New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning
Teacher of the Year
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Many congrats to Randy Budros, the LVA tutor who was named Teacher of the Year by the New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning (NJALL). The award is presented to an adult educator who has demonstrated professionalism and exemplary performance teaching adults in the field of lifelong learning.
Dr. Budros is a social justice advocate and a dedicated volunteer literacy tutor who has never declined to accept one more new student into one of his ESOL groups. This retired researcher and University of San Francisco professor spends many hours as a volunteer in efforts as varied as aiding refugees from West Africa and South America at the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Charities, fighting voter suppression in Georgia, and promoting racial justice and LGBTQ rights. And, for the past five years, he’s still found time to help students learn to read, write, and speak English, as well as to find essential life resources, and to assimilate into their communities. In turn his students provide him with a window into their complex worlds, both now and prior to their journeys here, he said in his award acceptance speech. “This sort of symbiotic relationship makes tutoring a richly rewarding, even intoxicating endeavor, making you eager to return for your next weekly fix.” |
New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning
Adult Learner Writing Contest 2021
Congratulations to our talented student authors who earned awards in the NJALL Adult Learner Writing Contest 2021. Contest winners will have their work published by the organization both online and in a hard copy magazine.
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Georgina, who in the past has garnered the attention of NJALL writing contest judges, took this year’s first-place non-fiction award for Justice for Vanessa Guillen update, an opinion piece that questions the sincerity of the military’s response to the murder of an Army specialist stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. An investigation into Specialist Guillen’s homicide found a command climate that was permissive of sexual assault and sexual harassment and it resulted in the firing or suspension of 14 Army officials. “How long would we continue to see cases like Vanessa’s?” the Ecuadorian native asked in her piece. “There needs to be a change in culture within the military and within society as well.”
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In Kids Left Behind for a Dream, Rosa, a native of Ecuador, tackled the issue of children who suffer painful separations from their parents when they are sent to the U.S. to live with other relatives. Rosa won a second-place award for her non-fiction effort, which captured the emotional trauma that many of these children experience, including her husband who was sent to the states at age 10 to live with a sister. Many of these children are grateful for the sacrifices their parents made but remain emotionally scarred. “As an adult, he still experiences the loss of his mother and father deeply,” she wrote of her husband, whose mother died before he could return home to see her. “In his mind, the last image of his mother saying goodbye haunts him.” You can read a profile of Rosa, who also earned her high school diploma last month, on the second page of this newsletter.
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Insight 2021 |
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