Annual fundraiser brings local teams together to support adult literacy programs
BY VANESSA ECHOLS
FOR THE OBSERVER
LEE COUNTY — Lee County’s new spelling champions are a department chairman and an English teacher. But these spelling wizards aren’t in middle or high school. They are this year’s winners of The Great Grown-Up Spelling Bee, sponsored by the Lee County Literacy Coalition.
For the second year in a row, Doss Buckalew and Heather Johnson, the spellers representing the Southern Union State Community College team won the Bee, held Aug. 27 at the NonProfit Center of East Alabama. Buckalew is the chair of the Business Department at Southern Union and Johnson is an English instructor.
The Literacy Coalition began hosting the Grown-Up Spelling Bee in 2018, stopped during the covid pandemic in 2020 and brought it back last year as one of the organization’s fundraisers. This year, pairs of spellers from Southern Union, John Emerald Distilling, Chiefs Construction, Public Relations Council of Alabama and MidSouth Bank competed in the Bee. The teams had two minutes to spell as many words as possible, correctly.
The Literacy Coalition has been operating in Lee County since 1994, focusing on helping people learn to read, improve their reading and math skills, as well as preparing for the GED. The coalition serves clients in Lee, Macon, Chambers and Russell counties in its in-person programs. It also provides Financial Literacy and Drivers Ed programs virtually throughout the state. Executive Director Patricia Butts said even in our community with a major university and state community college, there is a growing number of people who don’t read well enough to thrive in the workplace.
“We have an influx of non-English speakers in the area. We have folks who didn’t graduate, those who were socially promoted. We have folks that dropped out of school for different reasons, and that’s impacting employment,” Butts said.
According to Butts, the Coalition helped almost 500 people in 2022, but this year has already helped 1,066. The program relies on volunteers who act as one-on-one tutors for the program’s clients. According to the most recent state statistics, one in five people in Alabama is described as functionally illiterate. In Lee County, there are an estimated 30,000 adults who struggle with basic reading and writing skills. That means they have difficulties performing basic tasks like reading and filling out a job application, reading instructions for their medicine or understanding their bank statements.
Butts said the Coalition is recruiting more volunteers to tutor the growing number of people seeking help. The volunteers go through training and are able to create a flexible schedule for themselves. Butts said it takes less than two hours a week to make an impact on someone seeking help.
“It only takes about an hour and a half a week to possibly change the trajectory of someone’s life. You’ll be helping them toward whatever they’re trying to accomplish, maybe getting a GED, increasing their math skills or helping them with their English. That shifts how people show up in the world,” Butts said.
If you’d like to find out more about volunteering as a tutor or supporting the Literacy Coalition of Lee County, you can find information at www.leecountyliteracy.org/
