I have had that chance to go back into the schools and talk to kids about the importance of reading. It took a while, but I have had that chance to go back and help the school system, as well, and to fill in the gaps so the kids don’t fall through the cracks. There is a lot more testing that is now taking place that wasn’t there when I was. I’ve kept active in the literacy movement.

On the local level, I sit on the board of directors for a well known literacy program and have for almost 10 years now. For the last six years now, I have sat on a national board of the literacy program. I am a student rep for the state of Pennsylvania and we help other adult learners to achieve their success in life.

I want to find easier ways to bring more people into our programs, be it on the local, state, or national level, to get the word out more to people that if we work as a group, we can control the problem. I think what we need in accomplishing this is more of an awareness program or visibility to put it back on the front burner. For a while it has been lurking in the back burners. I think it’s, again, time for us to move and move it back up on the front burners to help these people.

Irene, who is not at all shy about her adult education experiences, describes the opportunity she had to put in a good word for adult education at the national level.

Since I have completed the adult education program, I have obtained an associate’s degree in Liberal Arts and I was asked to help establish the new national organization for adult learners I was also asked to sit on its eleven-member board....

In June 1999, I had surgery on my knee. July 3, I was in Washington DC for National Literacy Day. Patricia McNeal, the assistant Secretary of Education and I were both on crutches. It was a bonding moment, when we got to exchange war stories. That was an absolutely wonderful opportunity for me to talk about literacy centers, about me becoming a success story, about [Voice for Adult Literacy: United for Education] VALUE.

Conrad, Peter and Irene were not the only participants to take advocacy for adult education to the national level. William is a natural leader. While attending a school for the learning disabled, he was elected senior class president and student body president. He ran a snack bar at lunch time and then joined with other students to start a cafeteria that still exists at the school. Upon graduation, he enrolled in a tutoring program and raised his reading level six grades in eight months. He then enrolled in a community college while still working in food service.

It took William ten years to earn an associate degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. At the same time he progressed on the job from a cook’s helper to food service manager where he was responsible for seven employees and a budget of about three million dollars. But his real interest lay in adult learner advocacy. After 17 years, he quit his job to move to a full time position in the field of adult literacy:

Now I have a grant to do research … I’ve learned how to impact state, impact local programming, and also adult learners. I am ready to get my stuff published... As an administrator, I’ll be trying to find money, hiring staff and running an office. … Ten years ago, if you look at Adult Education student involvement, it didn’t exist. The student came into the program, their reading level went up and there was just no place for you. I have watched this field incorporate student involvement all the way through.