Placing Adult Literacy Front and Center

November 9, 2011

Adult literacy continues to be a serious educational and economic issue in the United States. Currently, there are an estimated 32 million adults living with such low-level literacy skills that reading a children’s picture book or understanding the instructions on a medicine bottle pose a challenge.

That’s what made the first U.S. Conference on Adult Literacy (USCAL), held November 2–5 in Houston, so groundbreaking. Sponsored by ProLiteracy, the conference brought together adult learners, literacy providers, educators, librarians, advocates, and policymakers to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the adult literacy field in the 21st century.

ProLiteracy and its 26 national, regional, and local partner organizations, including ALA, offered a full program of continuing education and discussion sessions. The opening general session introduced the new “Stand for Literacy” campaign, an opportunity for adult learners and literacy advocates—including librarians—to share their personal literacy stories.

ALA participated in four conference programs. Dale Lipschultz, literacy officer in the Association’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, moderated the featured session, “Digital Literacy: Skills, Tools, and Opportunities to Reshape Adult Literacy Learning and Instruction.” The panelists were: Lana Jackman of the National Forum on Information Literacy; Stephen Reder, professor of applied linguistics at Portland (Oreg.) State University; Petrice Sams-Abiodun, executive director of the Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy at Loyola University in New Orleans; and Toni Cordell, adult learner and literacy advocate. In another session, Lipschultz facilitated a discussion on the future of e-readers and their impact on adult learners and literacy programs. This program solicited interesting exchanges between librarians, educators, and adult literacy instructors.

Miguel Figueroa, acting director of OLOS, participated in a second featured session, “Federal Level Public Policy and Advocacy Updates,” where participants discussed ALA’s digital literacy task force and the advocacy efforts that ALA’s Washington Office is pursuing related to digital literacy initiatives at the federal level.

Three librarians from the American Dreams Starts @ your library initiative described how their libraries are providing new and innovative literacy services to adult English-language learners. The ALA-administered project, funded by the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, provided $5,000 grants to public libraries serving adult English-language learners. Hadi Dudley, of Bentonville (Ark.) Public Library, shared her library’s experience hosting a naturalization ceremony for 30 new Americans from 14 countries. Elise Shell, of Harris County (Tex.) Public Library, described HCPL’s efforts to offer English-language tutoring and how an increased demand for services led to transformed library spaces. Cindy Welsh, of High Plains Library District in Greeley, Colorado, discussed how her library system offered citizenship classes at literacy centers and libraries countywide in response to an increasing demand.

Throughout conference sessions and in the exhibit hall, attendees consistently reaffirmed the importance of libraries as essential partners in providing and promoting adult literacy services. At “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library: Promoting Social Change One Book at a Time,” Virginia Carmody of the Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County, New York, spoke about the significance of holding the program’s kick-off event at the local public library. The choice of venue connected children and families to the library and a lifetime of available resources. Eva Raison and Erna Golden of Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library presented their best recommendations for high-interest, low-level reading materials from BPL’s adult learner collection.

The commitment of adult literacy advocates was renewed and reinvigorated during this inaugural U.S. Conference on Adult Literacy. ProLiteracy and its partners are already looking ahead to the next USCAL conference, scheduled for October 2013 in Washington, D.C.

DALE LIPSCHULTZ is literacy officer for ALA’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, and MIGUEL FIGUEROA is acting director of OLOS.

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