Elizabeth Ann Hamlin and Janet Wigodner

00:04 My name is Janet wigodner. I'm 54 years old today is October 4th, 2013. We're here in the literacy suite at the Waukegan Public Library and I'm talking today with and who is a volunteer tutor in the library literacy program.

00:20 A my name is Elizabeth Ann Hamlin, but I go by Anne and I'm 80 years old. And today's date is October 4th, 2013. And we're in the Waukegan library in the literacy sweet and I'm the tutor who's been teaching for about 28 years here with this literacy program. And I think it's so fantastic that you have been with our program for as you said 28 years. How did you get started the library this Library had a radio announcement about needing tutors for adults who could not read and I couldn't imagine adults not being able to read it. Just was it didn't sink in until I call to ask what you had to be to be a tutor. You didn't have to be anything. You just had to volunteer to take the training. And so I took the training here and started tutoring and in those days, there are no materials for adults the publishers.

01:20 Did not make adult materials and you had to take children's materials and I dab them two adults. That's one of the wonderful things that's happened in 28 years is that the Publishers have great material said you can use with adults but it was very hard because adults who want to learn how to read are not kids and they do not want childish stuff. And you had if you remember up a child's workbook, it was actually very difficult and it had pictures in it instead of just words and things and we still use pictures about their adult pictures and the children's materials. Do I have adult things are well, and I am not only that but they're very complicated. They're very smart because at that time they weren't The Learning System was look-see, which does not teach on learning disabled adult how to get they have to memorize all the words in and adults need running it learning disabled adults need a way.

02:20 To get two things by themselves so they need a system and there was no system of systems came later and

02:37 I'm sorry, you have to ask me a question. Yeah, I know what you're saying that they've already also often seen some of the children's materials and those weren't effective for them for when I return I didn't want to use them we met in the library here but in the basement in a cement room with Stacks all around and renewed and one of the one of the interesting thing about adults is they keep the fact that they were illiterate hidden from everybody else and it's a very secretive thing with them right now. They learn to cope with everything without letting that be known and they do not like to meet in in public. You have to have a very private place to meet with them to to have them open up and really learn how to learn. I think that's fair to her. So often when I first meet an adult learner they have really you can tell they really pulled together their courage to make that phone call in to make that meeting and will often tell you a very

03:37 Oh her trending story about is there an application in the first student that I met with one of the places where we would meet to learn would be in the campus very near here, but it was in a building that was owned by a newspaper and they had a private parking lot with signs up warning people that if they parked their their cars will be told immediately and that's where he parked his car because I couldn't read the signs. Luckily. We got out there quick enough and he got his car moved, but you learn to do things like that and ask them. Where are you parked? Because if you if the if the signs were there and they can't read it. They don't know and you know that such a good point because with the many years that you've been working with students, you've really had a chance to see very short-term results like like that like this like helping adults improve their reading has server student I had was

04:36 Totally learning disabled. He knew two letters A&S and he was 45 years old and he knows those two it because they were the beginnings of his name's which which I will not tell you what we started in and started working with him and and it took many many years because he was severely dyslexic and a very difficult to teach but we ended up getting him a job and he worked at job and retired and has a retirement but the magic thing about what's happened with him is that he has a grandson who has the same problem and he has spent an enormous amount of money and time getting help for this child who the school's help but not enough and so we won't hopefully in generations to come have repeats of of his learning disabilities, they'll be there but they'll be compensated for and they'll be taken care of the schools are much.

05:36 Better now than I used to be married, but they're still crowd at the school. So crowded they feel so the money to buy speech therapist and to do learnings therapist is not there. So you're still having a lot of people who are our learned that is a table because he had a chance to experience the tutoring with you understood how important it would be for his grandson. Then you should know that this guy was also a genius underneath that he was he would have been an archaeologist if he'd gone to school if he could have read and he we cook them up with Library of Congress and the reading books because he was declared legally blind in terms of reading and he got books from the Library of Congress for years and and red and all of them were heavy told him that I would not have tackled him. But he did it he's so he got his learning through that and he he also told me that

06:36 That he finally was part of the parade not sitting on the side watching the parade. Oh, yes, he could write because he could and and one of those book and one of the greatest things that happened to me with him was he he said he was married and and his wife had a birthday and he went to a card store and he bought a card for his wife you realize how crippling going into a card stories for someone who can't read but another thing that happened with him and this happens with a lot of of learning students adults.

