Two weeks ago, over 100 vol­un­teer tu­tors from across the coun­try gath­ered in Bel­mont for Al­ta's An­nu­al Tu­tors Meet­ing. Tu­tor meet­ings are a com­bi­na­tion of on-go­ing train­ing and re­la­tion­ship build­ing at Al­ta–all part of de­vel­op­ing a cul­ture of col­lab­o­ra­tion and main­tain­ing high cal­i­bre tu­tors to serve our stu­dents.

This year's meet­ing was a rous­ing suc­cess be­cause it re­flect­ed those aims so well with the pres­ence of adult lit­er­a­cy pro­fes­sor and au­thor Joanne Kil­go­ur-Dowdy.

Pro­fes­sor Kil­go­ur-Dowdy, a daugh­ter of the soil liv­ing in the Unit­ed States, is still very in­vest­ed in help­ing her na­tive coun­try. She has been a sup­port­er of Al­ta for 14 years and was en­thu­si­as­tic that this year the tim­ing of her vis­it to Trinidad in June co­in­cid­ed with our end-of-aca­d­e­m­ic year Tu­tors Meet­ing. Apart from her ob­vi­ous con­nec­tion to Al­ta's work, as a guest speak­er this year she brought to Al­ta a valu­able re­source by way of her lat­est book, Olympic Hero: Lennox Kil­go­ur's Sto­ry.

The book writ­ten about her fa­ther, Trinidad Olympian and medal­list Lennox "Gour" Kil­go­ur is an il­lus­trat­ed book for chil­dren, but al­so ide­al for stu­dents at Al­ta Read­ing Cir­cles who meet week­ly to prac­tise their read­ing in an in­for­mal set­ting. Tu­tors and Read­ing Cir­cle guides had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see first-hand the pro­fes­sor at work, breath­ing life in­to its pages.

Joanne Kil­go­ur Dowdy was a per­former first be­fore be­com­ing a pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­cy and she cer­tain­ly shone on the Al­ta stage. She en­gaged tu­tors with a range of prac­ti­cal tools to bring her book to life and en­hance read­ing com­pre­hen­sion. They be­came her stu­dents first, then got the chance to be ac­tive­ly in­volved in her process. The work­shop for­mat had tu­tors pair­ing up to com­plete lit­er­a­cy ac­tiv­i­ties and re­spond as she mod­elled these. It was a nov­el ex­pe­ri­ence for tu­tors who don't all know each oth­er out­side their re­spec­tive class venues or re­gion.

Dr Kil­go­ur-Dowdy brought along a film crew and has promised to give Al­ta a copy of the edit­ed video. This will be a great ad­di­tion to our teach­ing ma­te­r­i­al to train Read­ing Cir­cle guides as the strate­gies mod­elled fit nice­ly with the re­cent re­struc­tur­ing of Read­ing Cir­cles to use the Guid­ed Read­ing Ap­proach. The Al­ta train­ing for read­ing guides is on the first Sat­ur­day in Oc­to­ber every year, this year on Oc­to­ber 4, and Al­ta is seek­ing new vol­un­teers to be read­ing guides at lo­ca­tions through­out Trinidad. The train­ing is just one day and the com­mit­ment one two-hour ses­sion per week as op­posed to the two ses­sions asked of Al­ta tu­tors.

The Tu­tors Meet­ing was al­so a great time for new­ly-trained vol­un­teers to see Al­ta's cul­ture of col­lab­o­ra­tion at work and grab hold of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be en­gaged and in­volved af­ter an in­ten­sive six-week train­ing of their own. Al­ta is prepar­ing for a new in­take of stu­dents in Sep­tem­ber and the start of Read­ing Cir­cles in Oc­to­ber with greater hope that with more col­lab­o­ra­tion and the right sup­port, adults un­able to read will no longer be afraid to step in­to the light and shine.

Thank you, Joanne Kil­go­ur-Dowdy, for your pow­er­ful les­son.

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