Over the next few weeks The Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion will be fea­tur­ing our stu­dents who sub­mit­ted their writ­ten pieces to We Learn, an in­ter­na­tion­al on­line dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ty that pro­vides qual­i­ty af­ford­able ed­u­ca­tion in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

All of Al­ta’s stu­dent sub­mis­sions were suc­cess­ful­ly pub­lished and our vol­un­teers, tu­tors, spon­sors and staff are ex­treme­ly proud of their ac­com­plish­ment.

Our stu­dents are dis­cov­er­ing, with the sup­port and en­cour­age­ment of tu­tors, that read­ing and writ­ing are not just util­i­tar­i­an in na­ture. Self-ex­pres­sion through the writ­ten word can al­so be a source of strength and ful­fil­ment. Have a read of our fifth piece, “A Hunger for Ed­u­ca­tion”, writ­ten by PJ

As I was read­ing the Guardian news­pa­pers one day, I came across an ar­ti­cle about Al­ta and what they were of­fer­ing. The in­for­ma­tion got my at­ten­tion, as I was nev­er for­tu­nate enough to write CXC and I al­ways dreamt of writ­ing it.

I found out that morn­ing and evening class­es were of­fered and at many dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions, so one can choose a time and place most con­ve­nient for them.

Most of their tu­tors were ma­ture adults, which boost­ed my con­fi­dence. In ad­di­tion to this very gen­er­ous of­fer, Al­ta was not ask­ing for a fee or any monies ex­cept for a pit­tance for our work­books, which was more than rea­son­able and af­ford­able when com­pared to all they were of­fer­ing. At the next en­roll­ment, I was signed up.

I think peo­ple who have ac­quired a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion and/or a de­gree or more are more re­spect­ed in so­ci­ety. It is not easy get­ting by in life with­out a good ed­u­ca­tion, de­pend­ing on one’s goals and as­pi­ra­tions. One can have some of the worst or best ex­pe­ri­ences de­pend­ing on their ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground. I see Al­ta as a door­way to a bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion.

I knew how to read and spell fair­ly well, which was de­rived from teach­ing my­self. I learnt a bit from check­ing my chil­dren’s books when they came from school and from do­ing their home­work with them. I al­so took the ad­vice of a teacher many years ago who told me to nev­er pass a word that I can’t pro­nounce, keep try­ing un­til I fig­ure it out, then move on. I read every­thing I put my hands on and checked the dic­tio­nary, which I didn’t ever know how to use for a good chunk of my life.

I be­came more flu­ent in read­ing over the years and recog­nised words eas­i­ly. As a re­sult of that my spelling was rea­son­ably good. De­spite think­ing that I knew how to read, I knew there was much more to learn, like pro­nun­ci­a­tion and the prin­ci­ples and rules of read­ing and spelling, which would make me even bet­ter at spelling and read­ing.

Some­times my life feels in­com­plete, one rea­son is that I have not yet ac­quired a de­cent ed­u­ca­tion. I would love to earn at least one de­gree. I won­der if I will be able to ac­com­plish and get all the things I de­sire in life like get­ting re­mar­ried, hav­ing a clos­er re­la­tion­ship with God Almighty, trav­el­ling and of course a bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion. Af­ter all, I’m al­ready 44 years old. Due to my hu­mil­i­ty, de­ter­mi­na­tion and faith in God though, I think I’ll do just fine.

I’m glad I chose Al­ta be­cause just as I thought, I have learnt so much from Sep­tem­ber 2018 to present, Jan­u­ary 2019 and I know there is much more to learn. I chose Al­ta be­cause they seem to un­der­stand the plight of the un­e­d­u­cat­ed and the se­ri­ous­ness of il­lit­er­a­cy. I am gain­ing the con­fi­dence to over­come my fears and chal­lenges. One day I know I will suc­ceed.

If you or some­one you know is in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing a tu­tor, join­ing a class, or be­com­ing a spon­sor, call 624-2582 or email al­ta­pos.tt@gmail.com.

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