The Big Picture: Adult Literacy Insights from the ProLiteracy Conference
Written by Terry Witherell, First Literacy Executive Director
Bryan McCormick, First Literacy Program Director, and Terry Witherell, First Literacy Executive Director, pictured at the ProLiteracy Conference in October.
Many of us who work in the Nonprofit sector or in Education often feel like we’re in this alone, fighting the good fight. We can start to feel burnt out, especially when we don’t have the opportunity to pick our heads up from our daily work, step back, and look at our work from a higher vantage point. That’s one of the reasons it’s so great to go to a professional conference.
Last month, our Program Director and I attended the ProLiteracy Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. We joined over 800 educators from across the country who work in adult literacy, through various Adult Basic Education (ABE) and English Language Learning (ELL) programs. Like most small Nonprofits, First Literacy does not have a big professional development budget (in fact it’s practically non-existent); so it was a big deal for us to be able to go.
Many of the sessions drilled down into specific teaching techniques: things like “Using Auto Teacher for Adult Reading Comprehension”, “Building Numeracy with Digital Resiliency”, and “Integrating Mental Wellness and Trauma-Sensitive Techniques into Adult ESOL”. Because I am in a leadership role and not in the classroom, these workshops were not as relevant to my day-to-day work; but I loved having the opportunity to dive deeper into some of the techniques and language of the profession, and to attend workshops that were more aligned with my work, such as “Community-Based Literacy Organizations: Stronger Together”, “Working with Your Board of Directors Effectively”, and “Adult Education Research: Partnering to Identify Effective Strategies for Improving Learner Access and Equity.”
A Pioneer in the Field of Adult Literacy
The conference also included many tributes to honor Ruth Colvin, who recently died at the age of 107. Ruth was the founder of Literacy Volunteers of America. It was Ruth who in 1962 was shocked to learn that over 11,000 adults in her hometown of Syracuse, New York were unable to read. She started tutoring in her basement; fast forward to the founding of Literacy Volunteers of America, and the professionalization of ProLiteracy.
Unfortunately, sixty-two years later after Ruth started her work, there are still 48 million adults in the U.S. who cannot read above a third-grade level; and the majority of these adults were born in the United States. To make matters worse, the programs and resources available only help ten percent of those who would like to learn to read and write in English.
Our Impact
At First Literacy, we are doing our part to help ensure that adult learners and the educators who support them have the resources they need. We like to say that we are “small but mighty”; with only five people on our team, we are able to impact over 8,000 adult learners each year, through free professional development workshops that are offered to teachers and volunteers who work with adult learners, grants that are awarded to those with innovative new ways to teach their adult students, and scholarships that are provided to adult learners who are pursuing community college or vocational programs to achieve their goals.
Thank you to the educators who are committed to this work, and to everyone who supports adult literacy efforts. We still have a long way to go until every adult in the United States is able to read and write.