Joe won't have to fool them now
Literacy Services offers adults a new chance at life
San Diego Union: September 24, 1991 by Bob Rowland
When Joe Fernandez showed up for a job interview early one cool summer morning, he brought two key props: a newspaper and an application form that had been filled out for him by a friend.
But when Fernandez sat down to scan the application in front of him, his palms began to sweat. One question...then another, and another...didn't match those on the dog-eared sheet of paper in his pocket.
Frustrated and embarrassed, Fernandez slipped out of the personnel office and tossed the newspaper into the trash, knowing that yet another opportunity had slipped through his fingers.
"When you can't read or spell, you can't get anywhere," said Fernandez, 52. "You can fool people -- like I did whenever I took a newspaper with me -- but you can carry it just so far."
Fernandez sat hunched over a steno notebook one night last week during a two-hour learning session at the El Cajon office of the San Diego County Library's Adult Literacy Services.
The program offers free, confidential tutoring to English-speaking adults over 18. The East County office moved in July 1990 to its present location in a nondescript two-story building at 151 Van Houten St.
"Adults in our culture who can't read do get by, but it takes a tremendous amount of energy," said Pamela Carlisle, director of the East County literacy program.
"There is a stigma associated with illiteracy in this country," Carlisle said. "So much so, that people have a terrible time seeking help."
In the past, distance was another stumbling block for East County residents who wanted to take part in the literacy program. Those who owned cars faced a 40-minute commute to Kearny Mesa, where the unit was previously situated. Public transportation was even more challenging, especially for people working unusual hours.
Since moving to downtown El Cajon, Adult Literacy Services has experienced a surge in activity, Carlisle said. Last year, 178 learners took part in the program, which is carried out by three paid staff members and about 150 volunteer tutors.
It has been nearly a year since Fernandez knocked on the door of Adult Literacy Services. He took that step, he said, after a lifetime of daily frustrations -- and at the urging of one of his children.
"I worked as a laborer in construction for more than 15 years, because I didn't have to spell," said Fernandez, who was born and raised in Holtville, Calif. "But I want more now. I want a better job. And I want to be able to write a note to someone, or read a book or a newspaper."
Fernandez and his tutor, Lynda Martinez, have been working together as a team for months, meeting twice a week at the Adult Literacy center to pore over spelling exercises and vocabulary drills.
"I've always loved reading, and I think it's the most important thing I have to share," said Martinez, who works in the marketing department at United Way."
"Every day we talk about helping people," she said. "I came here because I wanted to put my energy and time where my mouth was."
Peering through silver wire-rimmed glasses, Fernandez struggled with the 26 symbols that have both taunted and eluded him his entire adult life.
Martinez repeated a phrase and waited for Fernandez to begin writing: "The cat is out."
The father of four wrote slowly, a No. 2 pencil gripped tightly in his right hand. For Fernandez, and for the estimated 350,000 county residents who cannot read or write, a simple sentence can pose obstacles, close doors, instill fear.
After several attempts and a few erasures Fernandez smiled down at the sentence he had just written.
Another small victory. But there are more ahead.
"I asked a friend of mine if he had seen the movie 'Misery,' and he said he had but that the book was even better," Fernandez said.
"That book is a long way off for me. But it's going to be there when I'm ready."
Monday, September 30, 1991
Thursday, May 30, 1991
Los Angeles Public Library - ENDING ADULT ILLITERACY SIMPLE AS TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO READ
ENDING ADULT ILLITERACY SIMPLE AS TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO READDaily News: May 12, 1991 by Shel Erlich, Guest Columnist
It bothers me. It's been bothering me for years. Shame on us! As a supposedly advanced and educated country, shouldn't we be making greater progress ending our national problem of illiteracy? It can't be as difficult as ending homelessness, which always seems to come down to spending money. Ending adult illiteracy merely requires teaching people how to read, or how to read better.
The subject attacked my conscience again just recently as I sat in a crowded airport lounge waiting for a flight. I glanced up from my magazine. About half the people in view are either talking with someone or just waiting, alone with their thoughts. The other half were busily engaged in something most of us take for granted - reading.
