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On Friday, August 8th, education reporter Heidi Coy visited the Literacy Volunteers of Roanoke Valley Learning Center to interview learner Travis Crowe for a news report that night on both the Fox 21/27 ten o’clock news and the WSLS Channel 10 eleven o’ clock news. This news segment aired on an evening when adult literacy received national coverage on NBC anchor Tom Brokaw’s special report “A Loss for Words.” Brokaw’s report set the stage for Travis’s interview and the program’s appeal for volunteers. This media attention has created a lot of new interest in our program. Because of Travis’ willingness to share his story and all the phone calls we’ve received in response, we anticipate a big turnout for our next Basic Literacy and ESOL tutor trainings. Of course, with a waiting list surpassing sixty people, we can never have enough.
 Travis’s story is indeed a compelling one. Having entered our program six years ago at an elementary reading level, Travis, with the help of his tutor Claire Blake, has achieved great success. His hard work and perseverance over those years culminated this past spring when he passed the GED tests and received his high school equivalency.
In 1997 when Travis entered our program, he tested about the fourth-grade level in reading. Being a young father who had dropped out of school to support his family, he came to a moment of decision when his young son wanted Travis to read to him and he couldn’t. Travis said in his interview with Channel 10’s Heidi Coy: “I came so [that] I could read to my son. That was my goal…my first goal.” Shortly after he entered the program, Travis was matched with volunteer tutor Claire Blake, and the two began a partnership that is still active today. As the years passed and his initial goal to read to his son was met, new goals took its place. Travis was tired of the frustrations and limitations that lack of literacy skills imposed on his life. In his interview he said, “You deal with it…[but] of course, my wife, my mother, my grandmother had to fill out most of my papers for me.” Travis wanted not just to “deal with it;” he wanted to take control of his own life.
As Claire and Travis worked together, he began to gain that control, developing reading and writing skills that he thought were beyond his reach, becoming more and more confident in his ability to learn. As he set and met goals and made advances in literacy skills, Travis’s life began to change. Not only did his relationship with his family change – reading to his son and baby daughter became a part of daily life – his general confidence grew and his value as a worker increased, leading him to better jobs. He now works for a building restoration company as a project coordinator and estimator. Travis would not have reached this position of responsibility if he had not had the courage to come forward and ask for help. He would not have reached it if he had not had the strength to stick it out through the years. He may not have reached it, or at least it would have been more difficult, if there were no good-hearted people like Claire Blake who volunteered her time and efforts to help another person achieve his goals.
In 2002, Travis set his sights on perhaps his biggest goal – one that had been on the back on his mind for years. He was ready to prepare for the GED. Although he had recently been assessed at the highest level in reading, Travis knew that he had his work cut out for him. Passing the tests is no cake walk. The most recent 2002 update of the GED Tests were norm tested with graduating high school seniors in the spring 2001.Their guidance counselors assured the testing service that these students would receive high school diplomas. 30% of these students could not pass the GED Tests. The American Council on Education develops and administers the GED Tests through its arm, the General Educational Development Testing Service. Five tests make up the GED: Language Arts - Reading, Language Arts - Writing, Social Studies, Science, and Mathematics. Travis knew that these content areas presented a new challenge for him, but since educational institutions widely accept the GED as equivalent to a high school diploma, he also knew that to take college classes and continue to advance in his education, he had to meet this challenge. And, of course, Claire was there to help.
In the spring of 2003, Travis took the GED Tests, which Roanoke City Public Schools Adult Basic Education administers locally. At the end of May, we here at Literacy Volunteers, Claire, and Travis waited anxiously for the final scores. Well, we were anxious anyway. Claire and Travis knew that he was ready. Finally, the last results were in. Travis not only passed; he passed with impressively high scores. This young man, who is now twenty-six years old, had passed a milestone that many adult learners want to reach. Having entered the program six years before simply wanting to read to his son, he now has the credentials to take college classes and create an even brighter future for himself and his children.
Heidi Coy did part of her interview with Travis at his office. Seeing Travis behind his desk at work, punching numbers into his calculator for job estimates, handling papers for current projects that he is coordinating, was inspiring. At the end of the interview when asked how his life had changed, Travis summed it up simply, smiling broadly, “Life, just life itself, is much better.” Travis makes a great spokesperson for Literacy Volunteers, representing not only the possibilities of our program but also the successes, great and small, that all our learners have with the help our dedicated tutors.
If you’re interested in helping an adult learner, please call 265-9339 or email for more information. If you have a few hours a week to spare, drop on by and get involved in a new success story.
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