My Journey Through Literacy

My journey through literacy has hit many snafus along the way. Literacy is not something that can simply be programmed. There are many different aspects to literacy, I am constantly learning to adapt and incorporate new methods of communication in my everyday life. Throughout my career both professionally and personally the most embarrassing situations are the ones I have learned the most about literacy. Literacy is ever present in almost everyone’s lives, it is not a static defined concept, but rather one that evolves and differs within cultural groups.

I have been forced to learn about literacy in many different ways. I once took a job at a call center, this job took me through a very fast and in-depth crash course on literacy. The job was pretty straight forward and involved a tremendous amount of button pushing. The hardest
This at first was very troubling for me, I did not know how to explain the concepts of credit reporting and scoring to them and I simply assumed they were stupid. These people were never provided any formal financial education and many of the concepts I took for granted were foreign to them. I made the adjustment and treated these situations with patience and care. I had just been given a platform few are provided, I had the ability to teach, and in turn help them unlearn many common misconceptions they may have. Another example of literacy that strikes me as important were foreign callers and non-English callers. In most of these situations I was the illiterate party. I had no idea what was going on between the translator and the party on the phone. I had to pick up on the context clues and resolve situations with a heightened sense of purpose. These situations showed me no matter how encompassing my knowledge and skills might be, I will never be a catch all. With each one of these callers I learned to pick up on their social constraints and communication