All Grown Up and Learning to Read

You asked me why did I come to the reading program—to better myself. I want to know what’s going on. It’s frustrating when you don’t. If you’re traveling somewhere and you got lost and you call for help. A person asks you, “Where are you?” You look around and you see signs, but you can’t read them, and that can be very frustrating. You don’t know where you are. You’re lost.

This is what Lewis [last name withheld] told me soon after we met. He left school in eighth grade because he couldn’t read. His nine brothers and sisters all graduated from high school, but at our first meeting I discovered that Lewis did not know many of the sounds of letters or even some of their names. He grew up in a time and place before learning disabilities were widely diagnosed and before individual educational plans were prescribed for students with learning problems. Socially adept, he was “protected” by his teachers and passed on year after year.

Fortunately, I have had many years of experience working with non-readers as a former elementary school teacher. However, most of those were five- and six-year-old children, not grown adults. I did have training for working with students with learning disabilities, but I am not a specialist.