YOUNGSTOWN Class trains volunteers to tutor illiterate adults

Volunteers were shown what it is like to be functionally illiterate.
By IAN HILL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- About one of every five Youngstown adults doesn't have the reading or writing skills needed to get by in society.
Leslie Kiske, a tutor trainer for Project Opportunity, said these residents may not have the skills needed to apply for a job.
They may not be able to read the instructions on their medication or the costs of food at the grocery store. They may even have trouble finding their way home at night.
But Kiske believes that functionally illiterate adults shouldn't give up hope.
On Saturday, Kiske helped lead a class for 23 prospective volunteers interested in teaching reading and writing skills to functionally illiterate adults. Kiske said she hopes the volunteers will learn to "use the tools to help others."
"You can help. It's not a dismal, dark future," she told the volunteers.
Boardman resident Arlene Berry said she was looking forward to helping local residents overcome functional illiteracy. "It will be a way of giving something back to my community," she said.
Sponsor: The class was sponsored by Project Opportunity, a nonprofit local literacy education project that is part of the Youngstown Adult Basic and Literacy Education program. Rosann Proscnjak, the Project Opportunity matchmaker, said she hoped the volunteers in the class came away with "an understanding of what nonreaders are up against in this world."
"There is a great need for their help," Proscnjak added.
About 60 adult students and 45 teaching volunteers are participating in the project. An additional 15 students are on a waiting list until the new volunteers can be trained.
Once they are trained the volunteers will spend up to three hours each week teaching an adult how to read.
Saturday's class was the first of three training sessions. Kiske and fellow trainer Mary Dutko outlined the Laubach method of teaching used by Project Opportunity.
The Laubach method emphasizes the use of repetition, practice and praise to teach reading, writing, spelling and grammar.
Kiske and Dutko also led the volunteers through "sensitivity exercises" to teach them what it is like to be functionally illiterate. The volunteers wrote with their left hands and read a sentence written in a foreign alphabet.
Reading and writing are "very complicated tasks," Dutko said. "I think we take for granted what we do. ... We just do it."
Dutko said that it can take about a year and a half for a functionally illiterate adult to learn how to read at a sixth-grade level.
What participant said: The Rev. Hosea Ekong, the pastor of Youngstown's Victory Lutheran Church, said he came away from the class with a better understanding of the difficulties faced by illiterate adults.
"There is so much I have taken for granted as someone who is able to read," he said. The Rev. Mr. Ekong said he was planning to use what he learned in the class to start a literacy program at his church.
Meanwhile, prospective volunteer and Youngstown resident Vanessa Moyer said she hoped to help her 25-year-old son overcome functional illiteracy using what she learned in the class.
"I've seen him over the years, I know how frustrating it is," she said.
Dave Kramer, a Canfield resident who has helped eight adults learn to read through Project Opportunity, said adults involved in the project find learning to read difficult but rewarding.
Kramer said at times learning how to read can be so difficult that an adult can be disheartened after a session with a tutor.
But when that adult learns a new reading skill, he or she will be "just beaming," Kramer said.
"Sometimes they'll leave the lesson and they'll glow because they've learned so much," he said.
The next Project Opportunity training session for tutors will be this fall.