A Happy Bee Blog!

Each first Tuesday of the month, spellers from all over Austin gather to compete at the Literacy Coalition’s Happy Bee at The Belmont. These monthly events are fun, raise awareness, and act as small fundraisers to help support our work to eradicate illiteracy. What exactly does it take to compete?

Being a Spell Raiser at a Happy Bees isn’t easy. By following this step-by-step guide you’ll be well on your way to becoming next month’s Happy Bee winner!

1. You’ll have to come to the realization that yes, in fact you do spell lots of words really well. Words like potato, weird, and potluck don’t come easily to everybody, so you’re one step ahead in that sense.

2. Next, you’ll want to find that courage deep down inside that you usually save for asking a girl/guy out or running a big race to sign up to compete. Draw a number - that will be your position in the Spell Raiser line of the Happy Bee.

3. Next, you’ll have to pay close attention to the rules about things like eliminations and audience shout outs. Keep in mind your friends will be having a good time at a table nearby. Don’t worry though, they’ll be ready to cheer you on as soon as the competition starts!

4. When it’s your turn to spell, you’ll come up to the microphone and stand under the bright light – sorry, it’s pretty bright. Listen carefully for the word you must spell. You’ll have to use your best listening skills, since the Pronouncer will only repeat the word once.

5. Using your noggin, you’ll spell the word to the best of your Spell Raiser ability. You’ll probably do great, spell the word perfectly, and we’ll all be super proud of you! Of course, we’ll all understand if you don’t, because who has to spell words like tintinnabula every day?!

6. After a few rounds, there’s just a few Spell Raisers left. Remember that courage you found to sign up? Use that good stuff one more time. The competition may get tough, and you may actually want to remember how to spell tintinnabula.

In the end there can only be one winner of the Happy Bee. You’ll get a prize if you come in first or second though, so don’t give up! Prizes for past winners have included gift cards to How Do You Roll?, Hey Cupcake!, Güero’s, Austin Java, and other great places. And really, what better prize is there than cheers, hugs, and high five’s from all your friends after you give it your all?!

*Note: The Happy Bee at The Belmont will be taking the month off in April since there are two Satellite Bees in bee-tween. Check out a Satellite Bee at The High Ball on Tuesday, March 22^nd or Thursday, April 7^th!

Literacy Day at the Capitol

This year’s Literacy Day at the Capitol got off to an unusual start – we had to reschedule at the last minute because of abnormal winter weather and Austin’s rolling blackouts!

City Hall the day after what was originally going to be Literacy Day

When Literacy Day at the Capitol did happen this past Thursday, though, it was a resounding success. Nearly 300 people came out to advocate. After breakfast and advocacy training at the First Baptist Church, we all marched up to the Capitol in groups. I tagged along with Becky Rhodes and the Austin Academy. Our group went to visit Senator Kirk Watson’s staff and had a sit-down meeting. We went around the table and introduced ourselves, with each of the students explaining why he or she was attending the Austin Academy. The staffer was genuinely interested in their stories and asked quite a few questions about the difficulties adult learners face in their educational journeys. We left behind printed information about the severe effects of illiteracy and policies that affect pivotal adult literacy programs.

The Austin Academy group before heading to the Capitol

Across the Capitol, student advocates were able to help increase awareness of adult literacy programs and impress how important those programs are. Other groups had experiences like the Austin Academy's, and were able to really educate staffers about the reality of illiteracy in our community.

More groups visiting the Capitol

It was a successful day! The rain held off everything wrapped up right around noon. The only downside to my morning was getting stuck walking several blocks back to the Coalition’s offices in the pouring rain!

30 Seconds in the Life of a Low Health Literate Individual

1) What has your physician recommended for you?
2) What does this procedure involve?
3) How are you going to prepare for the procedure?


Now, think about how that felt? Did it take you a second to figure out what you were reading? Did you have to look back at the short paragraph in order to answer the questions at the end? If you struggled with this exercise, maybe you will be able to better empathize with the the 90 million low health-literate Americans who face frustrations such as this on a daily basis. The average medical form, whether it be a pamphlet on how to eat nutritiously or a patient consent form, is written at the 10th grade level. The average American is reading at the 8th grade level. Herein lies one of the major problems in our healthcare system.

What can you do? If you're an adult ed instructor, incorporate health-related information into your lesson plans. Don't know how? No problem, we provide half-day workshops on how to teach health literacy in the adult ed classroom! If you're a healthcare provider or advocate, talk to your supervisors about the patient-friendliness of the materials that you provide your clients. Also, think about the care you provide low health literate clients...are they REALLY understanding everything you tell them? We provide trainings on patient-provider communication in order to improve patient-compliance. Together we can begin to increase the health literacy of our community.

It’s organic, didn’t you know?

