Written by Isolde Mueller, who volunteers at Central Minnesota ABE and is a 2014 Volunteer Story Contest winner.
When I learned to read, I struggled. Making the connection between sound and symbol, often meant that I did not have enough energy to figure out the meaning of what I was reading. Stuck with the mechanics, I did not seem to be able to get to what I now enjoy about reading, the meaning of a text, which let you imagine people, including yourself, ideas and the world in a different way. You can do it anywhere anytime, with any text, from a book to a cereal box. And best of all, sooner or later, the choices are all yours.
This is why I now work as a reading tutor. My students are adult learners, mainly from Somalia. What makes working with adult learners so enjoyable is their high level of motivation. Despite their traumatic experiences, they are engaged and eager, ready and willing to try again and again. Many of them have had little formal schooling, because the war interrupted their education and their time in refugee camps was spent on survival. What is vicious and destructive about trauma is that it takes away people’s ability to focus on anything but the trauma, which often means losing the ability to imagine options, wishes or dreams. Staying alive takes all the energy available.
Some might argue that learning to read in a highly print-literature culture like the US, is a matter of survival, too. Immigrants need to read to set up their lives, from immigration documents, to rental agreements and to driving tests. Being able to read means being able to integrate into the new society. My students and I therefore read a wide variety of texts. Since last September we have worked our way through biographies of famous African Americans, Black Beauty (the students kept asking why a horse can talk), Robin Hood (we did give up on him because we found that nobody particularly cared for him), about the winter weather (which only seemed fitting given the weather this winter), and Little Women.
But I believe that we read for more than information and necessities. We also read for reinventing and reimagining ourselves, which happened with the story in Little Women where Jo submits her first story to an editor because she wants to contribute to the family finances. When we left that evening, one of my students said “I want to write.” When I said “Like Jo?”, my student smiled and responded “Like Jo.” This to me is why we read – because it allows us to imagine ourselves differently, with role models in the past and options for our future.
