Literacy Volunteers of America, Essex & Passaic Counties, NJ Inc.

November 2022

Volume 10, Issue 11

The Insider

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The Insider, the monthly newsletter of LVA, Essex & Passaic Counties, will keep you in the loop on all of the organization’s upcoming events.

Many thanks to workshop presenter Carol Cochi (top pane above) for introducing us to strategies and skills that will help make our English language learners more proficient, and active listeners.

Literacy Volunteers of America Essex & Passaic Counties

90 Broad Street, 2nd Floor, Bloomfield, NJ 07003
(973) 566-6200, ext. 217 or 225

195 Gregory Avenue, 2nd Floor, Passaic, NJ 07055
(973) 470-0039

Cristhian Barcelos      -Executive Director
                                           cbarcelos@lvaep.org
Catherine Angus -Tutor Support Specialist
                           cangus@lvaep.org
Russell Ben Ali     -Social Media & Newsletter Coordinator
rbenali@lvaep.org
Jorge Chavez               -Data Processing Coordinator
jchavez@lvaep.org
Marisol Ramirez          -Student Coordinator
mramirez@lvaep.org

Greetings LVA family!

Happy November, which just so happens to be National Family Literacy Month, a time to gather the family and read together. Reading aloud to children stimulates their imagination and helps them develop language and listening skills that last a lifetime. That works for grandchildren and other kids as well.

Okay, so the midterm elections are over, although some vote tallies continue. What never seems to be mentioned in election news coverage these days is the high number of foreign-born naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote. About one-in-ten people eligible to vote in the U.S. are immigrants who mostly live in five states – California, New York, Florida, Texas, and New Jersey, according to a Pew Research Center study. New Jersey has about 1.2 million immigrant eligible voters, according to the study, of which 32% are Latino, 30% are Asian, 25% are white, and 11% are black.

About 18% of all eligible voters in New Jersey are foreign-born and the top birth countries for these voters are India, Dominican Republic, and the Philippines. New Jersey also has the nation’s highest share of Asian immigrant eligible voters with a bachelor’s degree or higher, at about 66%. You can read more report highlights at: https://pewrsr.ch/3eDrVSc

Finally, don’t forget our annual membership meeting this week, one of the few, if not only, opportunities for all of us to get together, albeit virtually. We’ll elect new board members, catch up with one another, and hear a brief report from our director, Cristhian Barcelos, on the status of our organization.

LVA’s 2022 Annual Membership Virtual Meeting will take place on Thursday, November 17th, from 7:00-7:30 pm, via Google Meet. The video link is https://meet.google.com/ihs-pybw-phg and attendance confirmation is greatly appreciated.

In the News

To view the following stories, copy and paste the highlighted website into an internet search bar.

“English classes: Seniors show it’s never too late.”
VN Express International. http://bit.ly/3Tu3Tw2

“Is DACA back to square one?” NJ Spotlight News. http://bit.ly/3NZPjeo

“What prevents immigrants from applying for U.S. citizenship?” Record Journal. http://bit.ly/3WO7Pue

Magaly, one of the first female electricians in her Ecuador hometown, wanted to become a police officer but her father, a career cop, discouraged her.

Tutor Training Workshops

Online Training, by TBD
Platform: Zoom
Wednesdays, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
January 25, February 1, 8, 15, 22, & March 1, 2023

Tutor Support Workshops

"Grammar Instruction that Works,"
with Catherine Mitch
Platform: Zoom
Thursday, November 17, 2022
11:00 am – 1:00 pm

"Teaching Beginner ESL Students Through Ventures,"
with Maria Paduano
Platform: Zoom
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
11:00 am – 12:30 pm

Monthly Coffee Hour with Tutors

with Catherine Angus
Thursday, January 12, 2023 at 4:00 pm

http://www.lvaep.org/workshops.html

Getting to Know Us
Magaly, LVA student
by Russell Ben Ali

Magaly faced the usual daunting obstacles that confront new arrivals to the U.S. from Latin America and other countries.

Her minimal grasp of English made it difficult to understand others, including vital contacts like her family doctors and children’s teachers. And those same language barriers hampered her job prospects.

Nine years later she is an intermediate student, with an ease of conversing in English that comes from years of practice, including time spent studying at an Orange adult learning center, at Essex County College, and now at LVA.

Her progress is likely due to a steady work ethic she gained at the hands of her late father, a former police officer, and her mother, who stayed home to raise Magaly and her seven siblings.

“My dad, who died two years ago, taught me to always work hard to get ahead,” said Magaly, who is employed as a housekeeper but aspires to find a position in the healthcare industry.

