Friday, September 17, 2010

Adult Education and Family Literacy Week 2010

This week (September 13-19, 2010) marks the Adult Education and Family Literacy Week, declared by the National Coalition for Literacy. As one of their campaign activities, they've "called all bloggers" to blog about adult education and family literacy and to discuss how literacy impacts areas that concern them. They have featured several of these blogs on their website that promote adult and family literacy.

One of the blog posts I found particularly interesting was by Deb Peterson. She lists several ways that people can get involved in literacy efforts. Her list includes:
A couple more of my own ideas to build upon her list include the following:
  • Check out volunteer tutoring opportunities in your local community. Two organizations I've been impressed with in my neck of the woods include Project Read in Provo, UT, and the ESL Center in Salt Lake City.
  • Learn how to teach someone to read. A helpful, free resource is found at http://www.phonicstraining.com/.
  • Join a book club or an online book-sharing group. I was invited today by a friend to join "goodreads," which allows you to see what your friends have read, keep track of what you've read and what you'd like to read, and get ideas for books to read.
  • Read a little more for pleasure. We often take for granted the fact that we can do that.
  • Write in a diary or journal.
  • Consider how your ability to read and write affects your life. Consider the privilege it is to be literate. I've documented some of my thoughts in the previous blog posts, "Lessons Learned from Life" and "The Value of Literacy."
There's a lot of need out there. But there's also a lot we can do in our personal lives to ensure that we are taking full advantage of the privilege of being literate. When we're reminded of how enriched our lives are by literacy, I think we're more likely to feel a desire to help others gain that same privilege, and then to actually do something about it.

See also my post Adult Education and Family Literacy Week 2011: Teaching Struggling Readers.

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