Your ideas count, or rather, my ideas count. That seems to be the unspoken motto of the Literacy Coalition. As the newest member of the team and plucked from a bureaucratic giant, words like “run with it” are not something I’m used to hearing.

Landing in such an organic, fluid, and intellectually-charged environment is daunting for someone like me who’s more familiar with the concepts of “top-down,” “vertical hierarchy,” and “boundaries” than the ideas of empowerment and cooperation. There’s no time clock. It’s you, your ideas, your team, and the community. All are dependent on each other for sustainability, expected to create an ever-evolving synergy with more direct impact than thought possible. It’s something I can get behind.

The bar is set high here where initiative, direct interaction among team members, and open communication allow for creation and flexibility. I witness community impact and capacity- and coalition-building, once vague and ill-defined notions for me, on a daily basis. It’s a collective force of energy and ideas, and I can’t wait to jump aboard. Wait, I am on board. I hope I can hold on…

The Invisible Challenge

When we tell people that one in five adults struggles with literacy to the extent that they can't fill out a job application, we almost always see shock and disbelief in their faces. I, too, doubted the statistics, until I really dug in to the data and the validity of the sources. And I have to say, it's true. Not only is it true, but I now understand why it's so unbelievable. The issue of illiteracy is, by nature, an invisible one. You most often cannot tell when you come across someone who is struggling with literacy issues. Which makes this issue one of the most pervasive challenges in our community and communities across the nation. There is very little attention to the literacy challenges of families around us; very little government dollars are invested in literacy instruction in the state of Texas and locally. General awareness of the prevalence and consequences of the issue is very low. So, we continue to allow the snowball of a problem to silently worsen. Because of our collective low investment in literacy instruction for adults, kids enter school way behind, and are much more likely to drop out. Then they have children that struggle in school, and the cycle continues. The beauty of the issue of literacy is that the solution is so simple. When people have access to high quality instruction, they change their own lives, and the lives of their children. We hear everyday about the transforming effect of literacy programs. It's not uncommon to hear things like "I never really though I could learn," or "I never had goals for myself, but now I know I have what it takes to become a nurse." Research shows very clearly that when a parent enters a literacy program, the child does better in school and is much less likely to drop out. And when those parents have access to good instruction, they are finally able to lift the invisible weight off their shoulders and pursue their dreams. That's why we do what we do! Thanks for helping us make it possible.

Comic Book Literacy

So you might be asking yourself what do Comic Books and Literacy have in common?  In early January I came across a documentary called ... Comic Book Literacy and was intrigued.  I looked into the documentary film exploring the positive potential of comics in community education and was blown away by the love of the film. The film features interviews with a number of comic book creators, publishers, artists and fans...many of whom attribute their own love of reading to comics. I had it on my "to see" list to check out ... 

Fast forward to February and I receive an email from Uncle Staple of the STAPLE! Independent Media Expo and as luck would have it he informed me that as part of the programming this year the Comic Book Literacy documentary will be screening!  The film will be shown at 4:00pm Saturday March 5th, after which there will be a Q&A panel with the film's director Todd Kent & James O'Barr, the creator of The Crow, who appears in the film as one of the interviewees.


Comic books and literacy are two subjects Uncle Staple feels strongly about, and the more I read the more I have to agree with him.  I believe that this film has an important message that needs to be shared with those in the educational and literacy communities who may not see the connection between literacy and comics.  I would encourage all of our providers to check out this film!

STAPLE! runs from 11-6 Saturday March 5th and from 12-6 Sunday March 6th... $15 for a two day pass gets you into everything but LCCT providers and friends I have news for you! I have passes for the expo & film screening that will be given away over the next few weeks at our Annual Meeting and on our FaceBook page!  LCCT will be joining the STAPLE! family for the weekend, so look for our booth and come by to say hello!

Check out these awesome trailers Uncle Staple passed to me today ... 

this one is an animated trailer, by local artist Yehudi Mercado: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXRB-s4pIYE

...and here is a trailer for the Comic Book Literacy documentary we will be screening at the show: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUvxYzhvMDA

The gift of health literacy!

A few weeks ago, a program called Austin GiveCamp offered the Coalition a belated Christmas gift. In cities across the nation, the Camp brings together area web developers and designers to do pro bono work for nonprofits over a weekend. They came to us at exactly the right time, because some pretty big plans were brewing over in the Health Literacy Department.

Next week, the Coalition will be launching its new and greatly improved Health Literacy webpage, fully equipped with a searchable library of every health literacy resource we know about. You'll be able to go to our page and search resources based on your perspective as an adult educator, healthcare provider, or patient. The page will be premiered at the Literacy Coalition's Annual Meeting for our network providers on February 16th. Have your clicking fingers ready, because overlooking health literacy just got a whole lot harder!