07:21 His wife was very smart and red paid all the bills did everything that had reading attached to it. And when he got so that he could read and he could see what the checks were being written for and things he questioned her and they almost got a divorce because she was in the enabler. It's almost like a codependency thing for drug and alcohol. There is always one member of the party who knows how to do things and that's their job. And if the person runs out of read that way their job changes that relationship changes the relationship and I have to tell tutors that that will happen to them if they're really successful with the people that they work with that. I know that came up with one of the students that you've been working with more recently who write one of her challenges was changing her speech patterns, right because she could not talk so that people could understand her. She was a good reader.

08:21 Good reader and a very smart person and but people talked over her all the time because I couldn't understand so she would be talking and I would be that would ignore her they would talk over and after we work together for a while slow and soft and slow and low was armato syllables in everything and all of a sudden she and her husband had a lots of difficulties. And actually I think she did leave him for a while.

08:55 She couldn't stand him talking over her and she was ready to take a relationship in terms of having hidden abilities. One of my students was he was married to first to a woman who had a doctorate degree and was working for the government and she died and then he married again and he couldn't read but he was a genius with the stock market and he made tons and tons and tons of money, but he could not fill out a form to go to the bank and deposit money in the back. He couldn't do any of those things, but he knew which stocks to pick and the whole thing and we spent an enormous amount of time. He married again, and he really love the second wife, but he had a lot of children with the first wife. So there was a big family and everything and we spend a lot of time because he wanted to write a note to tell her that he loved her and we spent an in

09:55 When is the Mount of time on that thing and he died and the I never talked to a wife in about six months after he died she called and she said I just had the courage to go through his things. I did not know that he could not read and I found this note that he was working on. So she did not know he hit that from his wife. I have great coping skills the students do they just they you know, I forgot my glasses anybody says that to you, you know that they can't read and they can be of any economic level that has nothing to do with it. And that's one thing. I love about watching you work with students because a lot of times

10:43 You make the same comment to me that that this distant is it is so intelligent even brilliant and

10:53 When I think about these students, these are students with lower levels of literacy. They may be reading at a 1st or 2nd grade level or below and a lot of them have learning disabilities that they've been struggling with for years, but you see their gifts and their talents and I'm just making sure to talk to them thinking how powerful that must be it is and why do you do this? You are so many hours a day and I said listen the first one that looks up at you and says I can read this and smiles than that takes you for a 6 months ride to get some more students in their I'm reading and with the reading it's like walking into a brick wall you walk into that wall and walk into that Wally has no door there and you're trying to get through and then one day you're over on the other side and they've learned and it it it's not definable, but it's there. It's not like a linear path.

11:53 Hatred is not I had one student who came to me. I don't think you gave him to me but I think somebody did and they said he couldn't read and he was very motivated. He'd retired. He'd been working for 40 years for a automotive company and we work together and he he use the computer and he worked himself at the end of a year or I'd gone through a full phonemic awareness program with him. He he had a high school diploma a lot of people too because they go through the special ed classes and he took a class at the college the local College in criminal justice and got an A in it and then went on to take other classes and did something that he'd wanted to do always liked and I told them I said he could read when you gave to me I said no it couldn't we tested them thoroughly. He could not read. So this was the thing of it is that they are the ones who have to learn.

12:52 You're disturbed guiding them to wear that the I bet you like an archaeologist yourself you're digging in their brain to find the the the things that they already know because they sought the classroom for 12 years, you know, but I long time ago when I started

13:11 My student was his brain didn't function right if you go in a room and turn on the switch, you expect the light in that room to turn on his light didn't turn on that room. It would turn on them one way far away in a different place. But the next time it might turn it on it it dare was no pattern and no functioning of his brain in terms of connections. And so I used to kid and say and I'm rewiring your brain. I have now found out from the neuroscientist that this is exactly what you're doing its left and right sides of the brain do not communicate and that by repetition and learning that you make connections you rewire the things that aren't connecting up in their brain and it works you're doing that. So was it mostly repetition? How did you do that?