I saw paperbacks and hardbacks, newspapers, a miscellany of magazines, textbooks, brochures, comics, airline schedules, fan-folded computer print- outs and the silvery screens of laptop word processors.
These items were put away momentarily while we shuffled aboard the plane, stowed our belongings and belted ourselves in. But it wasn't long - some people didn't even wait until the plane took off - before the reading materials were taken out again, along with the newly discovered in-flight magazines and the emergency information cards. (I was sitting right next to the over-wing exit window, so I thought I should at least read the instructions about what I might have to do.) A few folks even smiled, somewhat grimly, over the words on the airsickness bag. The point is - a lot of people were reading.
For many years, I had heard the numbers: one out of five adults in this country either can't read at all or have some difficulty with printed words that go much beyond a simple STOP sign, the MEN and WOMEN on restroom doors or other very elementary instructions, signs or labels. Sometimes, illiterate persons memorize these bits of information as symbols, rather than read them as words. Non-readers often have very good memories - better than you and I. They have to; it's a matter of daily survival.
Stereotypical ideas of what an illiterate must "look like" are false; in fact, they look and usually act exactly like the rest of us. Some appear to be - and often are - quite successful in their businesses or occupations, their family relationships and other personal interests and hobbies. The greatest "achievement" for many of them, however, is how well they have hidden their illiteracy from their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers.
Could the well-dressed fiftyish woman in the aisle seat in my row on the plane be one of these "functional illiterates"? Maybe the tall, clean-cut young man carrying the athletic bag, or the elderly gentleman with bifocals who looked like a law school professor? None of them had been reading or speaking with anyone. Yet, it hadn't seemed quite appropriate to go up to one of them and say, "By the way, can you read?"
Late last summer, feeling somewhat guilty about having procrastinated for so long, I signed up to be a volunteer reading tutor through the adult literacy project offered by the Los Angeles Public Library. Libraries, with their endless shelves of reading matter on every imaginable subject, have given me countless hours of knowledge, information and enjoyment for as long as I can remember. But to a non-reader, a library must represent a fearsome and foreign place, perhaps as frustrating and uncomfortable an environment as a high-tech biological research lab would be to me.
My personal motivation in becoming a tutor was to be able to open those library doors, to open the covers of those books, to someone - to anyone - who couldn't read. I wanted to share the pleasures I had enjoyed for so long.
Due to a previously planned vacation last fall, I missed my first chance at the 12-hour training program. The next available program began in March, and I made sure I was there. Those three Saturday sessions were bracketed, perhaps only coincidentally, around Literacy Awareness Week, March 10-16, adding a sense of purpose for the 35 earnest volunteers in our group.
My "student" and I met for the first time in late March. I had looked forward to that moment with anticipation and, yes, some nervousness - like ''meeting a blind date," as one of our instructors put it. I had no idea at what reading level he had entered the program; I only knew that he had - somewhat courageously - asked for help.
Dan (not his real name) is a family man in his late forties (exactly my age). His present reading skills hover around the second- or third-grade level, according to my own untrained assessment. He dropped out of a San Fernando Valley junior high school in the eighth-grade, frustrated at his inability to keep up, but Dan says he's never been without a job. He now operates construction equipment. He is outgoing and speaks quite well; few would be aware of his hidden handicap.
We have met six times, and I am as amazed at his enthusiasm for learning as he is at how well he is doing. "I can't believe I just read that!" is his very frequent exclamation.
As we work together, I have to remind myself that the reasons many adult illiterates want to learn to read may be somewhat more urgent or practical than being able to enjoy a volume of William Shakespeare or John Steinbeck or Shel Silverstein. These new readers-to-be want to qualify for a job or get the promotion that's been eluding them for years, to write a check in the supermarket, to get the gist of local and national news from the newspaper or to read to their young children.
When the time is right - it could be three months or six months, it could be longer - I'll be at least as excited as Dan when we go out for lunch or dinner to celebrate the progress he has made, however large or small. And when he confidently picks up the printed menu and orders something other than ''whatever he's having," we'll both feel pretty damn good!
It bothers me. It's been bothering me for years. Shame on us! As a supposedly advanced and educated country, shouldn't we be making greater progress ending our national problem of illiteracy? It can't be as difficult as ending homelessness, which always seems to come down to spending money. Ending adult illiteracy merely requires teaching people how to read, or how to read better.
