Expanding Family Literacy Initiative Helps Parents and Their Children Succeed

(November 23, 2009) Carol Hermanowski knew it was finally time to confront her reading problem when her daughter began to catch on that Carol was making up the stories she was “reading” from the children’s books.

“I was pretending to read and make it all up. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before Patricia really knew what I was up to and that wasn’t the kind of mother I wanted to be,” recalls the 47-year-old New Britain resident. “But the first step toward helping myself was admitting I had a problem.”

And that, Carol says, forced her to confront years of hiding her secret from others in order to avoid the embarrassment of admitting that a learning disability had made it virtually impossible for her to read despite repeated attempts to learn. She had a litany of excuses and tricks to hide the fact that she couldn’t follow billboards, street signs, job applications, recipes, or board games. Even the man she’d dated for 18 years didn’t know.

But then one day about two years ago she saw a poster for Literacy Volunteers of Central Connecticut and decided to give them a call. She signed up for their Basic Literacy Program and was matched with 14-year tutoring veteran Cindi Whitham, a retired teacher from Plainville. The two met weekly and together began to do for Carol something no other program had ever been able to accomplish – teach her to read.

Using the Wilson Reading Program, which systematically teaches the structure of words in the English language, they started with the basics, learning letters and their sounds. “The program really works for me because I needed to start at the beginning and I needed one-on-one attention,” says Carol.

In a recent tutoring session, Cindi was dictating words for Carol to spell – ignition – satisfaction – introduction – and slowly, but surely, Carol wrote them down correctly. “I am just so amazed at myself,” she says with obvious delight. She is now able to really read stories to Patricia, who is still learning to read herself. At age 9, she’s struggling with the same learning disability that Carol is overcoming and Carol is grateful that she now has the skills and confidence to be able to help her daughter.

Getting all parents to read regularly to their children is one of the primary goals of Literacy Volunteers of Central Connecticut’s Family Literacy Initiative.  That’s because research has shown that parental literacy is one of the most important indicators of a child’s success in school. The Family Literacy Initiative currently operates in New Britain, Plainville and Southington, with plans to expand to Berlin, with $134,000 in support over the past two years from the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain’s First Years First Fund and the New Britain-based Christine E. Moser Foundation.

The initiative began in response to troubling statistics about low literacy rates in New Britain, where an estimated 16,000 adults, or 26 percent of the population age 16 and older, are at the lowest literacy level. Many can sign their own names or pick out key facts in a brief news article, but are unable to fill in background information on a job application or read medicine or food container labels, explains Darlene Hurtado, executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Central Connecticut.  Furthermore, more than 29,000 adults in New Britain speak a language other than English at home, a 40 percent increase in the last ten years, and more than half of these people do not speak English well.

“The good news is that we know our program, which benefits more than 300 adults a year, really does change people’s lives.  We know that many of the parents we’ve tutored are reading more to their children at home, their children are reading more on their own, and these families are engaging in more literacy activities together at home,” she says. 

Over the next two years, the program will expand in new ways to better serve the needs of low literate families in New Britain, Plainville, Berlin, and Southington. The initiative is developing "literacy collaboratives" in these communities in order to bring resources together to assist low literacy families. “It is very exciting to see how much more can be done when organizations, businesses, schools, and individuals work together around a shared goal,” says Hurtado. “What I have learned in doing this work is that all parents want to help their children succeed in school and many are open to receiving our help to improve their literacy skills, to learn to help their children with homework, and to increase reading at home.”

Over the years, Cindi Whitham has seen firsthand the people behind these encouraging statistics. “When I see the smiles and tears of joy from the people I’ve tutored, like Carol, I know I’m really making a difference and it’s just so rewarding,” says Cindi, who also enjoys tutoring adults in Literacy Volunteers’ English as a Second Language (ESL) program. 

Through that program, she has worked with people from many different countries and cultures, an experience that has – as Cindi puts it – “just opened my world up!” One student, who is from Yemen, told Cindi that she sought out Literacy Volunteers after she was unable to give her address to the 911 dispatcher when her daughter was ill. So in addition to learning English, she worked with Cindi practicing these important life skills. Another of Cindi’s former students, a man who immigrated to this country from Korea, is now working on his Ph.D. in electrical engineering.

Carol Hermanowski has a career goal of her own. She’s well on her way to being able to handle the reading and writing that will be required when she enrolls in school to become a Physical Therapy Assistant. She says, “I have so much more confidence in myself and it’s mostly because Cindi has been so patient with me and really believed in me that I could do this.” 

For more information on the Family Literacy Program, please visit www.literacycentral.org or call 860-229-7323. 

Established in 1941, the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain connects donors who care with causes that matter in Berlin, New Britain, Plainville and Southington.  The foundation does this by raising resources and developing partnerships that make a measurable improvement in the quality of life in each of these communities.  For more information, visit www.cfgnb.org or call (860) 229-6018.

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