Reading Their Problem Loud and Clear

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, Patrick Tomlinson shifted uncomfortably at the podium as he began speaking to his audience, a group of reading tutors. But a seasoned public speaker could not have been more poignant and direct.

His mother had helped him keep his secret, Tomlinson said, covering for him so people would not guess that he could not read or write. Then she died.

“All of a sudden, I’m stuck. I’m here alone,” said Tomlinson, 33, telling of panic that compounded his grief. With a household to manage, he could not write a check or pay a bill.

In desperation, Tomlinson sought help from the Huntington Beach Library’s Adult Literacy Services, a move that would change his life.

“I learned a long time ago how to hide my secret from everybody,” said the Garden Grove resident, who works as a machinist. But now, “anybody who ever asks me, I tell them about it. . . . Now I can read.”

“There are a lot of us out there,” Tomlinson told his rapt audience. “We need you.”

Tomlinson’s turn at the podium illustrates what advocates say is the literacy movement’s new direction. In Orange County, where experts say nearly half a million people lack basic language skills, students are taking the lead: making speeches, leading workshops, raising funds, recruiting volunteers.

With the fervor of religious converts, new readers here and across the nation are stepping out of the shadows, sharing their struggles and triumphs, enlisting others to the cause.

Al Bennett, literacy specialist for the California State Library in Sacramento, compares the zeal of new adult readers to that of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And like MADD members, he said, they are changing public opinion.

The dedication of MADD’s founders made drunk driving “no longer a laughing matter and . . . absolutely changed the attitudes of America in a way I never would have believed possible,” Bennett said. “Literacy’s new readers are the same way.”

Though there has been some resistance within the literacy movement to giving a prominent role to new readers, the students have won out, said Beth Broadway, a literacy consultant in Syracuse, N.Y.

“They were just relentless in their pursuit of participation,” she said.

*

A 1993 survey by the U.S. Department of Education revealed that 40 million Americans, or about 20% of the population, had only rudimentary reading and writing skills. Most in that category could find key facts in a newspaper article but could not draft a letter describing an error on a monthly bill.

In Orange County, where 16.7% of adults hold bachelor’s degrees or better and the median annual household income is $45,922, an estimated 450,000 adults lack elementary reading skills, according to READ/Orange County, which operates literacy programs at county libraries.

Tomlinson, a high-school graduate, said most illiterates either have someone to cover for them or become adept at bluffing their way through, fooling their teachers and classmates.

That was the case with Fernando Sandozequi, 28, of Costa Mesa, who admits to having skated through Estancia High School with far more interest in athletics than academics.

Though he graduated in 1986, he lacked the skills to go to college. Instead, he got a job installing telephone cables.

A decade later, with two young daughters to support, he was finally motivated to tackle his reading problem so he could seek a better job. He enrolled in a literacy program earlier this year and is making steady progress, though his task is not easy.

“I have trouble with words I have never seen before,” he said. “Sometimes it is confusing because the letters are silent--like ‘psychologist.’ Who put the ‘P’ at the beginning of ‘psychologist’? “

He hopes eventually to enroll at Rancho Santiago College and become a firefighter. “I don’t have perfect reading comprehension,” he said. “I am going to need to improve to go to college.”

Carol Ball, 53, sought help when she was going through a divorce and suddenly had to support herself. The Costa Mesa resident has a form of dyslexia that makes Bs, Gs, Ds, Ps and Qs look the same. She graduated from Fullerton Union High School unable to read but adept at faking it.

“I sat in class and shut up,” she said. “I copied term papers from my sisters. I could write, so I copied them over.”

Ball signed up for one-on-one tutoring with READ/Orange County and has overcome her learning disability to the point that she now holds a job as an administrator for a real estate company.

“I was afraid I was going to be totally worthless forever,” she said. “I knew that had to change.”

*

That illiteracy could be so common in affluent Orange County may seem incongruous, experts say, but the fact is that California public schools generally are overburdened and underfinanced, which means youngsters with reading problems may be overlooked.

To address what she characterized as a crisis, state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin last year appointed a reading task force to study the problem and propose solutions.

That group was instrumental in persuading state officials to offer financial incentives to school districts that limit class size to 20 pupils in primary grades, a program that began in September.

The task force also reported statistics showing that the reading test scores of California schoolchildren lag the national average and have declined in recent years. Based on those findings, the group encouraged schools to review the materials and methods used to teach reading and urged parents to promote reading at home.

Positive results from those initiatives will not be seen for years, though, and will not help today’s struggling adult nonreaders, who increasingly are taking responsibility for their own education.