For four months she has worked with her tutor, Mary O’Connor, on everything from grammar to writing in a group that includes students from Egypt and Brazil.

“Magaly works very hard to improve because she really wants to get back to a level of a job that is commensurate with her background,” Mary noted. “I’ve not only seen an improvement but a confidence that seems to be growing.”

Magaly is a native of Azogues, an Andean city in south-central Ecuador. In school she studied the fundamentals of electricity and graduated to find herself one of only a few female electricians in the city. “I knew only about two female electricians in my town … and they said it wasn’t easy because the men didn’t like women to be electricians.”

And work was hard to find. Magaly wound up assisting her husband with his electrician practice, as she continues to do today, but mainly worked in libraries, first in “SINAB”, Ecuador’s national system of public libraries, and later in a middle school library. There she helped children improve their reading skills, guided them through writing and art projects, helped them with homework, and accompanied them on cultural trips.

Literacy opens a wide door to life. Help us keep that door open with your donation!

Thanks in large part to you, we are able to aid hundreds of students each year. Please continue your efforts to improve the lives of others by giving the gift of literacy. You can contribute by mailing us a check or through our website @:

http://www.lvaep.org/donate.html

‘How illiteracy silenced my father.’

UnHerd

By Darran Anderson, November 3, 2022

The signs were there throughout his entire life that my father could not write. I can see them now but only with the benefit of hindsight and only when it is far too late. In fairness, he hid them well. He was an old-school stoic and there are many things a man, particularly of my father’s time, could conceal behind a beard, a host of tattoos, and silence. “Still waters run deep” my mother would say of him, or “It’s the quiet ones you have to watch” at other, more apprehensive, moments.

Some of the signs seem obvious now. A heartfelt but garbled message he’d chalked for my mother’s birthday before he left for work. How he would hover around, very slowly and subtly, trying to get us, his primary school-age children, to fill in forms he needed. In terms of boundless curiosity and the vastness of his references, from the intricacies of Brehon Law to the Latin names for plants to obscure battles of the Second World War, he was perhaps the smartest man I’ve ever met. And yet he carried the burden of illiteracy, silently, since he was a boy. Were I not his son in terms of unsentimental temperament, it would break my heart to think about.

In the end, there was no space to hide it any longer, no room left to evade or disguise. It was silence itself that revealed the condition. Unexpectedly and brutally stricken with Covid, my father ended up critically ill in ICU. Breathing via a ventilator and tracheostomy, it was impossible for him to talk. (cont.)

Reprinted from UnHerd. For full story, paste the following link into your favorite web browser address bar: bit.ly/3fOMJeR

Student Resources

Learning a new culture is more than studying a language. Tutoring is more than learning techniques. Our “Resources” webpage covers everything from legal matters, health care, & scholarships for immigrants, to professional development for tutors. Give us a look @: http://www.lvaep.org/students.html

Getting to Know Us
Howard Gardner, LVA tutor
by Russell Ben Ali

Long before he became a literacy volunteer, Howard Gardner began writing poetry, and reciting his verses in public while accompanied by a guitarist and, occasionally, a drummer or cellist.

While his body of work and list of performances are vast, dating back to the 1980s, there’s one show this Montclair native likely will never forget.

That came in April 1999, when Howard took the stage at UCLA’s Royce Hall, an iconic concert venue that’s hosted show stoppers like Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein, and Wynton Marsalis, among others.

For two amazing nights, dozens of renown jazz artists gathered at the university to commemorate the 100th birthday of the late jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington.

Howard, who performed a special piece that he’d composed from Ellington’s spoken word song introductions, was accompanied by a talented UCLA all-star band, led by university professor Kenny Burrell, today a Grammy Award winner and one of the world’s best-known jazz guitarists.

“The other cool thing was, when I left the stage, Clark Terry was in the audience and he complimented me,” Howard said, as he recalled an encounter with the famed trumpeter and eventual Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner. He doesn’t remember Terry’s exact words – possibly “Nice job” or “Right on” - but no matter; this was Clark Terry!

Howard, a California State University, Los Angeles graduate, returned east after retiring as a Los Angeles public school English teacher. He joined LVA in 2010.

He currently works with a group of four intermediate students, all from Latin America, on everything from grammar to vocabulary to conversation.

Howard enjoys working with groups and prefers in-person instruction to virtual classes. He’s also found working with adults to be an interesting change.

“They’re motivated to learn,” he said. “They don’t have to be there. So there’s very little classroom management.”