By
Taryn Plumb |GLOBE
CORRESPONDENT
JANUARY
18, 2015
PHOTOS BY DAVID
L RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
QUINCY
— For the first 50 years of his life, Paulo Ramos simply got by.
He
relied on universal symbols, committed the visual makeup of certain
essential words to memory, and copied by rote letters and numbers
that friends assembled for him.
But
even as the Weymouth resident held down various jobs and eventually
went on to run his own cleaning business, the extent of his literacy
was being able to pen his own signature.
He
had never read a book or newspaper, and had never sat down to write a
friend or family member a letter or e-mail.
“When
I started, I was nothing,” the 54-year-old Cape Verde native said
of his first session with a literacy tutor in Quincy four years ago.
“I [had] just learned to sign my name.”
You
are probably reading this story without even thinking about it. You
have no need to sound out the vowels and consonants, consult a
dictionary, or puzzle over context.
What
you may not realize is that, reading these words — as simple as it
may be for you — can be a confounding and incapacitating task for
many adults in this country.
This
is where the nonprofit Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts-Quincy
fills a void; for more than a quarter century, the program based at
Thomas Crane Public Library has enabled hundreds of locals like Ramos
to acquire the reading and writing skills that many of us take for
granted.
Part
of a statewide network of more than a dozen such programs —
including in Stoughton, Norwood, Framingham, Lowell, and Methuen —
the nonprofit offers free, confidential, one-on-one tutoring to
adults at or below a sixth-grade reading level. Individualized
tutoring focuses on basic literacy or English as a Second Language.
There can often be a waiting list, depending on the number of tutors
available. The only requirements for prospective students are that
they are over age 16, not enrolled in school, and have the ability to
make a regular commitment of two hours a week.
The
Quincy program was established 28 years ago, according to Mary
Diggle, the program’s project manager, and assists between 70 and
100 students a year with reading and writing comprehension.
“It’s
life-changing,” said Mary Kelly, a part-time reading teacher from
Quincy who has worked with Ramos the past four years.
And
not just for the student. “You get more than you give,” she said
as she sat in a private reading room at the Crane library during a
recent weekly session.
According
to a recent study by the US Department of Education and the National
Institute of Literacy, more than 30 million, or 14 percent, of US
adults cannot read, while 21 percent of US adults read at below a
fifth-grade level.
This
is due to a number of factors, explained Diggle. American-born
students may have simply dropped out of primary or high school,
lacked educational opportunities while growing up, or are afflicted
with learning disabilities that were never identified or mitigated.
Immigrant students, meanwhile, may have been denied access to school
due to the atrocities of war or poverty, and, upon entering the
United States, may have learned to adequately speak English, but not
to write or read the language.
According
to Diggle, 68 pairs of tutors and students from the Quincy area are
working together; students are often age 50 or older and seek
assistance due to work barriers, or simply because they crave the
opportunity to read to their grandchildren.
Tutors,
meanwhile, are retired or practicing teachers like Kelly or people
who simply say, “I love reading and can’t imagine not knowing how
to,” Diggle explained.
Always
in demand, their only qualifications, Diggle said, are a passion for
reading, sensitivity, and an ability to work in diverse groups. They
initially go through an orientation, as well as six three-hour
training workshops focused on techniques, materials, and lesson
planning. The next tutor orientation is scheduled to be held on Jan.
26, according to Diggle.
When
Kelly and Ramos were paired up four years ago, they started with the
basics: the ABCs.
During
a recent weekday morning session, they worked on word drills, various
iterations of letters, and full sentences on word cards. Clad in
Boston College paraphernalia, Ramos used his finger to keep place
and, when stuck, took off his glasses and lowered his face within
inches of the pesky word.
“Look
at that again,” Kelly prompted. “Pause, take a breath.”
“Startly
... ” he attempted. “S ... startle.”
Kelly
nodded in approval.
“What
does it mean to startle you?”
Ramos
turned to his small hand-held electronic Franklin Speller machine,
looked it up, and read the definition aloud: “A sudden shock of
surprise or alarm.”
He
continued with a series of random sentences.
“He
was the proud owner of a Basset hound.”“We
will have clam chowder in a cup for dinner.”
“Do
not slouch on the couch.”
Born
to farm-working parents, Ramos recalled that he attended school
occasionally — for a duration of two to three years, he estimated,
but not every day, because work at home took precedence. He never
learned to read or write in his native Portuguese, and, when he came
to the United States, he learned to speak English phonetically and
held down a series of low-wage jobs.
Finally,
when a back injury put him out of work a few years ago, he decided to
do something about his illiteracy.
“I
thought, ‘I’d like to read, to see what’s going on, to use my
mind,’ ” he said in a thick Portuguese accent.
He
has proved to be a star pupil, developing a voraciousness for
reading; he picks up anything, from discarded scraps of paper to
health care brochures, to newspapers, and, more recently, young adult
books, including a biography of Babe Ruth (he wrote a book report on
that) and Kate DiCamillo’s novel “Because of Winn-Dixie.”
“He
comes in with anything he finds lying around,” said Kelly. “He’s
soaking up everything.”
“Every
day I get better and better with my reading,” he said, affirming
that, “if you want something, you work hard for it. Nobody can do
it for you.”
Interested
in sharing your love of reading and writing? The next tutor training
orientation will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on Jan. 26 in the
Thomas Crane Public Library’s community room. Training will take
place in the library’s community room from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Feb.
2 through March 2.
To
download an application and find out more details, visit
http://thomascranelibrary.org/read.
Visit
Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts at http://www.lvm.org.
Original story link.
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