September/October 2021

WHY CHOOSE LITERACY AS A PROFESSION?

"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference." – Tom Brokaw

I've been asked in the past why I chose the profession I'm in. Never an easy question to answer. I have a master's degree (in Counseling and Education). As a high school graduate, I was offered a full ride to the General Motors Institute. That path would have provided a life-long, lucrative career in the automotive industry. I was one of a handful of original employees at Autodesk. I try not to think of the lucrative stock I would've had :( I've had a successful psychotherapy practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist. I've been a Community College counselor and an international school counselor in Kuwait.

So why did I choose to work with low-literacy adults and their families? It wasn't for the money or the prestige. I passed those up by resigning from my previous jobs. It wasn't for a forty-hour week or good pension benefits. Ever try to run a nonprofit on a forty work week? Hah! Again, I let that go with my other jobs.

So, why did I end up running a literacy nonprofit for the past 20 plus years? In reflection, I've felt a deep sense of making a difference and of joy in assisting low-literacy, often low-income, adults achieve the literacy skills that give them a positive path forward. This path may be to a better job, a college certificate/degree, a better health outcome, a more stable financial plan, or a better community, politically engaged member. And also, I was always moved to see their children wanting to be educated and go to college because they were proud of their mom or dad's example.

To riff on our Literacyworks Center motto: Literacy is changing lives. Literacy creates real lifelong change. That's why I choose a profession in literacy education.

Paul

6 FACTS ABOUT LITERACY IN AMERICA

AND ONE MYTH

1.      As of 2011, America was the only free-market OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country where the current generation was less educated than the previous one. (Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy. "Reach Higher, America Overcoming Crisis in The U.S. Workforce." National Commission on Adult Literacy.)

2.      Nearly 85% of the juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, proving a close relationship between illiteracy and crime. More than 60% of all inmates are functionally illiterate. (Blankenship, John. "Functional illiteracy continues to grow, but there is help.") 

3.     It is estimated between $106–$238 billion in health care costs a year are linked to low adult literacy skills. Adults with limited health literacy are hospitalized and use emergency services significantly higher than those with higher skills. (Vernon, J. A., Trujillo, A., Rosenbaum, S. & DeBuono, B. (2007, October). Low health literacy: Implications for national health policy. Health Sciences Research Commons). 

4.      43 million adults in the United States can't read above a third-grade level. That means that 1 in 7 people have literacy issues. If you're surprised, you're not alone. 79% of adults said they don't know an adult with this issue. (Adult Literacy in the United States. 2019, July).

5. The U.S. has—by far—the world's largest immigrant population, holding about one-in-five of the world's immigrants. Among immigrants ages 5 and older in 2018, only half (53%) are proficient English speakers. This severely limits their access to jobs, college, and citizenship and increases their vulnerability to living in poverty. Pew Research estimates that between 2015 and 2065, immigrants and their descendants are projected to increase the U.S. population by 103 million people.

6. There are countless reasons why people attend literacy programs.

• They attended low-quality schools/poorly funded schools.

• They dropped out of school because of events out of their control. Such events as needed to become the primary earner for the family, for example.

• They struggled with undiagnosed learning impairments.

• They fell behind early and never caught up. "Sixty-six percent of all U.S. fourth-graders scored 'below proficient on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading test." 

MYTH: "We have more important issues to worry about, like health care, unemployment, the economy, or who our next president will be."

Fact: People with low literacy skills are four times more likely to have poor health (two times higher than the national average). Refer to the health costs above.

Fact: Adults with low literacy levels are twice as likely to be unemployed. How do you fix it? If half of the dropouts from the class of 2008 had graduated, there would be an additional 30,000 new jobs! Imagine if that happened every year.

Fact: Americans with low literacy levels are less likely to be politically engaged or understand what is going on in politics. Do you want to get things done? Give people the tools to really understand the importance of the political process, and we all might be a little less frustrated after every fourth November.

THE CENTER IS CHANGING LIVES AND THE NEED IS GREAT

 SOME PROGRAMS PROVIDE JUST A BAND-AID, BUT THE CENTER CREATES REAL LIFELONG CHANGE 

As we reflect on the past six years of the Literacyworks Center program, several students stand out for their persistence and achievement.  Here are a few of their stories.

A mother trying to complete her GED after having a difficult time in high school achieved her goal. After five years, she is preparing to be transferred to a pharmacy program. 

Another student entered the program taking English as Second Language classes.  He quickly improved his English skill and began taking credit classes with an emphasis on science.  He graduated from SRJC and transferred to UC Santa Crus, majoring in physics.  He completed his first year taking classes remotely due to the pandemic.  Now he is in his senior year taking classes in person.  He will graduate next Spring.

A young mother of two demonstrated confidence and determination in the very first Literacyworks Center workshop she attended.

She came to the United States at an early age speaking no English.  She describes how she realized that if she wanted to get ahead and create a comfortable life for herself and her family, she would have to learn English and did.  College classes were challenging, but she worked extremely hard.  Now, after five years in the Center's program, she is applying to nursing school.  We are confident she will get there.

 A young man struggled in high school, almost not making it to graduation.  He found his way to SRJC and the Literacyworks program.  He attended part-time while working to support himself.

He progressively took on a leadership role on campus in the student service area, which allowed him to help other students find value in education and the college community. He graduated from the JC two years ago and transferred to UC Berkeley with a full scholarship. He graduated with honors while attending remotely.   His goal is to get a Ph.D. in Sociology and give back to the Santa Rosa Latinx community. 

Literacyworks Center has awarded over 1100 adult literacy scholarships to students in the program in the first six years.

Each individual's story is one of persistence, hard work, and determination.  It has been a great honor to serve this remarkable group of people as they strive to achieve their goals.   

