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St. Petersburg
resident Ruth Feldman heard Frank
Laubach speak in 1968 about his “Each
One, Teach One” program to train people
to read. She decided to bring the method
to her hometown, and enlisted eight
women to be tutors, and the Literacy
Council of St. Petersburg was born.
With the help of
Pasadena Community Church, the Council
received $100 to purchase literature. It
was decided then that teachers would pay
for their own material, but students
would pay only if they could afford to
do so. The Council welcomed its first
pupil, and soon the original class
members, having received their Frank
Laubach certificates, started organizing
more teacher training classes. The
Council received official status as a
non-profit organization in 1971 from the
Internal Revenue Service.
The organization
grew and many of its students were
immigrants learning English for the
first time. So in the mid-1980’s, the
Clearwater group formed its own
organization, the Literacy Council of
Upper Pinellas, and focused on its
English as a Second Language program.
In 1986, a special
adult program was begun with the tutors
meeting one-on-one with students in St.
Petersburg at Lakewood Community Adult
(night) School . Northeast and Dixie
Hollins community schools soon followed.
Each school has a coordinator who
interviews students and assigns them to
tutors.
It has been a
successful model, according to Virginia
Gildrie, a Council member since 1973 and
a founder of the program. “The reluctant
student who has had negative experiences
at school willingly comes to meet just
one person who focuses on him. In
addition, the sites are close to the
homes of both the student and the
tutors, and the student sees others who
are working as hard as he is, and is
encouraged by that.” |
YES,
Santa, there is a Virginia! Meet Virginia
Gildrie and her husband Gil. For 30 years the driving force behind
StPete Literacy. 