Thank you so much for passing on something positive!!

 

Sandy Jensen, Hawkeye Community College, Waterloo, Iowa

Adult Basic Education, GED, ELL

 

From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Virginia
Pulver
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 11:18 AM
To: Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2412] This I Believe - NPR - Do Over's

 

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: www.nmcl.org <http://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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