14:10 We'll first have to figure out what's wrong with them. People think there's one thing that's dyslexia. There's a million things that are just like CSI, right? It is write a definition. For example, sometimes it's the oral the hearing from the ear tooth from the ear. It doesn't come out the mouth the right way. There's no connection there. I had one student who didn't have a type running in her head when I'm talking to you you're visualizing my students. You see them as people in your brain, right? I see a movie and you're you're you're projecting forward what might happen or what I might be going to say. What if you had no movie in your brain and you could not predict anything that was going to happen and you didn't see when you were getting mad you didn't you had no and that was that was the case of one student and we did a lot of role-playing we just we just okay. What do you think will happen now? And then so the chief begins to think of what?

15:10 What happen I think you may have told me about this student cuz she's PS2 who's the mother of five children with no husband. I think maybe three fathers, but she was very very contact. He was Desert. She was abandoned as a baby in a hospital and somebody picked her up and took her and she lived with someone and when she went to a very good high school, she had a high school diploma, but she was too had this memory problem. So she couldn't predict she could read very well and take a right and she had the children when summer came and we needed to continue teaching her. I had two children with her so I had to figure out okay. What am I going to do with five children from ages 5 to 12 and a mother. What am I going to teach? Well, it was a first date book handy. Everybody needs first aid and we met on the beach. We did things like that and I talked him first aid 1 week. We did the Heimlich maneuver the kids got a great joy out of it.

16:10 But you know what happened in about a week or week and a half the youngest child swallowed a candy that got stuck in her throat. They called the ambulance and one of the older boys use the Heimlich maneuver and spit that candy out home. I lived it was why did I choose first? That was it was it was just chilling to think of what could have happened if they hadn't done that.

16:44 Can you also helped her with her communication is with others, LOL. We did she had problems with you bring up the children were handicapped and the teachers they were in the special programs in the school. And she was the kids went to work. I mean went to school spotlessly clean. She took care of them beautifully. She did not work. She had SSI in different things so that she could live on that and but you couldn't communicate with the teachers. She was a beautiful person and I ate it. I don't know whether it was off-putting to the teachers when she would come in, you know, but she had a bad relationship with him. So we did role play and we actually fixed it so that she could communicate with the teacher she went in and by that time we've done it enough so that she responded in the way that she should have to them instead of getting mad because she could tell that they were when your

17:44 Really really beautiful person. Sometimes people react to you differently. You know, I love the way you really think about the whole person. You know, it's for you. It's not doesn't seem like it's just, you know, let's just work on your reading now you basically it self esteem. They have to learn how to think well of themselves somebody I'm working with right now is in a drug and alcohol program and he's doing the things that they tell him to do and he has children that he said he can't get a job because he can't read so he's at home taking care of the children. And you said I don't work I said, what do you do? If you're at home, I take care of the children. I said, I don't want you to ever again tell me that you don't work because that's hard work. You have a job. You're the daddy Mama you're taking care of household. It's the girlfriend or wife or whoever it is can earn the money.

18:43 And tell him so then a little bit later. He said are you telling me that I had low self-esteem think of yourself? You're a person, you know, LOL right now.

19:03 A few years ago in 2010. We began we call it our walk-in tutoring help session here at the library. One morning a week every every week and we invite adult Learners to come in and also members from the community to come in but it's a great way for us to get students started working with tutors and they can also see that it's that there's others in the community like themselves to but they're not alone that form a community of Learners and you've been a part of that program from the start especially because some of our adult Learners are burners with emerging literacy skills, and it's kind of your specialty.

