Adults Discover New World : Steering Those Who Never Learned to Literacy

University of San Diego sophomore Anastasia Hyll never knew teaching could be so demanding until she volunteered as a tutor for an adult literacy program offered at Carson Elementary School in Linda Vista.

Her first student, a middle-aged woman who has struggled through a blue-collar career by memorizing words by sight, never knew how thrilled she would be at learning to sound out words phonetically and starting to read magazine articles during her one-on-one tutorials.

Two nights a week, Hyll sits down with her student in the library at Carson, surrounded by shelves of books that one day the student--and the 30 other adults scattered in rooms throughout the school--may be able to pick up and read for pleasure.

Partnership Arrangements

The two-month-old program is proving to be a learning experience for both tutors and students, as well as an example of what can take place under partnership arrangements between public schools and private business or nonprofit groups.

The new literacy center is the result of collaboration between USD and Carson Elementary, and the efforts of the San Diego Community College District and the READ/San Diego literacy program, sponsored by the region’s public libraries.

For USD, a private Catholic university, the program enhances both its ongoing relationship with literacy tutoring and ties to its adopted elementary school under the city school district’s partnership arrangements.

“By chance, I was talking with Principal Linda Buffington at Carson last year about setting new goals, because USD had wanted to do more in the area of adult literacy,” said Judy Rauner, the university’s director of volunteer resources. USD students had been volunteering for tutoring in classes offered by the community colleges and had been helping teachers with paper work in their regular elementary-level classes at Carson.

“It’s a coincidence that we were sharing the same idea,” Buffington said. “I wanted to increase parent involvement and in particular follow up on research that says that children learn better when parents are able to read to them . . . and we want the community to see the school as something positive for all of them.”

$10,000 Program Grant

To establish the center, USD received a $10,000 grant from Campus Compact, a Rhode Island-based consortium of more than 100 college and university presidents that promotes student volunteer activities.

The tie-in with Carson gives residents of the heterogenous Linda Vista neighborhood--a mixture of ethnic groups and income levels--flexible and anonymous access to literacy programs, which many avoided because of the shame connected with admitting that they cannot read or write.

And it gives USD students another vehicle to help the community.

“Before this program, I didn’t know much about the Carson area at all, in fact I had never seen Carson,” said USD senior Nancy Nadeau, a University City High School graduate who oversees the literacy program, which includes child care while the adults study.

‘I Was Totally Shocked’

“I never gave illiteracy a second thought and I guess I was totally shocked at how many people cannot read. I’m just happy we can use the resources of the university to get things going.”

For Nadeau, a communications major, administration of the project is a major challenge, much different from the filing or phone work often found in volunteer programs. Nadeau and other student tutors complete nine hours of training given by specialists from the community college district. Nadeau also helps recruit others for the project.

“We learn how to gear the tutoring to the adult student, to understand what they want to get out of the program, such as whether they want to do a better job, or help with their children, or whatever.

“We understand that we should be giving them skills that they can apply to their lives, that will be useful to them,” said Nadeau, who carries out the initial hourlong assessment of the one or two new persons who show up each night of the project.

Hyll had already been involved in other USD volunteer activities, at an area hospital and in a fourth-grade class at Carson.

“I had never worked with adults, and I was a little surprised to find that these adults cannot read or write even though they speak well,” Hyll said.

In the quiet library, Hyll patiently goes over phonics with her student, sounding out a short “o” as in “olive” or “ox”, and a short “u” as in “umbrella” or “up.”

Hyll explains the difference in sounds between a short “u” and “i” when her student begins confusing the two vowels. She appreciates, without condescension, how difficult reading can be initially for a person long unable to associate the spoken language with the printed word.

“I was amazed when my student said, ‘Gosh, anything you say, you can also write down,’ ” Hyll said. “To me, reading and writing is just so natural that we take it for granted.”

That’s why Rauner makes sure that all tutors spend some time during their training talking about their emotional reactions to meeting functional illiterates and getting them to move beyond rudimentary literacy. The training includes tips on how to be tactful in explaining what may seem to a tutor to be basic, childlike functions.

“In fact, we go through an extensive process in selecting volunteers for these programs,” Rauner said. “I ask the students what issues they believe are important to them, what personal goals they have and how much available time they can commit.”

Rauner has plans to expand the program to other schools, and to set up instruction in a family learning center, where tutors, parents and children could learn to teach each other.