Michelle Zakrzewicz�before she married, she explains with a smile, her last name was �Hall� � graduated from high school when she was eighteen, and now at twenty-three she attends class at LVA by choice. �I enjoy coming here,� she says. �I ride the school bus with Chad, and I bring Tyler along. It gives me a chance to work on the computers. I can�t take a job now, but some day I will, and the computer skills will help.� She likes the people here at LVA. She likes to take her break with Megan at 10:15 in the middle of the morning class.

Michelle�s doctors don�t want her to work because of Chad�s medical condition. The three-and-a-half-year-old was born deaf and has additional neurological problems that have not been completely diagnosed but are probably degenerative. Chad is downstairs in a class for the hearing-impaired, and two-and-a-half-year-old Tyler is in the LVA preschool. For Michelle, the family literacy program is an escape from isolation. With no car and no driver�s license, and a husband in prison, she makes do with her two young sons, depending on a neighbor to drive her to the grocery store. �What I hate most is depending on other people for a ride!�

Michelle lost her driver�s license when she was eighteen. �I got big fines, and I can�t pay them. I owe $1800.� Slender, in blue jeans and rugby shirt, she seems mature and self-possessed. It is hard to imagine the transgressions that brought down those fines. �My kids made me grow up fast,� she says. Michelle is careful with her resources. Because of Chad�s condition she has a �medical exemption� entitling her, in spite of welfare reform, to continue to receive AFDC payments without holding down a job. �Chad also gets SSI,� she explains, referring to the monthly disability check from Supplemental Security Income.

�I don�t spend money on clothes or shoes, the way some people do,� she explains. �I only have four pairs of jeans, not a pair for every day of the week. I just do the laundry more often.� Instead of clothes, she is buying braces at $100 per month for about two and a half years. �The upper side teeth were bent back over my tongue. I decided to do this for myself. If I feel better about myself, I can do better for myself and my kids.�

She is excited about a computer that will arrive at home tomorrow. She describes DRAGnet, a nonprofit organization in the Minneapolis�St. Paul area, that �recycles used computers to low-income families.� Michelle will get a Macintosh computer, a monitor, and a color printer, all for $390. �I am taking this from Chad�s money. It�s for him too.�

With keen interest Michelle watches as the ABE teacher explains �Reading on the Run,� a red canvas bag full of books and toys that can be checked out and used with the children at home for a few days. �Going Places� is the theme, and the bag contains books such as Albert�s Field Trip and Ira Sleeps Over. �If there are too many words, you can just make up the story as you show your child the pictures,� the teacher suggests. One by one she removes each treasure from the bag, a book about a crow�s flight, a fishing game using velcro to attach fish to bait, a teddy bear to hold during the sleep-over story. A sheet of �guidelines for using parent pacs� asks parents to plan a 15- to 30-minute time each day when they do an activity giving the child their �undivided attention.� Michelle is the first to sign up for the red bag.

Michelle�s story shows why family literacy was created: education for the adult and for the child, along with parent-child interaction, all to help a family move through a difficult juncture in life and toward a better future. It has taken years to put the pieces together in this complex program. �Family literacy is a fragile program,� Jessica Collins says. �Maintaining it requires constant and creative problem-solving by the network of partners.�

�Is it worth all this effort?� is a question Jessica often faces. She recalls the faces of parents and children in the program over the years, each family, like Michelle�s, with its own particular lineup of challenges and triumphs. For Jessica, the goal of the family education program is crystal clear: meet the needs of families. For her, the answer to the question is irrefutable: �Yes, family education is worth it!