19:48 So because of your experience, we've been having you Mentor new tutors and having them and assisting tutors to get started working with students. So I want to hear about you know, what to tell you how to know that at first. I thought the lab might not work because I didn't know that people would come in and I was I was fearful that they wouldn't have the nerve to walk into it feel like there's enough coming to town. Right right because they are so pretending to hide this lack of skill on their part that I thought they would but then they started creeping him, you know one or talk to at the party and then I was gone for a while and came back and that's when you asked me to work with the Tudors and I hiked the Tudors are as afraid as the students are you don't hate you have no idea and even though you have a couple weeks of training or more.

20:45 There are so many materials out there that are so helpful, but you have to adapt the materials to the way that you teach and most of them are not teacher. Sometimes I shouldn't say this but sometimes teachers are not as good tutors as other people are because they expect they recreate a situation that the illiterate person failed in in the first place. They recreated classroom. They give homework they do the things that didn't work for them the first time around and so the student doesn't want that one of the things for example that teachers do in a classroom. They would go around the classroom reading and you would count how many lines would be yours. And if you couldn't read well you were just you're just all geared up because you might next you know, and then the teacher would get to you and they would go. Oh you can't do it and they would skip to the next person to automatically you were just

21:45 Shown up right to the public right then and they also don't wait long enough for an answer and you know, that's a good point because I watched you and you just sat there for an hour if you want to do well, I tell him that to that I'm not going to don't worry. Don't don't guess don't rush don't guess don't guess that's what they do. They guess all the time because the teacher always wanted an answer right away. So if you can teach a teacher not to recreate that situation and you can help us to know do you know and I know how do you detect the materials to work with him? Okay. Well you first place you had to spend enough time talking to them to find out about them find out what they really want. Your goals are different than their goals. If you have to find out just put the student me like that writes my I mean, are you looking to be able to redo your grandchildren most of a lot of them want to be able to read Bible readings?

22:45 In Sunday school and church and things and so even though religion sometimes as a taboo subject reading is not and phone if that's what you're teaching. You have to find out what they want and you have to give them what they want and that you have to keep talking to them to find out what it is. They went there really aiming for and sometimes it's it's a simpler than you think. It is not everybody wants a GED or you know, when you're in school yet got to do with the teacher told you but now as an adult learner do you were the one you get to drive the modern process? Most of them have holes in what they're they know it isn't that they don't know a lot of things they have holes in them and you have to find out what the holes aren't feeling them. And how do I do that?

23:45 You just keep you keep trying different things. And you test with it isn't always testing with reading that's not going to show up things. Cuz sometimes I can read and sometimes I can't sometimes their comprehension is not good to eat how to figure out if they know things and and be willing to tell him his going to be boring. We're going to start right in the beginning and it's surprising how much they don't know and then you can work on it. But then when you find somebody who needs to move for and you shouldn't stay in one area for a real long time because I get bored and don't forget that it's hard work for them a good hour of tutoring is like 8 hours of labor for their brains because they're having to spit up so much and and do things that they haven't done before I'll be a very very long as you're teaching them things, and they talked about it and you shift you change.

24:45 Until you get to what they're liking in what they're doing and there's so many materials, but that's what I like acquainting the Tudors with the materials so that they can see this isn't working. I need to get something else right and then have you noticed how if I put all that stuff in from they start playing with it, you know, like they're having a grand time. That's what they should be having this to do is have a grand time and then I have some I have some little tricks and things English is a terrible language. It's not regular it's totally a regular such a mishmash of options, you know, because there is a blue dingley but there's not a rectangle. But so then you say it is by itself. It's an anomaly it's something that they they they're not at fault.

25:45 But it wasn't my problem. And then if you have behavioral disabilities with learning disabilities and you have one or two in your group here, you have to also figure out ways. They've a lot of them have been bullied in discriminated against they have to know that they're safe with you but we use different hand signals to say, okay, you're getting in territory. We don't want to go into so stop and that works too because they'll do that either they do it or you do it. Okay, and that that's a that's a totally different bag of tricks is somebody who is not just learning disabled but felt mentally disabled to and where is you may be able to teach him how to read your pain.

