Learning to read opens adults to new opportunities

Horace Fullmer has worked hard, and pretty steadily, his entire life, mostly in the construction and building trades and, these days, for a company that installs phone equipment.

But what many of his bosses, co-workers and casual acquaintances over the years didn't know was that Fullmer could barely read.

Fullmer, 56, figures he has spent most of his life reading at no better than a third-grade level. Then, in January, he enrolled in adult literacy classes offered by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District.

Since then, Fullmer has been learning vowel sounds, and breaking words apart, and dealing with the frustrating complexity of written English.

But the toughest thing he has faced so far? Easy, Fullmer says.

"First, admitting to yourself that you've got a problem. And, then, second-hardest is walking through that door."

Fullmer isn't alone, as a tough job market is prompting older adults who have gotten by in their careers with inadequate reading and writing skills to finally learn now what they wish they had learned back in school.

Pinning down adult literacy - or conversely, illiteracy - rates is tricky, partly because there's no way to determine precisely how many people hide their lack of reading and writing skills.

"There's actually a larger population than most people realize in the workforce that have very low literacy levels," says Rebecca Metty-Burns, executive director of the College of Southern Nevada's Division of Workforce and Economic Development.

Low literacy rates are strongly associated with the lack of a high school diploma or general education development certificate.

"We have about 16 percent of the Clark County workforce that does not have a (high school) diploma or a GED," Metty-Burns notes.

Yet, adds Connie Barker, literacy services coordinator for the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, "unfortunately, many of the students that we do get (in the library district's adult literacy programs) are students who did, in fact, get through the educational system with poor reading or basic skills in general.

"The great majority of our students are non-native English speakers - primarily speakers of Spanish - but we get students from all over the world, and we are starting to see an increase in our native English-speaking students."

Adults who possess inadequate literacy skills represent the entire range of ages, Barker adds, noting that the library district's CALL - Computer Assisted Literacy in Libraries - program serves students from "17 or 18 all the way to people up in their 60s and 70s." It serves about 1,200 to 1,300 students each year, she notes.

Definitions of literacy can vary - along with reading and writing skills, basic math skills often are included in the definition - but most of them tend to be functional.

"I think for the general public, what you're talking about is, we just want to know can they functionally read and functionally write and functionally do math," Metty-Burns says.

Then, "we look at it from levels," she adds, so "illiteracy" may mean anything from "you can't read and write at all" to reading and writing "only at a third- or fourth-grade level."

Fullmer's decision to improve his literacy was prompted by a tough job market.

"All my life I was able to find a job," he says. "But in this new world out there, you've got to be able to read and you've got to be able to run a computer or they don't even talk to you. To fill out an application for a casino, it ain't like it used to be. Now, it's done online."

Fullmer grew up in Idaho and moved to Las Vegas during the late '60s.

"I've been a carpenter. I've done electrical and plumbing. I'm really mechanically inclined," he says. "But as far as reading and spelling, I never had the luxury of that one."

He traces that back to his early school days when, Fullmer says, "they didn't care if you learned or not. At the end of the year, they just passed you."

Fullmer dropped out of school about eighth grade. He was about 17 then, having been held back a few times.

"At that time, I thought to myself, 'They can't teach me,' " Fullmer says. "I was good enough in my math, and I know things about history and stuff like that, but reading and spelling, I had no knowledge of."

However, his mechanical aptitude always was enough to land him jobs. Not being able to read well was "a little bit" of a problem, he admits, "but not too much. I would always just look at the pictures or a diagram or something and figure out what to do."

Finding work-arounds is common among people with low literacy skills, says Lyn Pizor, executive director of the Community Multicultural Center, which offers no-cost literacy instruction to Southern Nevadans. The center's programs will serve about 800 adult students during the coming fiscal year, Pizor says.

"Our students hide it very well," Pizor says. "They have amazing coping skills, the most frequent being, 'Oh, I forgot my reading glasses. Can you read this for me?' "

At restaurants, Fullmer would order on the basis of photos in the menu. On the job, he'd watch a co-worker or supervisor performing a task and then try to memorize the procedure.

"You learn how to compensate," Fullmer says.

Whenever he had to fill out or read documents, Lewis Romanovich, 48, recruited others to do it for him.

"I had friends. My mom helped me, or nurses helped me out," says Romanovich, who has been studying in the library district's adult literacy program for about a year-and-a-half. "And my wife, she used to help me do paperwork and stuff like that."

"It's just using common sense and learning how to work around your issues - your problems - and making ways to make it work for you," says Romanovich, who grew up in Pennsylvania and left school about eighth grade.