Illustrating how the movement has evolved, when the Literacy Volunteers of America’s annual convention opened Oct. 30 in Tulsa, Okla., 17 of its 84 workshops were geared specifically to students, rather than tutors and administrators. By comparison, only five of 82 workshops last year targeted students.

Literacy professionals and volunteers say the change has been gradual over the past decade. As students broke through the barrier of illiteracy, their self-confidence soared.

At the same time, increased media attention helped to reduce the stigma of being a nonreader. Former First Lady Barbara Bush was an outspoken advocate of literacy and a tireless campaigner, lobbying state and federal governments for grants to public libraries.

As nonreaders entered literacy programs and began telling their heart-wrenching stories, they drew more students, more volunteers--and donations. As literacy leaders recognized students’ value to the cause, they encouraged them to play a more active role in the movement.

“Philosophically, we were always saying our students are smart people, and they are,” said Valerie Stadelbacher, literacy coordinator at the Corona Public Library. “It came to a point where people said, ‘Well, if we really believe this, they need to be part of the team.’

“We’re asking society to not put any limitation on these people,” Stadelbacher said. “Certainly, we shouldn’t either.”

*

New adult readers are among the most effective crusaders for literacy because they are living examples of what can be accomplished.

“I can quote statistics till I’m blue in the face,” said Doug Schneider, a spokesman for Literacy Volunteers of America’s headquarters in Syracuse, N.Y. “But I haven’t lived what a functionally illiterate person has lived.”

Many new readers champion their cause with evangelical fervor.

Sam Fuga, who sought help six years ago from the Huntington Beach literacy program, is an activist familiar to his City Council as a lobbyist for funding that program.

Fuga, 42, recalls how his discomfort over assuming a higher profile in the movement gradually turned to confidence as his reading skills improved. First, he began giving “little speeches” to prospective tutors and contributors.

“Next thing I know, I’m standing in front of the City Council, and I’m going, ‘Whoa!’ ” said Fuga, who is now on the literacy program’s board of directors. “I have more confidence in myself and can take on any challenge in my life.”

In 1992, prodded by his tutor, Fuga signed up for a psychology class at Orange Coast College. He got a B. Encouraged, he took more classes and is now on track to earn an associate of arts degree next year.

“Anything that comes my way that has to do with reading, I can just face it head-on now,” said Fuga, a property inspector for a real estate company on weekdays and a security guard on weekends. “Before, I would run away from it.”

As he spoke of the gift given to him by the literacy program, Fuga choked up. “I get emotional--OK, hold on,” he said during a recent interview, fighting back tears. “Just to read a word is a big thing.”

In the past two years, Fuga has attended five literacy conferences across the nation and has made speeches at tutor training groups, church and community functions and city council meetings.

He has also organized a student support group and led a workshop to teach new readers the fundamentals of elections and voting. In 1995, he was one of four new readers named “Student of the Decade” by the Huntington Beach program.

Fuga, who works about 15 hours a month for literacy, said he doesn’t mind not getting a salary. “I’m paid for life,” he said.

*

By sharing their stories of humiliation and shame, former nonreaders bond quickly with new students.

“We’re determined that the future generations should not have to grovel on the same path that we had to, because that’s what I felt like,” said Toni Cordell, 54, a Syracuse, N.Y., resident who began working with a tutor in 1988.

“I always knew there was opportunity out there, but I always felt it was out of my reach,” said Cordell, who is now New Reader Leadership Coordinator for Laubach Literacy Action, a global network of volunteers. “I could read well enough to get by but not enough to get ahead.”

Experts say workplace changes are making that problem more acute.

“Technological acceleration and social issues make the gap between skills and technology greater and greater,” said Evelyn Renner, state director of field services for Literacy Volunteers of America.

Even the definition of literacy is changing, Renner said. “During the Depression, if you graduated from the sixth grade you were literate. Now, if you graduate from high school you are barely literate.”

At the same time, state and federal funding for reading programs is shrinking in an era of tight budgets, forcing some reading centers to cut staff and put prospective students on waiting lists.

But energetic literacy students are proving their worth in the financial arena, too. When funding is threatened, groups parade out their star pupils.

“They’re the ones who go out into the community and do the public speaking,” said Meg Schofield, director of the adult literacy program at Chula Vista Public Library. “They’re the ones who tell the stories that really grip people and get people engaged.”

Schofield credits students with organizing a letter-writing campaign this year that prompted state legislators to allocate $900,000 for new reading programs.

A fund-raiser that brought in $6,000 for the Newport Beach Public Library’s literacy program was organized by Chris Calcinari, who last year became the first student elected to the executive board of Literacy Volunteers of America.

Calcinari, 50, who owns a Huntington Beach office furniture company, is outspoken about the rights of those with reading challenges.