The subject attacked my conscience again just recently as I sat in a crowded airport lounge waiting for a flight. I glanced up from my magazine. About half the people in view are either talking with someone or just waiting, alone with their thoughts. The other half were busily engaged in something most of us take for granted - reading.
I saw paperbacks and hardbacks, newspapers, a miscellany of magazines, textbooks, brochures, comics, airline schedules, fan-folded computer print- outs and the silvery screens of laptop word processors.
These items were put away momentarily while we shuffled aboard the plane, stowed our belongings and belted ourselves in. But it wasn't long - some people didn't even wait until the plane took off - before the reading materials were taken out again, along with the newly discovered in-flight magazines and the emergency information cards. (I was sitting right next to the over-wing exit window, so I thought I should at least read the instructions about what I might have to do.) A few folks even smiled, somewhat grimly, over the words on the airsickness bag. The point is - a lot of people were reading.
For many years, I had heard the numbers: one out of five adults in this country either can't read at all or have some difficulty with printed words that go much beyond a simple STOP sign, the MEN and WOMEN on restroom doors or other very elementary instructions, signs or labels. Sometimes, illiterate persons memorize these bits of information as symbols, rather than read them as words. Non-readers often have very good memories - better than you and I. They have to; it's a matter of daily survival.
Stereotypical ideas of what an illiterate must "look like" are false; in fact, they look and usually act exactly like the rest of us. Some appear to be - and often are - quite successful in their businesses or occupations, their family relationships and other personal interests and hobbies. The greatest "achievement" for many of them, however, is how well they have hidden their illiteracy from their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers.
Could the well-dressed fiftyish woman in the aisle seat in my row on the plane be one of these "functional illiterates"? Maybe the tall, clean-cut young man carrying the athletic bag, or the elderly gentleman with bifocals who looked like a law school professor? None of them had been reading or speaking with anyone. Yet, it hadn't seemed quite appropriate to go up to one of them and say, "By the way, can you read?"
Late last summer, feeling somewhat guilty about having procrastinated for so long, I signed up to be a volunteer reading tutor through the adult literacy project offered by the Los Angeles Public Library. Libraries, with their endless shelves of reading matter on every imaginable subject, have given me countless hours of knowledge, information and enjoyment for as long as I can remember. But to a non-reader, a library must represent a fearsome and foreign place, perhaps as frustrating and uncomfortable an environment as a high-tech biological research lab would be to me.
My personal motivation in becoming a tutor was to be able to open those library doors, to open the covers of those books, to someone - to anyone - who couldn't read. I wanted to share the pleasures I had enjoyed for so long.
Due to a previously planned vacation last fall, I missed my first chance at the 12-hour training program. The next available program began in March, and I made sure I was there. Those three Saturday sessions were bracketed, perhaps only coincidentally, around Literacy Awareness Week, March 10-16, adding a sense of purpose for the 35 earnest volunteers in our group.
My "student" and I met for the first time in late March. I had looked forward to that moment with anticipation and, yes, some nervousness - like ''meeting a blind date," as one of our instructors put it. I had no idea at what reading level he had entered the program; I only knew that he had - somewhat courageously - asked for help.
Dan (not his real name) is a family man in his late forties (exactly my age). His present reading skills hover around the second- or third-grade level, according to my own untrained assessment. He dropped out of a San Fernando Valley junior high school in the eighth-grade, frustrated at his inability to keep up, but Dan says he's never been without a job. He now operates construction equipment. He is outgoing and speaks quite well; few would be aware of his hidden handicap.
We have met six times, and I am as amazed at his enthusiasm for learning as he is at how well he is doing. "I can't believe I just read that!" is his very frequent exclamation.
As we work together, I have to remind myself that the reasons many adult illiterates want to learn to read may be somewhat more urgent or practical than being able to enjoy a volume of William Shakespeare or John Steinbeck or Shel Silverstein. These new readers-to-be want to qualify for a job or get the promotion that's been eluding them for years, to write a check in the supermarket, to get the gist of local and national news from the newspaper or to read to their young children.
