Good Monday Morning to Each of YOU!

 

I heard an essay on National Public Radio (NPR)  yesterday and wanted to
share it with you (see below) since we all share a passion for this topic .
It is a success story about adult literacy.  Though this man did not seem to
find a mentor in the adult literacy community, he did manage to set
significant goals and reach them.  It is a nice testimony about literacy,
motivation and success.It is these personal "love" stories that we share
with people that remind us that what we do is important - that there is a
need.   

 

 If you would like to hear this man tell his tale, there is an audio link on
the NPR website under the Weekend Edition program aired on  Saturday, 20
July.  The segment is called: "This I Believe" and the title of the piece is
"Do Over's."

 

Happy reading!

 

Life is good..

 

Virginia J. Pulver, AmeriCorps*VISTA

Recruiting Consultant, NM Coalition for Literacy

3209-B Mercantile Court, Santa Fe NM    87507

virginia at nmcl.org

 

YOU can become a volunteer adult literacy tutor or 

refer adult learners for FREE 1-1 tutoring!

1-800-233-7587  

Visit our Website:  <http://www.nmcl.org/> www.nmcl.org

 

Weekend Edition Sunday, July 20, 2008 . I don't know why I came to the
decision to become a loser, but I know I made the choice at a young age.
Sometime in the middle of fourth grade, I stopped trying. By the time I was
in seventh grade, I was your typical degenerate: lazy, rebellious,
disrespectful. I had lost all social graces. I was terminally hip and
fatally cool. 

It wasn't long after that I dropped out of school and continued my downward
spiral. Hard physical labor was the consequence for the choices I made as an
adolescent. At the age of 21, I was hopelessly lost, and using drugs as a
way to deal with the fact that I was illiterate and stuck in a dead-end job
carrying roof shingles up a ladder all day.

But now I believe in do-overs, in the chance to do it all again. And I
believe that do-overs can be made at any point in your life, if you have the
right motivation. Mine came from a surprising source.

It was September 21, 2002, when my son Blake was born. It's funny that after
a life of avoiding responsibility, now I was in charge of something so
fragile. Over the years, as I grew into the title of Dad, I began to learn
something about myself. In a way, Blake and I were both learning to walk,
talk, work and play for the first time. I began my do-over.

It took me almost three years to learn how to read. I started with my son's
books. Over and over, I practiced reading books to him until I remembered
all the words in every one of them. I began to wonder if it were possible
for me to go back to school. I knew I wanted to be a good role model, so
after a year-and-a-half and a lot of hard work, I passed my GED test on my
son's fourth birthday. This may not sound like much, and I'm surely not
trying to get praise for doing something that should have been done in the
first place, but all things considered it was one of the best days in my
life. Today, I'm a full-time college student, studying to become a
sociologist.

It's funny, growing up I always heard these great turn-around stories of
triumph over shortcomings. But I never thought they applied to me. Now I
believe it's a choice anyone can make: to do it all over again.

Independently produced for Weekend Edition Sunday by Jay Allison and Dan
Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

 

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