Teaching literacy in the city benefits learners, tutors

UCLA students are teaching English and literacy to immigrant adults in their community. This helps the adults learn English which they need in so many parts of their lives, but it also helps the students become better in Spanish and better teachers. The students all are amazed at how hard these immigrants work and still find time to study. - - Donna Poisl

By Alison Hewitt

The mostly immigrant adults attending Centro Latino for Literacy in downtown Los Angeles usually speak only Spanish. They come to learn to read and write their language, motivated by a panoply of hard-luck tales that they share with the UCLA interns who teach them to trace the letters of the alphabet.

There's the garment worker, paid by the piece, who realized he'd been signing forms acknowledging making only 60 pieces a day, when he should have been paid for making 100.

There's the father, ashamed to let his first-generation American children know that the reason he won't help them with homework is because he can't read their textbooks.

There are the adults who can't read maps or street signs, who navigate relying on an extraordinary memory of landmarks.
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