Lots of good things are happening at our Literacy Council. This past fiscal year, we grew from 29 to 80 matched tutor/student pairs, and collected 5,098 tutor volunteer hours! That averages out to 9.4 hours of tutoring per month, per active tutor/student match. We are also planning on training an additional 30 new tutors at our Fall training, and matching each of them with students immediately afterwards.
Harvey Robinson, 47, grew up in one of the roughest parts of Washington, D.C. and quit going to school after the eighth grade. He never learned to read. “I used to lie and tell them that as a child I got lead poisoning,” Robinson said. Robinson became interested in learning to read about two years ago, when he went to take the GED and a counselor told him he needed to call the Literacy Council. Since then, Robinson has been meeting with his tutor each week and feels a lot more confident about his reading skills. He’s even taken to watching “Jeopardy” and doing word games. “We have all got gold in us,” he said, “and we just have to dig deeper to see it.”
By Earl Kelly, 3/14/2011, reprinted with permission of the Capital Gazette newspaper.
Charles Fort is Robinson’s AACLC tutor.
NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect new dates and locations for board meetings in November and December, 2012.
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All AACLC Board meetings are open to the public. Executive Board meetings are held monthly to track progress; at Quarterly Meetings, we discuss strategy. Board meetings are held from 7:00 to 8:45 p.m on the following dates at the library locations listed. All current Literacy Council members are eligible to vote.
Date: September 5, 2012 – Exeuctive and Quarterly meeting and elections
Location: Severna Park (small), 45 West McKinsey Road, Severna Park, MD 21146
Date: October 3, 2012 – Executive Board meeting
Location: Annapolis Library, 1410 West Street, Annapolis, MD 21401
Date: November 8, 2012 – Executive Board meeting
Location: Edgewater Library, Small Room, 25 Stepneys Lane, Edgewatere, MD 21037
Date: December 6, 2012 – Executive Board and Quarterly Meeting
Location: West County Library, Room A, 1325 Annapolis Rd., Odenton, MD
Our next two-day training for new tutors is scheduled for Saturday, September 29 and Saturday, October 13, from 10:30am to 4:00pm each day, at Woods Memorial Presbyterian Church, in Severna Park. The new tutor training format is twelve hours in length and covers both Basic Literacy and ELL (English Language Learning). If you, or someone you know, would be interested in attending this training, please email programdirector@aaclc.
For more details and a map to the training location, see our Calendar of Events
More tutor continuing education will be held this Fall – these sessions are open to all ongoing tutors and volunteers of AACLC.
Please encourage them to call us or use our Refer-a Student contact form.
Many of you are accustomed to receiving our Annual Membership Drive letter in June or July; this year it will arrive later this month or early September.
If you would like to make a donation online with a credit card or with a PayPal Account, you can use this button:
Click Button to Make Your Donation
Of course, if you want to stick to the low-tech donation, we welcome those too! Simply mail us a check payable to Anne Arundel County Literacy Council or AACLC and mail to:
Anne Arundel County Literacy Council Post Office Box 1303 Edgewater, MD 21037
Maggie Cullman, one of our dedicated AACLC volunteer tutors, brings us this heartwarming account of two students—Rose and Lan—whose lives have been changed for the better through the work of AACLC.
My current student, Rose, is a married woman with grown children. Her story dates back to the US involvement in Vietnam. Rose’s father had worked for the Americans, and was imprisoned by the new regime after the Communist victory. Rose and her siblings were not permitted to attend school at all.
friendly, chatty, and full of smiles. Her spoken language is serviceable and she reads at Laubach level III. Because she had received no education in any language prior to our time together, teaching Rose reading skills without the benefit of a shared language has been a rewarding challenge.
My second student, Lan, came to me when she was in her early 20s. She’d had a good secondary education in Vietnam, and showed lots of enthusiasm and drive. The only thing she lacked was English skills. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to help provide her with the linguistic keys to get ahead. Less than 3 years after we began working together, she left me to attend Anne Arundel Community College–while still working full-time at the salon and becoming engaged to a charming young man. After graduating last spring, she’s already working on completing a four-year degree through the University of Maryland. It’s been exciting and extraordinarily meaningful for me to help these individuals achieve their potential. I’m most grateful for the opportunity to do it.
If you are interested in supporting our organization by being a tutor, contact us today to learn about training and the exciting rewards of teaching adults to read. There are lots of ways to contact us:
If you missed the August, 2012 AACLC newsletter in your email inbox, you can find it here: AACLC Newsletter August 2012
If you’re not on our email list and would like to be, please click “Join Our Email List” here or in the sidebar.
I hope you have been enjoying your summer! Please take a moment to read through our newsletter. Great information follows, including an interview with Maggie Cullman, who has tutored several Vietnamese women over the years. Other articles include information on our updated website plans, Fall Tutor Training, Barnes and Noble Book Fair, Board elections, and more. If you’re reading this on our website blog, you can find these articles posted elsewhere in the blog.
We need a volunteer to help us stay on top of things at the office on West Street in downtown Annapolis If you have time to volunteer, please get in touch with me as soon as possible. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Lisa Vernon
We have some ideas for some fund raisers. Do you want to come help make them a reality?
Don’t worry if you don’t have experience. All we need is a team of creative fun-loving people to do some brainstorming and some planning.
Please send an email to info@icanread.org to let us know if you are interested.
A good time is practically guaranteed!
