VGCC celebrates North Carolina Literacy Month
September was proclaimed “Literacy Awareness Month” in North Carolina by Gov. Perdue, and Vance-Granville Community College observed the month by emphasizing the importance of reading and writing for Basic Skills students.
On Sept. 30, students at the college’s main campus shared with classmates the five-paragraph essays they had written, with titles such as “Look What Happened to Me, In My Life, on my Way to Getting my GED !” “Look What Happened to Me, In My Life, on my Way to Getting my Adult High School Diploma !” or “Look What Happened to Me, In My Life, on my way to Getting into Curriculum!” (referring to community college degree and diploma programs). VGCC Director of Basic Skills Sue W. Grissom explained that the concept originated several years ago when two women, who were waiting to take GED examinations, started to tell her their often-dramatic life stories. “I thought, every GED student has a great story to tell,” Grissom recalled. Since then, students in the program have written such essays every semester. All the stories are then compiled into books, which are often displayed in the lobby of Building 1 on Main Campus. Grissom said that writing is not only therapeutic for the students, but it also helps prepare them for the essay required of them to earn the GED. She added that students in VGCC’s English as a Second Language program complete a similar project as part of their classes.
Also in September, students at the Basic Skills Adult Learning Center at the college’s Warren County Campus joined their counterparts by composing “Look What Happened to Me…” essays for the first time. “They too are full of enlightening student stories of hardships and difficulties, enlightenments and revelations, failures, and at last, emerging success stories,” Grissom said.
VGCC’s Franklin County Campus also observed Literacy Awareness Month, according to Cathy Barham , coordinator/instructor for the Basic Skills lab at that campus. GED students there conceived, wrote and illustrated short online books, which were posted on a web site for beginning readers of all ages. The web site, tarheelreader.org , is a collaboration of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies and the Computer Science department at UNC-Chapel Hill. “I think the students were very creative, and this is a wonderful way to help others with their literacy needs,” Barham said.
At South Campus in Granville County, students worked on “Brain Teasers” in which they learned to think “outside of the box,” developing critical thinking and writing skills. They also turned poetry “inside out” by studying poetic rhyme, meter and verse and then setting the poems to music.
According to the N.C. Community College System, 20 percent of adults in the state demonstrate low literacy skills. For more information on VGCC programs that help adults improve literacy skills, call Sue Grissom at (252) 492-2061, ext. 3315.
Above: Students on VGCC’s main campus read and shared essays as part of North Carolina Literacy Awareness Month. Seated, from left: Angela Obery, Michelle Johnson, Brian Johnson, Clarissa Dawson and Helen Russell, all of Henderson; standing, from left: Sommer Kempson, Steven Tippett and Curtis Terry, all of Henderson, and Kruti Patel of Oxford. (VGCC photo)
