STUDENTS PREVIOUSLY ENROLLED IN LITERACY PROGRAMS
Nadine
Nadine is a single, 27 year old woman who lived with her sister and helped
to care for her niece and nephew at the time of the study. She was only
18 when she immigrated to Canada from Jamaica. While growing up in Jamaica, she
had attended school sporadically until the age of 12. Her only paid employment
was in Canada working for a few months as an office cleaner. A few years
after her arrival in Canada she enrolled in a general literacy program
at the school board. After attending the program for three years and making steady
improvements, she was forced to leave when her sister needed her to care
for her children. In addition to babysitting her niece and nephew while her sister worked,
Nadine also cared for her grandmother. Although she left the program
unwillingly, she had achieved a level of reading that allowed her to read
picture books to her niece and nephew. While she was away from the program, she said
she used her newly acquired reading ability regularly.
Nadine is painfully shy and before participating in the study, rarely spoke
more than one or two words at a time. She often only smiled nervously in
response to a question. She is also a very gentle and caring person who was placed in the role
of family caregiver. She never complained about this role but told Carrie, one of
the program's instructors, that she had recently applied for a subsidized
apartment so she could begin to build a life of her own. During the interviews for this
study, Nadine began to show a side of herself that her instructors had
rarely seen. She answered questions in a careful and thoughtful manner, and
even gave advice to other students in the group interview regarding the need to use
literacy at home and not just in the classroom.
Nadine's main motivation for participating in the employment preparation
program was to learn new skills and gain work experience so she wouldn't
have to return to cleaning jobs. "I don't want to do
that anymore. I want to try something else. That's what I know alone so I want
to go do different things, get more experience." Besides wanting to gain employment
experience, Nadine also wanted to continue to improve her literacy ability.
You need to learn to read because I [don't] want
to go out there and see things I can't read. I don't want to be embarrassed.
For most of the jobs you have to learn to read too, and you need to spell.
If they give you things to do, you have to learn.
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