Romanovich says his family traveled a lot when he was growing up.

"My stepdad, he moved around a lot and we had to move with him," he says.

Romanovich was in and out of multiple schools during his youth. When he got older and turned out to be a good athlete, sports insulated him from academics.

"I had one teacher tell me: 'Don't worry about it. You're gonna pass,' " he recalls.

Romanovich figures he reads at about a kindergarten level. Yet, he always has found jobs, mostly in the construction trades. He has operated cranes, driven heavy equipment and even has worked as a foreman.

"Even big bosses all the way up, they knew I didn't know how to read, but they said, 'Well, you know more about what to do and how to run a job than these guys who went to school,' " he says.

But Romanovich is certain that his lack of literacy skills "stopped me from climbing real high up the ladder."

Chuck Hedges doesn't mince words in describing how he kept others from knowing that he couldn't read well.

"I lied to people," says Hedges, 52, who has completed about five 10-week sessions in the Community Multicultural Center's adult literacy program.

The problem, Hedges continues, is that "when you con somebody all your life, you're conning yourself."

Hedges became skilled at asking questions to disguise his lack of reading skills. Handed a slip of paper by a boss, for instance, "you've got to kind of lie a little bit and say, 'I don't quite understand how you want this done.' One sentence leads to another, and you try to suck (information) out of them."

Hedges' family moved around a good deal when he was growing up. He attended school until 10th grade when, he says, "a lot of horseplay, a lot of not paying attention and moving around ... just turned over on me."

Still, he worked as a carpenter for about 30 years, about 20 of which he spent in Las Vegas working on such projects as The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, CityCenter and Bellagio.

"I'm a fast learner," Hedges explains. "I was always taught in the construction industry with my dad that, when you walk into a job, you look around and see what people are doing and see what you can pick up."

He had thought over the years about returning to class to improve his literacy skills. But, Hedges says, "when you work construction and you've got (five) kids, you just work, and that's what I did, basically."

Hedges says he read at about a second-grade level when he entered the center's program.

"It's just the words, the basics, the fundamentals," he says. "It seems like I wasn't taught, like, your vowels, your phonics, your decoding skills.

"When I saw this, I was, like, 'Why wasn't I taught this?' "

Sometimes, adults take literacy classes for intensely personal reasons.

"I've got a 6-year-old and an 8-year old, and, God bless me, they are smart. Way smart," Romanovich says. "It's kind of embarrassing when they come up and ask you to do something and you can't help them."

But, particularly during the past few years, adults have been turning to literacy classes for more practical reasons.

"The need to seek employment, the need to keep employment and the need to seek upgraded employment have caused even more people" to pursue literacy training, says Barker, who estimates that enrollment in the library district's adult literacy programs - which include pre-GED and GED courses - has increased by 15 percent to 20 percent during the past few years.

It used to be that non- or underliterate workers could make a pretty good living in Las Vegas. But, Metty-Burns says, "unfortunately, the economy has made that less and less true."

The College of Southern Nevada's adult literacy programs see high school dropouts who moved right into the workforce before the recession and are losing jobs now, she says.

"All of a sudden, you see more and more people come in because there are no real options for them." she says. "I think for a long time we didn't pay attention to it as much, and now it comes to the forefront. There are so many people out there who have some challenges with the skill level they have."

Fullmer has experienced it firsthand.

"Until three years ago, I had no problem walking in and telling a man what I could do and going to work," he says. "But, now, since the job shortages and everything, and at my age, they look at you like, 'OK, well, we're gonna take this younger guy.' "

It was, Fullmer says, "the job factor" that prompted him to enroll after considering it for about two years.

"I had no choice," he says. "At this point I have to learn it."

It's going well. Fullmer's family is happy for him. His employer is supportive. He's progressing well in his classwork.

"I'm noticing a vast improvement now, because I've got more confidence in myself," Fullmer says. "It's a brand- new world for me and my job and everything."

Hedges, too, is excited about seeing where his developing literacy skills might take him.

"I've always tried picking up magazines, like automotive (publications). I love cars," says Hedges, who even has picked up a study guide for the commercial driver's license test.

Romanovich is retired because of medical issues - "I would give anything in the world to go back to work," he says - but also is doing well in his studies.

On his latest reading test, Romanovich missed only three out of 24 questions, "and I even impressed myself," he says. "I didn't even think that I'd do that good."

And, while he might even go for his GED someday, Romanovich has a more compelling target to shoot for with his growing literacy skills.

"My goal is to be able to sit down and read to my kids," he says. "That's the main issue, right there."

Contact reporter John Przybys at
jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.