THE ASK

So, we have stated our case of why literacy matters and, by extension, why our students deserve your continued financial support. 

It takes $3,000 a year to enable a Center student to reach their goals and stay in school for a full academic year. We do whatever it takes to help our adults succeed in college, but we can't do it without you. Your gift of any amount creates meaningful change for our students, families, and their communities. All of our adults are low-income, low-literacy members of our community and are the first in their family to go to college. Many are parents. Their perseverance in reaching their educational goals encourages their children to excel in school and follow their example to attend college. 

We can’t succeed without your help. Please donate to Literacyworks.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – Dr. Seuss

May 2020 Literacyworks News

As COVID-19 proliferates across America, access to reliable, understandable information is critical. One's health literacy is the degree to which you can get, understand, and use basic health information to make decisions about health issues, identifying the false information, and discarding it. Plain language health literacy is a valuable tool in fighting this virus for our students and the community at large.

When the California Health Literacy Initiative (http://www.literacyworks.org/healthliteracy) launched in 2003, we wrote that adult learners faced the same health care challenges as fully literate adults. They faced challenges in establishing a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, understanding new therapies, and new diseases. For adult learners, the additional struggle is to deal with all these tasks while lacking the necessary skills to find and understand health-related information. As a result, they often fail to engage in early detection and preventive health care practices and have difficulty understanding and complying with instructions from their doctors. 

Literacyworks staff is dedicated to providing our students and the community with the best, current, most understandable, and trustworthy information to help deal with this current and any future crisis. As the Global Working Group on Health Literacy of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education stated about the pandemic, “the dissemination of quality, timely and understandable information is key in slowing down transmission and avoiding overburdening the healthcare system.”

As part of our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources site, we will continue to identify and tag false information by:

• Helping our students cross-check the accuracy and credibility of information found on TV, radio, internet, and social media.

• Enabling our students to ask questions to family members and trusted health professionals about the fake news, misinformation and harmful content and messages.

• Encouraging our students to check the source of information (where does it come from, who is behind the information, what is the intention, why was it shared, when was it published.

Below are some fake theories and our response. To see more, go to our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources site at http://www.literacyworkscenter.org/covid-19.

Wearing gloves will 100% protect me from the coronavirus.
FALSE! Gloves only help if you do not touch your eyes, nose, mouth and wash your hands after removing gloves. Whatever your dirty gloves touch, it can spread the coronavirus to those surfaces.

I am young and healthy, so I can’t be infected by the new coronavirus.
FALSE! According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people of all ages can be infected by the new coronavirus. Older people and people with illnesses (like asthma, diabetes, heart disease) can be in danger of becoming ill with the virus. WHO recommends people of all ages to take steps to protect themselves from the virus.

Hand dryers and UV lamps are effective in killing the coronavirus.
FALSE! According to WHO, “hand dryers are not effective in killing the coronavirus. UV lamps should not be used to sterilize hands, or other areas of skin as UV radiation can cause skin irritation. To protect yourself against the new coronavirus, you should frequently clean your hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub.”

Drinking a bleach solution will prevent you from getting the coronavirus.
FALSE! FALSE! FALSE! Do not drink bleach! Social media users and others are spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory that says drinking a bleach concoction will prevent contracting the 2019 coronavirus strain at the center of a current outbreak. The Food and Drug Administration has released multiple warnings about the "dangerous and potentially life-threatening side effects" of the solution and urges people not to drink it. They have reports of people experiencing severe vomiting, severe diarrhea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration, acute liver failure and death after drinking cleaning products.

We will continue to support our students and community when disaster strikes with sites like Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources http://www.literacyworkscenter.org/covid-19. 

As the global pandemic moves into May, our Center students continue to face significant challenges. As reported last month, the majority of our 110 students made the transition to online learning. Many said that they miss their classmates and teachers. They tell us that there is a great deal of homework, and it seems harder with no one to ask questions easily. Many of our students have children who are having their own first experience with online learning. Parents become teachers overnight, and some are struggling with their new role. The next dimension of this ever-changing situation is beginning to unfold. Rent is due on the first of May, and a number of our folks don’t have the money to cover it. Money for food is limited for some, many are taking advantage of the food banks, but that is sometimes in short supply. The subtle anxiety about the unknown yet to come is often masked by a perpetual optimistic belief that things will work out for their family. It seems the Center staff’s role has moved from not only providing educational support to also becoming an underfunded social service effort. One student told the staff that she appreciated getting a call because she knew we had her back and that we cared. During a recent Center staff telephone meeting, one member said that they are regularly profoundly inspired by the courage and strength of our students. Their bravery and boldness in attempting to change their futures through education are now being tested, but we believe they can succeed.

Some details about a few of our students: Diana is in a pre-nursing program taking anatomy online. She will do it, but she says it is not easy. Her tenacity and drive to improve the chances for her family’s future is a model for so many of our students. Vicente, a first-generation college student, has been helping some other students figure out how to manage the technology needed for online learning. He was due to graduate this month, but he will have to cross the stage virtually due to the virus. He is transferring to UC Santa Crus in the fall with a full scholarship for tuition and room and board, majoring in Physics. Maria is working on completing her GED. Now that the class is online, she is not sure how she will do but told us would succeed because she wants to be a model for children. Emanuel’s phone was disconnected.

~ Chris Schultz, Center Director

SUPPORT OUR STUDENTS!

Our low-income students are among the most vulnerable in our community when it comes to suffering during a disaster. Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, many of our students are suffering a loss of income and housing. Also, SRJC has been closed since the first of April when online classes began.

Our staff is offering additional support services to ensure our students stay in school and complete their course of study. We are proud that most have persisted and remained.

Thank you for supporting our students with your donation during this difficult time. You are making a difference in their lives with your gift.