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

September 2022

Volume 10, Issue 9

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.

The Monthly Coffee Hour with Tutors, an informal video call with tutor support specialist Catherine Angus, is a good chance to learn and share a few tips with other tutors. Next one is Oct. 6th.

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!

Ever wonder what the most frequently misspelled English word in New Jersey might be? We didn’t think so, but we’ll share it anyway. If you guessed rhythm, separate, broccoli, embarrass, a lot, or even misspelled, you’re on the right track. And it’s not multiplication (that’s North Carolina), or paparazzi (Minnesota). According to a northjersey.com column, which cites an unnamed study that used Google trend data, the most frequently misspelled word in New Jersey is actually a number: thousand. Go figure. If you think that’s a bunch of bologna (New Mexico, btw), check out the story via this link:
http://tinyurl.com/mwszv54u

Illiteracy rates have spiked as a result of the disruption of children’s education caused by the pandemic, according to a report by the World Literacy Foundation. Issued on September 8th, International Literacy Day, the report found that nearly 770 million people across the globe can't read a single word and another 2 billion people struggle to read a sentence. The estimated cost of illiteracy to the global economy is estimated at $1.19 trillion, the report states.

"In both developing and developed countries, illiteracy is ruining lives and is linked with an array of poor life outcomes, such as poverty, inequity, unemployment, social exclusion, crime and long-term illness,” said foundation CEO Andrew Kay. https://tinyurl.com/yck89cmv

INSIGHT 2022, the New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning’s literary magazine that features the work of authors from the organization’s Adult Learner Writing Contest, is now available online. You can read the work of our own Sophonie Pierre Louis, a student from Haiti whose “The Little Old Lady” story tied for first place in the fiction category, as well as others. Congratulations, authors! https://tinyurl.com/3unrwae9

In the News

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

“Pope on World Literacy Day: ‘May education unite us’.” Vatican News. https://tinyurl.com/yc5v9k2d

“They saw ESL classes as a key to the American dream. Here’s how they adapted through COVID.” PBS. https://tinyurl.com/3hdcthxm

“Best language learning apps in 2022, tested by our editors.” CNN. https://tinyurl.com/mr48emxe

Carolina, a student from Ecuador, is adjusting to life in her adopted country. But the transition hasn’t been easy.

Tutor Training Workshops

Online Training, by Barbara Hathaway
Platform: Zoom
Tuesdays, 6 - 8:15 pm
November 1, 8, 15, 29, & December 6 , 2022

Tutor Support Workshops

"Using The Language Experience Approach,"
with Darnelle Richardson
Platform: Google Meet
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
11 am - 12:30 pm

"Teaching Listening Skills,"
with Carol Cochi, Ph.D.
Platform: Google Meet
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
11 am – 12:30 pm

Monthly Coffee Hour with Tutors

with Catherine Angus
Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 4 pm

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

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

Beyond any obvious economic benefits of migration, splitting up families can have adverse effects on both those who leave their countries and those they leave behind.

So there’s little wonder that Carolina, a young mother from Cuenca, Ecuador, felt some hesitation about relocating to the U.S. She was pregnant when she left her home 18 months ago, along with her husband and 10-year-old daughter, and has since given birth to another girl, an American citizen.

“With our hearts broken, missing our family and friends, and leaving our familiar culture behind, we decided to take the opportunity God gave to us to change our destiny,” Carolina said.

In Ecuador, Carolina earned a university degree in business and ran a veterinarian supply warehouse with her sister-in-law. Carolina’s husband was a veterinarian. They’d hoped to grow their business and give their children a great education but felt there were few opportunities to do so in Ecuador.

Her husband has found a job grooming animals and they enrolled their daughter in what Carolina described as “a very nice school.”

She does not yet work but said she would like to learn English in order to eventually find a job in an office, or a bank, or as a groomer in a veterinary clinic. She also hopes to better communicate with her daughter’s teachers and to support the girl’s interest in swimming, for which she’s shown some skill.

Carolina is a serious student who is focused on her lessons, wrote Jalaire Craver, Carolina’s ESL instructor at the Reid Memorial Branch of Passaic Public Library, who provided much of the information for this report. With Carolina’s family settling in, she knows her priority now is to learn English. And she's feeling better about the decision to move here.

“Though every day we miss our country, this country has welcomed us,” Carolina said. “It wasn’t easy at the beginning, but we are making it with God’s help.”

Reporting from Jalaire Craver contributed to this profile.

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 adults are sharpening their reading skills later in life. 66% of Cleveland adults are functionally illiterate.’

News5cleveland

By Catherine Ross, August 31, 2022

CLEVELAND — In her late 60s, an experience in the church led Barbara Driscoll to a new life chapter. The mother of 6 said her participation during bible study was limited by her reading skills.

“Everybody in church was doing a verse,” she recalled. “And I asked the pastor if I could. He said, ‘Yeah.’ As I started to read, I broke down and started crying because I couldn’t.”

Driscoll explained she often missed school while growing up in the South because working in the fields was prioritized over going to class. When she moved to Cleveland at age 13, she was pregnant and unable to focus on academics. Her formal education ended several months into the eighth grade.

A fellow churchgoer at Driscoll’s bible study in 2019 directed her to Seeds of Literacy. The Cleveland-based nonprofit organization provides free basic education, GED courses and career readiness training for adults.

“They're very intelligent. They have so much promise and potential, hopes and dreams like everybody else, but they just didn't crack the code for reading,” said Seeds of Literacy Vice President of Programming Dr. Carmine Stewart. (cont.)

Reprinted from News5cleveland. For full story, paste the following link into your favorite web browser address bar: https://tinyurl.com/hebybu6m

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
Sara Olson, LVA tutor
by Russell Ben Ali

Sara Olson’s early days as a language tutor go back some four decades, starting with a Laotian woman who’d survived a harrowing journey across the treacherous Mekong River.

She and her husband frantically pushed their five children into an inner tube, then swam alongside it as they fled Laos.

Thousands and thousands of refugees died during similar attempts to cross the Mekong as they tried to reach Thailand during and after the Laotian civil war and communist takeover of the government in the 1970s.

The family made it to Thailand and eventually the U.S. where, through a Connecticut church program, Sara taught basic English to the mother, and helped the father study for and pass the written motor vehicle exam.

“I just wanted to help this family,” said Sara, now a volunteer LVA tutor. “It’s really hard not to be able to speak English and to be here.”

Sara received a PhD from Columbia University and retired from a career as a cancer epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is active in her church, enjoys exercising with friends, knitting, attending local theater, visiting NYC museums, and spending time with her children and grandchildren.

More recently, until the start of the pandemic, Sara organized a group of volunteers to teach English to asylum seekers from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia at a refugee resettlement ministry in Montclair.

At Literacy Volunteers, she leads a group of students from Latin America. The adults in her class have strong vocabulary skills and spend much of their time working on reading comprehension, writing, and conversation skills.

“People come here with hopes and dreams and I just want them to be able to get good jobs, to be able to talk to their children’s teachers and to know what’s going on,” she explained.