[Reading-hall-of-fame] National Teacher Appreciation Week

[Thomas Sticht]

Colleagues: This year National Teacher Appreciation Week in the United
States is celebrated during May 4 through May 8th, 2020. This is a time for
recognizing and appreciating how so many adult educators and teachers have
shaped individual lives and the ethos of our Nation.

A resource some adult educators may find of interest for their professional
development activities for this special week is available online. In 2009,
at the National Right to Literacy Conference in Buffalo, New York, I
presented an overview of a number of educators whose work was devoted to
teaching adults how to read and write.

In this talk, called “The Shoulders on Which We Stand”, I started with
George Washington, the “Father of our Nation”, who was not directly a
teacher of adults but I discussed him because he  directed Chaplains during
the Revolutionary War to teach solders to read and write. I ended my
presentation with a discussion of Septima Poinsette Clark, the  “Queen
Mother of the Civil Rights Movement in our Nation” whose work in the 1950s
helped tens of thousands of African-Americans learn to read and write.



In between my discussion of George Washington and Septima Poinsette Clark,
I discussed the work of Susie King Taylor and Harriet A. Jacobs, both
former slaves, the former who taught other former slaves to read and write
during the Civil War and the latter who taught literacy in the Freedman’s
Schools during the reconstruction following the Civil War.

Following the discussion of the former slaves who taught adult literacy, I
went on to talk about teachers in the 1920s. Cora Wilson Stewart, founder
of the Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates and J.
Duncan Spaeth, developer of literacy education for soldiers during World
War 1.  Both produced functional materials for teaching adults to read and
write. In 1923 Wil Lou Gray introduced in South Carolina  “Sign
–Your-Own-Name” and “I’ll Write My Own Name” Campaigns to get adult into
literacy programs and she started Opportunity Schools for adult literacy
learners.

Frank Laubach, popularized the slogan “each one teach one” around the world
and in 1955 at the age of 70 he started Laubach International, the first
major organization for adult literacy education in the United States. Later
this organization merged with Literacy Volunteers of America to form
ProLiteracy Worldwide.



During World War II, Paul A. Witty, a follower of the work of William S.
Gray who “fathered” the Dick and Jane readers in which children who were
learning to read could identify with the fictional children and their
activities, used that approach in developing materials for the Army
literacy program. He invented a fictional soldier, Private Pete, who was a
literacy student in the Army just as the real students were. This let the
real students identify with the fictional soldier who was learning
literacy.

My presentation ends up with the discussion of Septima Poinsette Clark’s
work with the Citizenship Schools. All the works of the teacher educators
are presented with numerous illustrations of them and their materials and
additional commentary about their work for adult literacy education. A copy
of my PowerPoint presentation, is available online at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335680116_The_Shoulders_On_Which_We_Stand

Happy National Teacher Appreciation Week to all!

Tom Sticht

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