Friday, June 3, 2016

Altadena Library :: Adult Literacy Tutor

Bob Lucas Memorial Branch Adult Literacy Tutor, Stephner White
Connect: May 2016 From the Director

The backbone of Let’s ReadAltadena’s Adult Literacy Program is our hard working and passionate volunteer tutors. Without their knowledge and assistance, our program would not be able to provide the tutoring services for our adult learners. Our tutors do not require advanced degrees in education or even experience in tutoring. They just need the desire to help another person to read and write. People coming in with that desire just need a place to work with a learner, a little bit of training, and the workbooks, which we provide.

Stephner “Steff” White has been a tutor with our literacy program for several years, and has worked with many learners in our program. During high school, she worked with computers and telephones, which led to her being involved in communications and training with the city of Los Angeles. Steff always felt a calling to be a teacher so she began tutoring during, and after, college. We asked Steff why she decided to tutor at Let’s Read Altadena and she expressed her wish to work with her Altadena community and that she had been influenced by Roberta Lauderdale, who was our literacy coordinator from 1996 to 2014 before she passed away.

While working with learners in our program, Steff said that her overall goal is to learn about the person she is tutoring and discovering what they want to accomplish with their literacy skills. This is a regular process for many of our tutors and the initial steps they take before working on the literacy needs of their learner. Steff uses many of the literacy materials we have for our tutors and learners, but she states, “being in a library,  I have all of the resources I need!”

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