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Eartha Johnson
Eartha Johnson’s personal motto is “I may be down, but I’m not out.” Eartha never learned to read; she didn’t receive the attention she needed in school, and she spent much of her time growing up taking care of her siblings. She recalls, “All my sisters and brothers learned to read and write and everything, and I was always their caretaker.” One day, Eartha saw a commercial on television for the Literacy Volunteers of Lake County program in Waukegan, Illinois. By the time she got a pen and paper she had missed the contact information. She left the pen and paper near the television and had to wait for the commercial three more times before she was able to write down the full phone number. “I made the phone call a couple of days later, and they said they could help me out. I just believed that they could,” she said.
Eartha set the goal of getting her GED and was excited about how it would feel to read. Learning wasn’t always easy, however, especially with her many other responsibilities. At times Eartha had to drop out for a while. When this happened, she always made sure the staff knew it was only temporary. She would tell them, “I’m down, but I am not out. I am not out; I’ll be back.” Her persistence set an example for her children as well. “I figured I was the best person to show my children that education was important, so who better than me to set the example? All of my five children can read well, and they have graduated from high school,” she says. Her children encourage her, too, with comments such as “Mom, going to that class tonight?”
“The first time I really knew that I was learning how to read,” Eartha says, “I was waiting for some students who were taking their placement tests. I was sitting there and just started to read everything on the wall. Then it hit me, HEY, that’s what all that says up there. I had been in that room many times before, and I didn’t know what that stuff said. Now I knew what it was saying.”
Eartha continues as a student in the literacy program and aspires to be a teacher someday. She advocates for children, particularly those identified with special needs. She also believes that adult literacy students have insights to offer local schoolteachers.
Her advocacy efforts are part of Eartha’s quest to help others help themselves. As student coordinator for Literacy Volunteers of Lake County, she is responsible for maintaining contacts between the program and its students, and she frequently assists students with personal problems.
Eartha takes an active role in spreading the message that “It works!” She wants people to know that adults can learn to read. She serves as a board member of Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education (VALUE) and was named as a member of the ProLiteracy Worldwide Student Advisory Council in 2003. She is president of New Readers for New Life in Illinois and a member of the Lakehurst Players, a group of student actors who perform theater sketches satirizing the everyday life of adult nonreaders. The group performs at national conferences, American Library Association (ALA) events, and other public events. Eartha has taken her message to mayors, to state representatives, to school boards, and to school superintendents. Eartha is a model of achievement in the literacy program. When asked about her own personal literacy goals, she says, “I know I am not there yet, but I’m in that tunnel and I can see the light.”
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