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In November 1999, Literacy Volunteers of America held its annual national conference in Nashville, Tennessee. A number of VALUE members attended. VALUE Chairman Archie Willard filed this report:

From November 9th to 12th, I attended the LVA National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

It was a well-organized conference. A lot of people from the LVA family did a lot of hard work to see that this conference served everyone.

It was estimated that about 100 adult learners were at the conference. I attended meetings that were being held at the same time as the conference, so I did not get to talk with adult learners or see their activities as much I would have liked.

I did have the opportunity to meet three people with whom I had been exchanging e-mail. It was nice to see them in person.

The Thursday morning student breakfast sticks out in my mind. The adult learners were asked to come up on the stage and to introduce themselves as adult learners, one at a time. This was an emotional moment for everyone. Then all the adult learners stood together and a group picture was taken. As I stood with this group, I said to myself, "I'm proud to be an adult learner."

There were two important things that I took home from the conference:

1. There was a demonstration using computer software that could read aloud. The computer could read e-mail and many other things to you. It read a book to me as I was following along reading the book at the same time. It had eight voices (4 male, 4 female) that could be used and the speed and the volume could be adjusted. This is a very important break-through for adult learners to use. If I were a younger age, I would take advantage of this technology and go on to higher education. I encourage you as adult learners to use this technology in your education.

2. At the conference I had the opportunity to talk with some people from Rhode Island about their Bill Of Rights that was passed for adult students to have the right to learn. This is important legislation. Adult learners and leaders from other states should try to get this kind of legislation passed to make sure that adult education is a place where we as adults who learn differently are able to learn freely in the way we need to learn. Legislation will be needed for us to get the accommodations we need to learn (such as the software I mentioned above). Educators are testing for the ability to read and how fast we can read, instead of trying to find out the information the student knows. We as adult learners need to think about how we can make changes and to learn how to talk to the policy makers and legislators.

Lastly, I want to thank LVA for a good conference. You have made the lives of many adult learners better.

Archie Willard
Eagle Grove, IA 50533 (US)
millard@netins.net
FAX - 515-448-3480
URL - http://207.28.234.137/archiew.html

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