Literacy Series
Today I embark on writing a series of articles that lay out some of my thoughts on literacy. First, some background.
Meaning of literacy
I am using the term literacy to encompass a wide range of ideas on learning, education, workplace skills, soft skills, computer skills, and general increase in knowledge and skills. I will focus mainly on adult literacy but will also include some thoughts on children.
What gives me the authority?
I have been involved in adult literacy education for nearly 15 years but I am not a professional educator. I started tutoring adults with Milwaukee Achiever Literacy Services in 1996. In 2004, I joined their board of directors and then was Board Chairman from 2006-2010.
During that time, I have devoted many personal hours to thinking about not only adult literacy but how our community could most effectively benefit from, pay for, and deliver literacy. Still being on the board but no longer chairman allows me the opportunity to consolidate and communicate my thoughts on the big picture of literacy.
Is literacy important?
Yes! It is extremely important and in a future article I will review a variety of statistics that show just how critical literacy is for the success of every community and ALL of its members.
Community
My understanding of how literacy fits into a community comes from the greater Milwaukee, WI area. I am certain that many of the ideas presented will have a wider applicability but the details will always be based upon and derived from the Milwaukee area.
Series
One reason that it has been difficult for me to write on this topic is that there is so much information and every topic seems interconnected with every other topic. I will attempt to start the series with simple overviews of the various topics. Next, I will try to demonstrated the connections between them.
It is entirely possible that in the course of writing my thoughts, the thoughts themselves will evolve. Hopefully by the end of the series, a coherent picture of how we can improve our community’s literacy will emerge.
I will attempt to do one article post per week but there will certainly be some weeks when that is not possible.
Time to get started!
