READING

 

Never take for granted that you are reading this.

 

When Sam was 14 years old, he dropped out of school and went to work in the Homestead Steel Mill in Pittsburgh. During his time in the public school system he never learned how to read. He was considered “slow”, so they just kept shuffling him from grade-to-grade. During his 30 years as a laborer in the mill, reading wasn’t that important – he was able to get along by following verbal instructions and, if unexpectedly faced with a written document, he had his tricks: casually get a co-worker to comment on the document or, if it was urgent, call his wife at home and read it out to her letter by letter so that she could read it back to him. Sometimes he would use the excuse that he had left his eyeglasses at home. Much of his energy and innate creativity went into hiding from others the fact that he didn’t know how to read.

 

Then, after more than 30 years of getting by, the mill shut down. Sam found himself with the nightmare of having to register with the unemployment office, with all of its registry forms and document requirements. He would have his wife accompany him and wait in the car so that she could help him fill out the multiple forms. Jobs were scarce, and his lack of basic literacy left him at a distinct disadvantage in any kind of interview. His self-esteem fell drastically as he went from being the breadwinner of the family to having to rely on the income his wife could bring in through odd jobs in the service industry. He drank heavily for a while. His life was falling apart. 

 

That’s when I met him.

 

Sam finally took a major step in his life and called the local Adult Literacy Council. At the time, I was a VISTA volunteer (remember VISTA? Short for ‘Volunteers in Service to America’ – it was like the domestic Peace Corps), working with the Council to provide training to community literacy volunteers in an “Each One Teach One” phonetic-based methodology. For Sam, an important aspect was the private one-on-one approach – nobody had to know that he was just learning to read. I decided to take him on as a student, and we met 3 days a week in a local public library. During our tutoring sessions, he told me more about his challenges as an illiterate adult. His wife was the only member of his family who knew he couldn’t read. In the supermarket, he had to rely on visual clues to identify different products that weren’t immediately recognizable. If he went to a restaurant, he tried to make sure that there were illustrations for the different dishes being offered (“I´ll have that, there.”)

 

In just under a year of tutoring sessions, Sam was able to get to a third-grade literacy level. He could read basic documents and his outlook on life was improving. My time as a VISTA volunteer was ending and I was getting ready to leave the Pittsburgh area to obtain an undergraduate degree, so I helped Sam transition to another tutor. He told me once that his greatest satisfaction after all those years of struggling with illiteracy was to be able to finally put his granddaughter on his knee and read a child’s story to her.