Although Valerie Rucinski has been an adult literacy volunteer for a year, she still laughs about her first encounter with her client.
The client had called Rucinski to set up the first meeting. Because it was to be held at the Green Hills Public Library in Palos Hills, he asked her for directions. She told him to get a pencil and paper so he could write them down.
There was an awkward moment of silence. Then the client said: ”I have trouble writing.”
Rucinski cringed.
She apologized ”as soon as I could get my foot out of my mouth,” she says. ”But even with that, we hit it off beautifully. We even laughed about it later.”
Before she began tutoring in the Moraine Valley Community College Adult Literacy Program, Rucinski completed three classes at the Palos Hills school. In her 2 1/2-hour weekly sessions with her client, she uses the techniques she learned and more, including phonics, flash cards and workbook exercises.
”We work on individual words, sentences and paragraphs,” she says.
”But I always stress the fact that words are not alone; they`re part of a sentence, part of the meaning.”
Rucinski`s other techniques include alternate reading, in which tutor and client take turns reading the same material to ease pressure on the student, and language experience stories, in which the client tells a story and the tutor writes it down. The client then reads the story aloud.
”This exercise builds confidence,” says Rucinski, explaining that in telling a story clients use words with which they`re familiar and, because they know these words, they are more easily read.
”When we began, my client had an excellent speaking vocabulary-he`s highly intelligent-but he could only read a few primary words like `baby` and `cat,”` she says. ”But now, a year later, he`s reading whole paragraphs and he knows words like `suddenly,` `breakfast` and `happen.`
”He`s done so much homework I bet he feels like an athlete. Learning to read means practice, practice.”
Her client is reading a book of stories using two- and sometimes three-syllable words geared to general adult interests on topics such as
nutrition, moving from the country to the city and taking a chance on the Lotto.
”We wait until a client gets to 4th-grade reading level before we zero in on his reading interests,” she says. ”Most books on specific subjects are written on higher (than 4th-grade) elementary levels.”
Some of Rucinski`s techniques come from her creativity. Once, her client told her that he and his wife had ordered some furniture but, when it arrived, his wife had gone out and he couldn`t pay for it because he didn`t know how to write a check. ”Please teach me how to write a check,” he said.
Rucinski began by making enlarged copies of one of her own checks. Then she taught him how to write the words for numbers 1 through 10.
She divided the process into five steps, from date to signature, which she and the client practiced together.
”He wrote several (practice) checks,” she says with a laugh. ”One of them, a $9.80 check, was for a 24-inch color TV. And we also paid a dentist bill; we named the dentist Okin I. Pullem. That was just silliness. But sometimes you have to have a laugh.”
Maria Thiel, program coordinator, praises Rucinski`s teaching instinct and her creativity.
”She`s a fabulous tutor and a fabulous person,” Thiel says. ”She seems to have an instinct for exactly what the student needs. For example, she just knew that the client should only learn the words for 1 through 10 in the check-writing lesson. Then, after these had been mastered, he went on to learn 20, 30 and the rest. If someone is given too much to learn all at once, it can be overwhelming.”
Rucinski says she believes that tutoring is as gratifying for the tutor as for the client.
For example, her client came to his lesson a few months ago with a big smile on his face.
”For years, no matter what restaurant he visited, he would order only cheeseburgers or BLTs because he knew these things were offered in all restaurants,” she says. ”But this time, he told me he`d had chicken breast smothered in gravy with mashed potatoes and green beans. The reason he was able to order this was because he found he could read the menu.”
When she heard this, she felt like she was walking on air, Rucinski says. ”I felt like I could go out and whip the world. What`s unique about this program is that there`s an immediate feel good, a rapid payback for both tutor and client.”
Another person in the program says that life was much harder before he began his lessons 2 1/2 years ago. ”I was always asking friends to fill out job applications,” he says. ”I couldn`t read street signs, and I usually ordered hot dogs, beef sandwiches or hamburgers when I went to restaurants.” His life has improved ”1,000 percent,” he says. ”I can read a menu now-and fill out a one-page job application. And I can read my 4-year-old son a story, although I still have trouble with a few of the words sometimes.
”No one should think that because they`re 20 or 30 or 50-or even 70-that they can`t learn. Believe me, if I can do it, they can too.”
Rucinski has done volunteer work throughout the 27 years she has lived in Hickory Hills. Her jobs have included serving as secretary of the former Hickory Hills Civic Association; PTA involvement, including a term as president; leading a Girl Scout troop; and church work.
Born in Chicago, Rucinski attended Mercy High School on the South Side, which is now closed. She graduated from St. Xavier College, on the Southwest Side, with a bachelor`s degree in sociology. She and her husband, Robert, married in 1959; they have three grown daughters.
In 1975 Rucinski began working full time as a benefits administrator for a food-manufacturing corporation. ”My job is to enroll employees and administer various benefit plans such as medical, dental, life insurance and retirement,” she says. She says she believes that her job has helped her learn to explain things clearly-a benefit to her tutoring.
She had considered being a literacy volunteer for several months before she joined the program, Rucinski says. ”All of my volunteer years, I had worked with children and young teens. But lately, I had begun thinking that perhaps I should consider spending time on adults and older teens.”
Rucinski didn`t pursue literacy volunteering until August 1989. She was driving by Moraine Valley Community College and saw a big sign: ”Be An Adult Literacy Volunteer.”
”It was like a flashing light had lit up just for me and was saying
`Valerie! This means YOU!,` ” she says. ”I called the college the next day.”
The literacy program began in 1985 with a small number of volunteers and clients, Thiel says. Today the program has 181 clients and 219 volunteers. Seventeen of the volunteers also work with an additional 81 students in two types of classes: Adult Basic Education, for students working below 8th-grade levels in reading and math, and English as a second language. Classes and one- to-one tutoring sessions are held at the college and 22 off-campus sites, including libraries, community centers and schools, within the Moraine Valley district of 26 suburbs.
The literacy program was initiated by Albert Moy, then director of the college`s Adult Basic Education Program. Moy knew that, according to the 1980 U.S. Census, there were 77,676 people in the Moraine Valley district who had not graduated from high school, Thiel says.
The program includes 12 hours of training for potential tutors and 90 minutes of testing for potential clients before a client and tutor are matched. When lessons begin, tutors are encouraged to participate in various teaching and reading workshops held each year.
Thiel is pleased at the program`s high completion rate-83 percent-which she says is ”considerably higher than the 50 percent who were thought to drop out of similar programs just a few decades ago.
”This may be because we don`t look at grade levels; we look at the reading needs of the particular person,” she says. ”Our tutors are encouraged to base lessons on the needs of the client and to stay at a level until a client has comfortably learned it before moving to the next level.”
Rucinski says she believes that teaching people to read and write is one of the most socially relevant tasks a person can do.
”We`re no longer a manufacturing society; we`re a brain society, a literate society. This is the computer generation and everyone needs to know how to read,” she says.
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For more information on the Moraine Valley Community College Adult Literacy Program, call 708-974-5333.
