Bob Lucas Memorial Branch Adult Literacy Tutor, Stephner White
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!”
