PRINTER FRIENDLY PAGE

Pennsylvanian Jim Gourley remembers a painful childhood, and adulthood, as a nonreader. "I didn’t have self-confidence. I didn’t feel I was going to be able to do anything in life because everything you do involves reading. I really didn’t like myself at all." Then one night, after years of being "sad and negative" and finding inventive ways to keep his nonreader status a secret, Jim attended a parent-teacher conference on building children’s self-esteem. Hearing about what can be done for children with low self-esteem caused Jim to take stock of what had not been available to him as a child. Jim made the decision t oconfide in his wife that he couldn’t read. 

After that, it took him six weeks to get up the courage to call the Adams County Literacy Council, a ProLiteracy America member. Once he did, his life began to change. "My tutor and I worked through a lot of problems. When I was a child, my dad hit me for making mistakes. When I started this reading process, I always felt something bad was going to happen if I made a mistake." 

"So I had to stop and tell my tutor, ‘Look, I know you’re not going to do anything to me, but it’s like my dad is sitting where you are, and I just have such fear that I’m going to give you the wrong answer.’ So we had to work through that, and I finally realized that people learn by making mistakes ... that making mistakes is okay." 

Now Jim goes into school systems to encourage kids to stay in school. He works with state and national legislators to make them aware of the literacy problem. As for Jim’s work life, "My job situation has changed dramatically. But I guess my major goal now is to move on to a different career. Now that I can read, there are so many possibilities!"