PEOPLE OF INTEREST
Silva’s office provides an assortment of instructional materials
and if one workbook doesn’t seem to be helpful, the tutors
and students are free to try others. Tutors can use newspapers,
magazines, word games, catalogs, maps and other
tools to help their students. When one student, a 22-year-old
Creole speaker from Haiti, puzzles over an English word, her
tutor often hands her an iPhone and suggests she look it up
on Google.
Impact 100, an all-female philanthropic group in Indian River
County, awarded the agency a two-year, $100,000 grant to conduct
a series of seven-week workshops for parents who want
to help their child learn to read. The program is called PEN,
meaning Parents Engaged Now, “for the love of their child.”
Silva said a common misconception is that literacy begins
at birth.
“That is so wrong,” she said. “It begins with parents who are
literate and engaged. Parents in the program learn that they
are the child’s first and most important teacher. We talk about
the importance of self-esteem. We talk about behavioral goals,
discipline, learning styles, what’s expected of their child.”
And they learn “to give your child dreams, like, where do
you want to go to college, as opposed to, well, you’ll finish
the 10th grade.”
In other words, they learn to emulate parents like the ones
who adopted Silva when she was 5 years old.
Community leader Alma Lee Loy calls Silva one of the hardest
working people she has ever known, but Silva disagreed.
“I think a lot of people say that about me, but I think of
myself as the laziest person. When I work, I work. When I
stop, I stop. I don’t stop a lot, but then I do nothing. I pretty
much either work or do nothing.”
99
MARY SILVA
Age: Middle age
Lives in: Vero Beach
Occupation: Attorney; executive
director, Literacy Services
People
of Indian River County
Education: Bachelor’s degree in
English, 1985; law degree, 1988,
both from University of Florida
Hobby: Tennis
Something most people don’t know about me:
“I played tennis and went to law school at Oxford (U.K.)
for one summer.”
license. Others want to learn how to read well enough to fill
out a job application. For others, the goal is college or job
advancement.
“We’re here to teach them that they can learn, notwithstanding
People
any baggage they bring to the table, and they can be
successful,” she said. “If we do that, we know our program is
successful, because they then become proactive in their personal
life. They’ll actually apply for a job, seek a promotion or
talk to their child’s teacher.”
The tutors are not required to have a teaching background,
though they do need to be patient and to understand that
adults need repetition in order to retain what they are learning.
They take a half-day of training when they sign on and
then can attend regular in-service sessions.
“What we say is that as long as you have a heart, you can
help a person, because our materials can literally tell you
what to say, word for word,” Silva said.
People
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