When the time is right - it could be three months or six months, it could be longer - I'll be at least as excited as Dan when we go out for lunch or dinner to celebrate the progress he has made, however large or small. And when he confidently picks up the printed menu and orders something other than ''whatever he's having," we'll both feel pretty damn good!
Wednesday, January 30, 1991
San Diego Public Library - READ San Diego - New library to be home for READ project
New library to be home for READ project
Evening Tribune: December 28, 1991 by Claude Walbert
A branch library to be constructed in Southeast San Diego will become a center of community activity as well as home of the READ/San Diego adult literacy project, said San Diego's head librarian.
It will be built on Market Street between 50th and 51st streets in Valencia Park and will house 50,000 books and periodicals.
Library Director Bill Sannwald said the 15,000-square-foot library was designed by Hillcrest architect Manuel Oncina to blend into the 8-acre site while leaving space for trees and paths.
The California Library Construction and Renovation Board awarded $3 million to the Valencia Park project Dec. 19 after plans for the library weathered a stiff state competition. The money comes from the Proposition 85 bond act.
Under terms of the grant, one of 14 awarded to 52 applicants, 35 percent of the construction costs must be paid by the applicant, and the new libraries must remain in operation for 20 years.
The Valencia Park branch will share its space with the literacy project, allowing it to move from its cramped Oak Park headquarters, Sannwald said.
Chris McFadden, adult literacy coordinator, said READ/San Diego will have twice the space now available in its 1,500-square-foot headquarters at 1535 Euclid Ave.
Begun in 1988, the literacy program has helped 1,500 people improve their reading skills, McFadden said. Most of those are adults, but anyone at least 16 years old who doesn't plan on returning to school is eligible for aid in gaining literacy.
The Euclid Avenue headquarters has four paid staff members and 45 volunteers in addition to the program's own library of books and records. It also has seven computers used to teach reading. That number is expected to grow to 18 after moving to the new headquarters, McFadden said.
Tutor training also will take place in the new headquarters, as will tutoring of adults.
There is no firm construction schedule for the library, said Terry Bednarzyk, a spokesman for Councilman George Stevens, in whose district the new branch will be built.
The possibility of adding 5,000 square feet to the library for a cultural center will be considered early next year, Bednarzyk said, with final decisions on construction details to follow.
Evening Tribune: December 28, 1991 by Claude Walbert
A branch library to be constructed in Southeast San Diego will become a center of community activity as well as home of the READ/San Diego adult literacy project, said San Diego's head librarian.
It will be built on Market Street between 50th and 51st streets in Valencia Park and will house 50,000 books and periodicals.
Library Director Bill Sannwald said the 15,000-square-foot library was designed by Hillcrest architect Manuel Oncina to blend into the 8-acre site while leaving space for trees and paths.
The California Library Construction and Renovation Board awarded $3 million to the Valencia Park project Dec. 19 after plans for the library weathered a stiff state competition. The money comes from the Proposition 85 bond act.
Under terms of the grant, one of 14 awarded to 52 applicants, 35 percent of the construction costs must be paid by the applicant, and the new libraries must remain in operation for 20 years.
The Valencia Park branch will share its space with the literacy project, allowing it to move from its cramped Oak Park headquarters, Sannwald said.
Chris McFadden, adult literacy coordinator, said READ/San Diego will have twice the space now available in its 1,500-square-foot headquarters at 1535 Euclid Ave.
Begun in 1988, the literacy program has helped 1,500 people improve their reading skills, McFadden said. Most of those are adults, but anyone at least 16 years old who doesn't plan on returning to school is eligible for aid in gaining literacy.
The Euclid Avenue headquarters has four paid staff members and 45 volunteers in addition to the program's own library of books and records. It also has seven computers used to teach reading. That number is expected to grow to 18 after moving to the new headquarters, McFadden said.
Tutor training also will take place in the new headquarters, as will tutoring of adults.
There is no firm construction schedule for the library, said Terry Bednarzyk, a spokesman for Councilman George Stevens, in whose district the new branch will be built.
The possibility of adding 5,000 square feet to the library for a cultural center will be considered early next year, Bednarzyk said, with final decisions on construction details to follow.
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