If a person is dyslexic, she said, “so what? It doesn’t mean that we’re stupid or dumb or don’t have organizational skills. We have to come out of the closet, like gay people . . . and stop feeling ashamed of ourselves.”

Not all nonreaders have embraced the movement so openly, and for some, their limitations still carry a stigma.

“I haven’t come to terms with this yet,” said a student at the Huntington Beach Library’s literacy program who asked not to be identified for fear of embarrassing her son and daughter, 10 and 11 years old. “I’ve been hiding it for so long.”

Articulate and successful, the 41-year-old woman has held highly skilled jobs in the computer industry and lives in a comfortable Westminster neighborhood. Friends and co-workers never guessed that she could not read.

“She told me she cried for three days before she came in because she was embarrassed to admit it,” said Rose Saylin, the Huntington Beach Library’s literacy coordinator. “She sounded so fragile. I knew it would be hard for her to walk in the door.”

*

The trend in the literacy movement, though, is for new readers to step up, speak out and take their activism to even higher levels. For many of them, memories of past humiliations are their inspiration to push on.

Calvin Miles, a staff member of a New York volunteer organization called Literacy Partners, vividly remembers an incident a decade ago at a literacy conference he was attending as a new reader. The issue arose of how students could be more involved in the movement.

“They can come in and clean my office,” Miles recalled one official saying. “They can sweep the floor.”

Miles, now 54, was devastated by the put-down. “It almost got me to quit the program,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

He now travels the nation encouraging student activism. His position is that new readers should be setting their own agendas and creating watchdog groups to make sure literacy organizations are serving the students’ best interests.

New readers’ involvement has built steadily since 1987, when the first national Student Congress was held in Philadelphia to discuss issues of interest to students. One new reader from each state was invited to attend.

In 1989, a pair of students from each state attended the biennial conference; in 1991, each state’s two delegates brought a staff member. For the 1993 Student Congress, the theme was “Leadership in Action.”

The national conferences were halted after 1993 for lack of funds, but the students were undaunted: They began organizing regionally.

*

The new readers’ increasing activism made some longtime literacy workers uncomfortable, Miles said, because they feared that the students might break away from--and become competitive with--established groups, dividing already scarce funding. But most gave their wholehearted support.

Since 1993, conventions have been held in at least 10 states.

One of those, the California Adult Learner Conference in San Francisco last March, was the state’s first gathering planned and conducted entirely by new readers. Participants declared it a rousing success.

“It was almost like a religious experience, it was so exciting,” said Carole Talan, director of the State Literacy Resource Center of California, which provides and coordinates literacy resources across the state and co-hosted the event.

“They truly were in control of this conference,” she said of the students. “That is what made it unique.”

The statewide conference will be held biennially, with regional conferences planned for the off years, Talan said. She predicted that new readers will lead the literacy movement into the next century.

“We’re going to find more and more programs with new readers or former new readers on their staffs,” Talan said. “We, who thought we were the teachers, have so much to learn from those whom we have taught.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Where To Get Help

Nonreaders seeking classes and volunteers interested in tutoring and other opportunities may contact one of dozens of programs available across Orange County. Literacy programs by city:

Countywide

* Orange County Public Library, 27 sites

(714) 566-3070

* South Coast Literacy Council

Programs in Irvine, Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente

(714) 493-2866 or (714) 493-3800

Buena Park

* Buena Park Library

7150 La Palma Ave.

(714) 826-4100

* St. Anthony Claret

1450 E. La Palma Ave.

(714) 776-0270

Costa Mesa

* Costa Mesa Literacy Center

First United Methodist Church

420 W. 19th St.

(714) 548-3384

* Harbor Area Literacy Center

610 W. 18th St.

(714) 536-1904

* Mesa Verde United Methodist Church

1701 Baker St.

(714) 548-3384 or (714) 668-9411

* Newport-Mesa Unified School District Adult Education Center

1050 Arlington Ave.

(714) 556-3432

* Orange Coast College

2701 Fairview Road

(714) 432-0202

Cypress

* Cypress Continuing Education Center at Cypress College

(North Orange Community College District)

