Literacy: Where dreams beginLompoc Record: Sep 8, 2006 by John McReynolds
Ian Vorster/Staff Yolanda Calderon and Dick Clark relax for a few moments Tuesday at the table in the Lompoc Library at which Calderon learned to speak, read and write English. The many hours the two have spent together have resulted in Calderon being able to open her own childcare business.
Today is International Literacy Day, but no pictures of barefoot, poverty-stricken children are necessary.
Visualize instead a young mother at the Lompoc Public Library with a book in one hand and a bottle in the other. Less than five years ago, Yolanda Calderon was that mother.
She and tutor Dick Clark are the superstars of the library's Adult Reading Program.
Since Calderon began the program, she has become a U.S. citizen, passed CPR and first-aid classes, has started her own child-care business, and has begun classes at Allan Hancock College to further her dream of becoming a teacher.
“When I came (from Mexico) I didn't know how to ask for paper or plastic,” Calderon said. “I feel very proud of helping my kids. All my kids' lessons are in English. I understand them. When I have a parent conference they don't have to translate. I don't need help any more. I can do it.”
Clark, a 24-year Air Force veteran, holds three masters' degrees, yet he and Calderon are remarkably similar.
They are both self-starters who began back in the pack.
Clark, 70, is short and trim and prodigiously energetic. He and his wife, Doris, play tennis and ride bikes, on occasion for three hours at a stretch.
A San Gabriel Valley native, he enlisted in the Air Force after a brief and less-than-successful high school experience. Through the service he earned a bachelor's in business from Colorado, then earned those advanced degrees - in electrical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, in systems management from USC, and in business from Golden Gate University at Vandenberg. After active duty he spent 18 years working for Vandenberg contractors as a computer programmer. He taught mathematics at night for Hancock College, but he retired from it all in 1995.
“When I retired I retired from the job, not from life,” Clark said in his characteristically clipped, anything-is-possible-let's-get-on-with-it fashion.
After shopping around for fulfilling volunteer programs, he read an advertisement for the library's reading program in early 1997. It was a perfect fit. “I didn't want to go back to teaching. This is one-on-one and I don't have to test.”
Plus it took place at the library, one of Clark's favorite places.
“I have an affinity for libraries and I wanted to help,” he said with unassailable logic. In addition to the reading program, Clark volunteers to check in books once a week and is now in the third year of a three-year term as president of the library board.
Eight years ago, Yolanda Calderon appeared and her needs meshed seamlessly with yet another of Clark's avocations, teaching himself Spanish. He watches telenovelas and reads in Spanish daily.
Improved Spanish, which he only uses in tutoring as a last resort, is just one of Clark's paybacks for his work. “It puts some structure back in my life,” he said. “I have to get cleaned up. I have to shave. I have to prepare for my class.” Clark has more students than any other volunteer - four. He dedicates eight to 10 hours a week to them.
He takes personal pride in their accomplishments. Three of them took the U.S. citizenship exam and all passed with perfect, 20 of 20, scores. “They make the progress but I had a hand in it.”
And the students appreciate him. Sometimes he receives gifts of lettuce fresh from the field. “He is the foundation for everything I've done,” Calderon said.
She was illiterate in English, but not in Spanish when she immigrated 12 years ago. Despite coming from a family of seven, she had advanced to the second year of university in the provincial capital of Morelia before dropping out for lack of finances.
In Lompoc, Calderon, with the support of her husband Enrique, took the initiative.
Library Literacy Coordinator Christine Chill introduced Clark to Calderon when her son Kevin, now 11, was three. Then Calderon gave birth to Adrian, now 7, and Lisette, 5, but pregnancies were only momentary delays.
“She'd be up here writing and holding a bottle with the other hand,” Clark recalled. “That baby is now 5 years old.”
When Calderon signed up, her immediate objectives were simply to help her son with his homework, to read the mail, and to get a better job, but they soon expanded. Her dream was, and still is, to become a special-education teacher.
“My goal has always been the same. Just that my Mexican qualifications don't apply, so I had to start from the bottom,” she said.
Applying for citizenship was Clark's idea. “I owe it all to him,” she said. “I wasn't interested in it at first, but he told me I could do it. I was afraid, but I did it. His explanations were so good I didn't have to memorize anything.”
Clark prides himself on understanding the challenges faced by students who must juggle families, husbands and jobs along with learning. He shifts weekly meeting times as his students request. He even encourages them to bring their kids.
“I try to make them be a part of it,” he said of the children. “They see their mothers learning and it brings rapport between the kids and me. They give me high fives. It also encourages use of the library.”
Clark invites students to bring anything from home that they might have questions about. Frequently they are notes from school. In Calderon's case they have been questions about an English, or CPR, or first-aid class she was taking concurrently.
Calderon may stand out for her tenacious commitment to her advanced educational goal, but she is not fundamentally different from other reading program students, said coordinator Chill.
“When they come in the program, they see getting a job as a long-term goal. As their literacy improves their self confidence improves also and before long they're filling out job applications. “Eighty percent of the students are women,” Chill said.
Chill's 25 volunteers serve 50 students but 16 more have signed up. Some have been waiting for an entire year. In especially short supply are volunteers who will work at night, the only time many students have available.
She estimates that 20 percent of her students are illiterate in any language.
“The goal is to teach reading and writing to people who speak English, but who may not read it or write it,” she specified.
“The book does the teaching,” said Clark. “You're a guide. You don't have to be a teacher. All you have to have is patience and a willingness to help.”
And maybe hold a bottle.
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