The student and the teacher sit side by side in a tiny cubicle.
They pore over a story by Toni Morrison. They discuss specific words; they ponder the author’s message. They talk about how it relates to their lives.
The student is Luis. At 25, he is working hard to improve his reading skills.
The teacher is Barbara Robins. At a time in her life when she could do just about anything, she’s giving her time and energy to help Luis reach his goal.
They’re working together at Literacy Chicago, 70 E. Lake St. The non-profit agency is dedicated to helping adults learn to read, with pride and dignity.
Robins has been a volunteer for a little more than 18 months.
“Reading was something I always took for granted,” she says. “You want to know something, you read. I can’t imagine not having that. It’s such a tool, such a joy, and I want everyone to be able to do it.”
But why take your time to help people experience that joy?
To Robins, 43, who lives on the Gold Coast, volunteering is just a basic element of life–no hesitation, no questions asked.
“If you’ve achieved any level of success,” she says with certainty, “you’ve gotten that from what’s around you, a community that supports you and your endeavors. But if you want your community to thrive, you need to give back.
“It’s just very basic. You need to give back.”
Her desire to give back goes way back, to what she jokingly refers to as her “generational anger thing.”
Robins grew up in Minneapolis, one of four children in what she calls a “regular family with good, loving people.”
“I was the good girl–until I became an adolescent. Then I was very, very bad,” she says with a laugh. “I turned rebellious and ran away from home for a short time, at 16. It was a real eye-opener.
“I left a very homogeneous community, Minneapolis, to go to New Orleans. I remember the French Quarter, breakfast at a place called Brennan’s. At first I didn’t realize there was another side to New Orleans. Then I saw the race riots and the poverty.”
But it was meeting other runaway teens that really opened her eyes, Robins says.
“There was one girl there who said she’d rather be on the streets than at home because of the things her dad did to her,” she says. “I had no concept of this. I ran away because I felt I didn’t have complete freedom of speech. It was nothing compared to what these kids were going through. It left a real impression on me.
“My rebelliousness made me realize there’s someone else out there who is feeling desperate or angry or lost or sad as I was.”
Since then, a strong caring for others has been a part of Robins’ life. While a student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, she marched for women’s rights and against the Vietnam War, and she has volunteered for Planned Parenthood off and on for the last 20 years.
“I’ve always been drawn to different areas where people have needs and may not have anywhere to turn,” she says.
Robins graduated from St. Mary’s University in Orchard Lake, Mich., in the early ’70s, earning a bachelor’s degree in home economics, with a major in textiles and clothing. For three or four years, she did alterations, made dresses and theater costumes. A marriage moved her to Michigan and a job as a manufacturer’s representative in the automotive industry.
Twelve years later, a divorce found her moving again, and a return to the field of design.
“I went back to school, to the San Diego Design Institute, where I got a bachelor of fine arts degree in interior design. I graduated in 1992 and met my current husband, Jim, on a blind date. It was just like fate put him at my doorstep,” she says.
And then fate took that old twist in 1994 when they decided to move to Chicago–in January.
“I was a little bummed out,” she says. “It was the coldest January in years. I thought, `Oh, I’m back in Minnesota!’ “
But she was in Chicago and trying to decide what to do with her time.
“I didn’t want to make a commitment to a firm, so I just started swooping around the city,” she says. “Then an older friend of mine who was semiretired told me he was using his free time to volunteer at Literacy Chicago, so I looked into it.”
What she found amazed her, Robins says.
“Reading the introductory literature from the group, I realized how deep the problem of illiteracy is,” she says. “I had such an emotional reaction. I had always assumed it was only people who immigrated here that had the problem. I was stunned to learn people graduated from high school and couldn’t read a book or fill out a form. And this was happening right here in my city.”
She signed on as a volunteer, going through two intense weekend training sessions to learn how to be an effective tutor.
“I remember being nervous, wondering if I’d have the patience to teach someone,” she recalls. She soon got her answer.
Both students and tutors fill out forms, saying specifically what kind of person with whom they want to work. Robins requested a woman.
“The student I got assigned to was a young Hispanic man who wrote `no women’ on his form and said he didn’t want someone white, worried that he might feel uncomfortable with anyone too different from himself. Well, he got just about the whitest female he’d seen in a long time,” she laughs.
Luis (not his real name) tells the story from his side: “I come from the inner city. I thought, `Here I go, some girl who’s going to be scared to know me.’ But it was the total opposite. She’s kind and open-minded. We’re a good combination.”
Now they call each other friends, and Luis, who is getting married in the fall, says he couldn’t imagine his wedding without Robins there.
While Robins is quick to credit the Literacy Chicago staff for its dedication and guidance, Bill Suttles, the director of the agency’s Adult-Family Literacy Program, says Robins’ basic nature makes her such a good mentor and teacher.
“She’s wonderful,” he says. “She’s genuinely uplifting. She comes to each lesson excited, and she has an overall positive attitude that carries over into all aspects of her life.”
Robins takes special care in finding materials that will motivate Luis to read. “We make new goals each month. Now we’re working to improve his comprehension. For the first time, we’re working on a book that’s college level,” she says, beaming with pride.
“Reading is like dancing,” she adds. “You learn a few steps and that’s well and good, but once you put it to music, then it gets fun, then it gets really good.”
Robins loves to see how Luis has “learned to dance.”
And perhaps the finest proof of their success?
“I have dreams to help others, to become a tutor like Barbara,” Luis says.
“It means a lot when you have someone to help you. I’m glad Barbara does it for me, and I want to do it for someone else.”
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For more information on Literacy Chicago, call 312-236-0341.
For information about literacy programs throughout Illinois, call the Illinois Adult Learning Hotline at 800-321-9511.