9200 Valley View St.

(714) 995-2238

Fountain Valley

* Fountain Valley Public Library

17565 Los Alamos St.

(714) 962-1324 or (714) 964-1432

Fullerton

* Fullerton Area Tutors, YWCA

321 N. Pomona Ave.

(714) 879-1452

* Fullerton Public Library

353 W. Commonwealth Ave.

(714) 738-3114 or (714) 738-6333

* Fullerton Union High School District Adult School

201 E. Chapman Ave.

(714) 870-3775

* Wilshire Continuing Education Center

North Orange County Community College District

315 E. Wilshire Ave.

(714) 992-6090

Garden Grove

* Garden Grove Adult Education Lincoln Center

11262 Garden Grove Blvd.

(714) 663-6305

* Garden Grove Unified School District

Chapman Education Center

11852 Knott Ave.

(714) 663-6525

* St. Paul’s Lutheran Church

13072 Bowen St.

(714) 537-4243

Huntington Beach

* Coastline College Adult Education

5172 McFadden Ave.

(714) 891-5678

* Golden West College

15744 Golden West St.

(714) 895-8306

* Huntington Beach Public Library

7111 Talbert Ave.

(714) 375-5102

Irvine

* Irvine Adult Education Program

Irvine Unified School District

311 W. Yale Loop

(714) 857-2682

* Irvine Valley College

5500 Irvine Center Drive

(714) 559-9300

La Habra

* Head Start Parents

1060 W. Lambert Road

(310) 694-0945

* La Habra Public Library

221 E. La Habra Blvd.

(310) 694-0078

Laguna Beach

* Laguna Beach Unified School District Adult School

625 Park Ave.

(714) 497-7700

Laguna Niguel

* Dana Niguel Branch Library

33841 Niguel Road

(714) 496-5517

Lake Forest

* Grace Community Church

26052 Trabuco Road

(714) 581-4248

Los Alamitos

* Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church

11600 Los Alamitos Blvd.

(310) 431-5356

Mission Viejo

* Presbyterian Church of the Master

26051 Marguerite Parkway

(714) 582-0187

* Saddleback Valley College

28000 Marguerite Parkway

(714) 582-4500

Newport Beach

* Newport Beach Public Library

1000 Avocado Ave.

(714) 717-3874

Orange

* Orange Adult Learning Center

Rancho Santiago Community College

541 N. Lemon St.

(714) 997-1610

* Orange Public Library

101 N. Center St.

(714) 288-2438

Placentia

* Placentia Library District

411 E. Chapman Ave.

(714) 524-8408

San Juan Capistrano

* Capistrano Unified School District Adult Education

31422 Camino Capistrano

(714) 493-0658

* Villa del Obispo

32220 Del Obispo St.

(714) 493-2866

Santa Ana

* Rancho Santiago College Centennial Education Center

2900 W. Edinger Ave.

(714) 564-5000

* Trinity Presbyterian Church

13922 Prospect Ave.

(714) 545-5095

* Tustin Unified Adult Education Center

18492 Vanderlip Ave.

(714) 730-7395

Yorba Linda

* Yorba Linda Continuing Education Center

North Orange County Community College

4175 Fairmont Blvd.

(714) 779-8279

Source: Individual programs; Researched by HOPE HAMASHIGE / For The Times

Early Warnings

Educators say there are several signs a child may be having trouble learning to read in early school years. If one or more of these warning signals is present, a teacher should be contacted:

* Going out of his or her way to avoid reading

* Struggling to read simple words

* Complaining of headaches or other physical pain when trying to read

* Becoming easily frustrated when trying to read

* Not being able to sound out words phonetically

* Not seeming to understand what he or she reads from a simple text

* Not trying to read commonly seen words such as those on signs or menus

* Being unable to read grade-level material independently

* Having no enthusiasm for showing parents what he or she can read

Source: Orange County Department of Education

Back to School

Adult education enrollment in California peaked in the late 1980s for instruction in English as a second language and in the early 1990s for basic skills. A look at the trend since 1981-82, the first school year for which enrollment numbers were tracked:

*--*

Elementary English as a basic skills second language 1981-82 56,595 388,699 1982-83 51,100 357,725 1983-84 50,249 374,932 1984-85 57,365 420,966 1985-86 49,988 408,105 1986-87 55,940 432,441 1987-88 67,741 456,187 1988-89 65,306 586,744 1989-90 87,993 589,959 1990-91 73,529 541,245 1991-92 88,777 516,227 1992-93 50,742 464,306 1993-94* 58,104 459,148

*--*

* Most recent data available

Source: California Department of Education; Researched by HOPE HAMASHIGE / For The Times

Back to Basics in College

More than 63,000 students are enrolled this year in basic skills courses, including reading and writing and English as a second language, at eight Orange County community colleges. The breakdown by district:

Coast Community College District

Coastline College: 3,804

Golden West College: 7,642

Orange Coast College: 4,669

North Orange County Community College District

Cypress College: 5,487

Fullerton College: 8,319

Saddleback Community College District

Irvine Valley College: 4,686

Saddleback College: 4,712

Rancho Santiago Community College District

Rancho Santiago College: 24,235

Source: Individual colleges; Researched by HOPE HAMASHIGE / For The Times