Learning to Read After Decades Brings Joy

From 1990-2000, I was the director of an adult literacy program in Santa Clara County, CA. One of my favorite projects was Digital Storytelling which provided adult literacy students with the opportunity to tell their story through mini-movies. After moving to Texas, I sustained my literacy passion by serving on the founding board of the National Coalition for Literacy and still consult with NCL on various projects. So you can understand my delight when I learned about the following story from the NCL news release.


Volunteer tutor Michelle Miller (left) and her student, Joseph Buford, told their story in Nashville, Tenn.
StoryCorps
Morning Edition, April 18, 2008

Joe Buford, 63, has a high school diploma but kept a secret, even from his family: He couldn't read. "I could memorize things," he says. "I call it drawing the words .... Nobody in my family really knew how bad it was with me and how hurt I was over it." Buford's wife didn't know about his reading problem until after they were married, he says.

"Some mail came one day and normally, she's telling me what came and what [bills] needed to be paid. But this time, she gave it to me and said, 'Here, read this.' And so she found out that I couldn't just read something from top to bottom. That tore my heart out."

Listen to the rest of the interview
Write to Joseph Buford
Read the rest of Joseph's story