Today's Guest Blogger: Madeline Bialecki!

Madeline Bialecki is the Executive Director of the Delaware County Literacy Council. The DCLC works with adults who wish to read, write, speak, and understand English so as to improve their communication skills and enable them to participate more fully in society. For more information please go to their website.

Hiatus

I am the Executive Director of the Delaware County Literacy Council in Chester, PA. Last January, one of our volunteers asked me to blog about adult education for an on-line magazine. Every week, I dutifully submitted an essay—for about four months. I have not submitted anything since last spring.

Then this past fall, the United Way put out a call for bloggers, and it struck a chord with me—I could start blogging again. At about that same time, I read something by a woman who said she had been on “hiatus” from blogging. It sounded so intentional.

I thought, “I have been on hiatus, too;” but there was no intentionality about it. I just stopped writing, or rather, I stopped submitting. The essays kept rolling around in my head—sometimes I even wrote them down—but I did not upload.

Even encouragement from people who read my blog was not enough to get me submitting again.

After a while, there was also the embarrassment factor with the person who had asked me to blog. Once a few weeks had passed, I was too embarrassed to send an email apologizing for my missing blog entries. And then more time passed, and….

What does this have to do with adult education? Many of the adults who come to the Literacy Council have been on hiatus, but it is usually called dropping out. There were often no immediate consequences when they dropped out of school; those came later when work options were seriously limited.

Then they come to us to pick up on their education. Many are faithful to their tutoring sessions, bur for some, life gets in the way—or fear or discouragement or some setback. At first, they call their tutors to cancel sessions, but eventually they stop calling and just stop coming. While the consequences may be real, the motivation and dedication needed to stick with their education may be lacking. And, that motivation needs to come from within.

The truth is that almost one-half of the people who initially contact us to ask for help will not stick with it long enough to achieve their goals. Some won’t even show up for their first appointment to be assessed. Others may come once or twice. Only half will come long enough to improve their skills.

Like me, many of them may be embarrassed once they have missed an appointment or a few sessions. Like me, other people’s encouragement may not be enough to motivate them.

Last week, I went to the on-line magazine site and saw my name was still there along with the pieces I submitted last winter. It was enough to get me to send my mea culpa email and ask if I could start submitting again. I wasn’t forgotten or deleted—I was just on hiatus.