[NLA] Re: Followup to Illinois New Readers for New Life State Conference

[lewis kalmbach]

Archie....you are an amazing human being. It was an honor to meet you and
spend a few days learning with you. Thank you for that opportunity.
Lewis Kalmbach

> From: Archie Willard <millard at goldfieldaccess.net>
> Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 20:53:55 -0500
> To: _NLA LISTSERV <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
> Subject: Followup to Illinois New Readers for New Life State Conference
> 
> Last week-end I was in Peoria, Illinois, to attend the Illinois New
> Readers for New Life State Conference. This was a special time in adult
> literacy for me to see all the adult learners and how excited they were
> being a part of making the health literacy video for the AMA.
> 
> In order to bring awareness to other doctors about some patients’ poor
> literacy skills, Dr. Terry Davis brought a team to make a video about
> the problems that adult learners face when they go into a medical clinic
> and also to do research on this subject. There were camera people,
> production people and people from the AMA to assist. Michael Wolf, PhD
> of Northwestern University was there interviewing adult learners on a
> health literacy project that he is working on. The New Readers of
> Illinois teamed up with this research team to help make health literacy
> better. At this conference, we were all students and all teachers at the
> same time.  We talked about health literacy from both sides and learned
> from each other. To my knowledge, never before has anyone partnered with
> adult learners in this way. There were many ideas and some were very
> good ones that can be used to make health literacy better.
> 
> Friday night Common Cause had an open house. They showed us their
> facilities that they are so proud of, and well they should be.  The
> building they use is an old church that was sold to them for one dollar.
> They are very excited about what they are doing there. They have a
> reading center, a computer room, a day-care center and church services
> are still held in this building. They do fund-raising and many things
> are donated to them. Many people volunteer their time to make the center
> run better.  They are a grass-roots organization. We were all touched by
> the people who ran the center and the love that was in the room that
> night. What happens at this center is what America is all about.
> 
> Saturday morning people were coming together at Bradley University. They
> were getting reacquainted with old friends and making new friends before
> the conference got underway. About 80 adult learners plus some
> professionals were at this conference. There was a general session on
> health literacy. Dr. Terry Davis gave a good overview of health literacy
> in our country and led a discussion. Mark Williams, MD and Ruth Parker,
> MD each spoke and answered questions. They all stressed that they were
> here to learn from the adult learners
> 
> Some of my thoughts about the day: If we are going to move forward with
> adult literacy it will take the education field, the medical people and
> the adult learners all working together. One of the things I learned was
> that health literacy is a bigger problem in our country than we realize
> and that only 5 million dollars has been spent to learn more about it.
> Yet it has cost our country billions of dollars. When talking about
> people having social problems because of poor literacy, Congress and
> society in general do not seem very interested, but if you say that we
> have health problems because of poor literacy skills they tend to
> listen.
> 
> We all came away with a better understanding of each other and a lot was
> learned.  This day should be just a beginning in health literacy. I hope
> other professions will partner with adult learners and I hope they will
> let the adult learners be the teachers. For me it was a great day and it
> was good to be a part of what happened there.
> 
> Archie Willard
> Adult Learner
> 
> --
> Archie Willard
> millard at goldfieldaccess.net
> URL - http://www.readiowa.org/archiew.html
> 
> 
> 
> 

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