26:43 If what he brought up I think is so true developing that sense of trust so that people can learn right and they're not afraid and sometimes it brings on crying and things they tell you things that they never tell anybody else. They tell you I find it a lot of them had backgrounds of abuse and things like that. So you end up finding out about that and then you have to have to work around it. And and of course that leads to the lowest self-esteem that you've ever seen in your whole life. I mean, they're there they they think I had a reading specialist tell one of the students that I taught how to read that he would never learned how to read now think about what would happen. If somebody would tested you said you will never learn how to read. You know, what I say to my students first thing.

27:39 By golly whether you like it or not, you know, I have a race.

27:46 You may think you'll never learn how to read but you will I'll figure out some way of teaching you how do you know said no that's too hard for me and not one of that but I also teach them proper terms for things when we have digress. We have died grass when we have plans we have plans when we have syllables. We call them by their right names and then they can go home and call him by their right names of the people who pinned denigrating them their whole lives to know. Yeah, I do see that you use a lot of things and I showered in and I have to teach it to the Tudors. Now, you can't baby this thing. This is an adult who wants to learn how to read because he wants to function in the world the same as everybody else.

28:35 Toum

28:37 And the literacy it the walk-in clinic Works, beautifully they come in and they come back. I don't know how to explain what happens to them. They do see other people they do get to be for the for the students. I'm talk about the Tudors come back to yeah. It's it's been a lot of fun hasn't been amazing and I have watched if you tutor a student one time the next week they come in and they think you're going to do to them again maybe but they might get somebody else. But when we have regular students, we try to match them with the same regular tutor butt and and sometimes at first there a little uncomfortable to have you

29:22 In that Dynamic but they quickly come around then they don't want to go to somebody else. My students are the type to stick to me or answering is kind of Fine Line, isn't it is because they have to watch it. I I think the lab is a great idea. I think it's it's I think it should be all over because then the student doesn't feel distressed. If they can't make it one of the one of the problems is that at that you have to get them trained to come on time and come every week not make other appointments at the same time and the lab gives them that opportunity in the library is wonderful. This is this is the place to be and so are the other libraries that I've worked into so

30:22 At the lab does really offer that?

30:26 That I have my own special tutoring room at the hell do I know?

30:34 But you're right. It allows students to be successful because it's difficult when we have a tutor and student match and and the student has attendance issues Transportation issue family issues all kinds of a lot of pain if they don't show up nobody's chastising them nobody saying, where were you and the other hand you to talk to students about letting them know that if they want to make progress I have to work and I have to they're the ones were working now. You know and so it's been a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it by sometimes ask you how much longer you think you'll be tutoring for. I'm am I walking am I standing going to be another 25 years at Sea when I'm a hundred

31:27 Having someone like you that has offered so much continuity in our tutoring program is left. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it's been a pleasure.

31:43 Good night.

31:45 Really think we need to get the word out when you tutors.

31:49 We need to turn sand and there's always such a great need isn't there right? I think you were telling me some statistics just before we we came in 13% of this county is a letter of the day and that's not English as a second language sets Americans who were born and bred here and went to the school and I think if you check the counties around and all over the country you would find at the illiteracy rate is a lot higher than its it's noted and that the need is great. And the funding is small funding goes to speak into English as a second language as opposed to this type of literacy, and I know that that's important that really is but I think we need to him and work my way to work. We do you have tutors that work with

32:39 Instructors in classrooms and I like the family literacy the kids meet together and all do different things but they coordinated we did one program in a school down in a town near here and the parents did not play with their children and their children now play a dance that I really enjoyed it really and truly dead.

33:16 Well, it's certainly meant a lot to me to get to know you and to have you help me learn about how to work with adult Learners that you were wonderful coordinator. And it's it's nice to have a matching up as a tutors in students and in the ability to do that and I think you do that. Well, so appreciate it's rewarding work working out I'll guess I like all the students keep coming back for more organized enough free time 103.9 The Other than look at that. Have to learn to just take a look at it and figure out what to do with it and be willing to change.

34:16 And I'm

34:18 It's good advice. Yes. Thanks. Thanks an thank you.

34:25 Okay. You to become a literacy tutor and what brought me into this kind of work?

34:34 The first thing was that I I read so much and I couldn't imagine somebody who couldn't read and then I wasn't thinking at that time about their functionality of what they could do in their life. I was thinking about the enjoyment that I get from books and libraries and things like that. And then when I started working with him, I saw how it changed their lives how they were so pressed down by not being able to read that. And so that's what kept me going. And once you have success with one or two people, it's like a disease you keep going to bring me more and they're so pretty. I don't know how to tell you how good it makes you feel when when they succeed when they get a job when they get their citizenship. I've had one or two of those and when they

35:34 Accomplish things because they are reading and what a key reading is to everything that we do in life. So it really is sweetie. I mean, so I'm you read labels on everything in and can you imagine not being able to read any of the labels in the store when you're trying to buy something and they can figure the money out but they can't figure the reading out and we've had five can pink of students who were so excited when they were able to read the birthday cards that they just say that you're here or could read a menu or the menu yet. They always what they ordered before they could read the menu don't you restaurants always have hamburgers hamburgers or they have the eggs and bacon for breakfast and and the hamburger hamburger hamburger and to be able to order something different besides Hamburger because

36:34 And you know, the interesting thing is that literacy programs are through libraries generally and in libraries and tell me where is a place that a person can't read would not go the library so that you Heather the challenges to get the information to the person who needs to read to some other way besides reading and generally they relatives and families actually, even though their enables they push on the people and tell they hear about it and they will recommend that they come and this is how they get to know about it because they do not read about it themselves. It's not in that, you know, you can't read the newspapers and and a public service announcements are not on Primetime TV. You know, they're at 3 at night and how many of those people are listening to it don't know so well.

37:34 You're getting the word out as a challenge is a challenge and also in the library. You have the library the literacy Suite down here. They don't mind taking the elevator in coming down here. But if the literacy portion is in a place that's visible to everybody. They don't want to be seen going into that because that again Mark some is somebody who's inferior. They feel inferior to everybody and they really don't you know anybody to know that they can't read specially if they're successful and they are generally they usually are there pretty successful. I like getting younger people but you don't get very many younger people. They don't come in until later. Yes, sometimes often the students that we get our are finally taking time for themselves. They work and raise their children there till

38:34 Out of the house and not and are sometimes you know, their grandchildren are right along a line that they can actually take some time for themselves to be where they wanted to do when people are having to find find work to keep alive and they don't have time and I'm pleased to see women, because women have more responsibilities than men do it home and they generally don't have any transportation have to depend upon somebody transport them to the lessons and things and suddenly it's it's taken away from them and it's getting better. Now. It's a it's a little bit more. Oh, okay for the women to do this and and the women have jobs are working more. They have more responsibilities and less time to do this. But but lots of times the husbands and the rest of the family are are undermining them and I found that a lot that

39:34 I didn't come last week because the car was broken. Nobody could get me there. Nobody was there to babysit I had to go to the store. I had to take somebody to the doctor. They have all these responsibilities that other people do not have till dad's been an interesting thing is to see the emergence of more women. I'm carving out time for this house Ariana. I'm being assertive and getting getting through.

40:04 And do homework

40:07 They learn to read so they can go do homework with kids. How many do you have come in? I need math because I can't math is a really difficult thing for them. So I just love doing it and that's how I got that to it in the more you get involved more you get him. You know, I've talked in Sellers and churches and we used to use the churches around here. We've used libraries. I've had battles with

40:45 Bad staffs at libraries about needing a private place. We'll just sit on that table out there. That would be fine fine. That doesn't work with my students. I'm not sick. I've met in closets in library giving officer great places because they're closed in Uno.

41:05 And and the students have come from every town in this community, which means that very high incomes and very low income. So that hasn't got anything to do with anything about whether their brain is wired, right? And so do you need to do what the neurosurgeons tell you to do and rewire tonight?

41:28 Find out which wire's need to connect my job and rewire them. So.