As she writes the alphabet in lower-case letters, her Literacy Network tutor, Sarah Boyd, watches patiently.
"Good," Sarah says, and produces a deck of flash cards.
Now comes the harder part. She shows Mary the vowels — the subtle gliding sounds that fuel the English language and often confound those trying to learn it — and the student gingerly sounds them out.
"Ay. Eee. Aye. Ooh. No. No."
"Wait. Wrong sound," Mary says.
Deep breath.
"Aye. Oh. You."
"Excellent,"
Mary bends over her workbook. After writing "Leonx," she catches herself and quickly erases it.
"Eh. Eh," Sarah prompts. "Remember what we learned about syllables."
The pair have been meeting like this, twice a week, for six years, and Mary — who lives in Lenox, runs a home-based catering business, is in her mid-60s and is a married mother of six — will be the first to tell you she has "no time to study."
She also will tell you she is grateful she found out about the Literacy Network of South Berkshire on a Channel 11 television broadcast six years ago.
The Literacy Network is among seven organizations in the county that teach adults how
"I finally said, 'That's it, I can start,' " recalled Mary, who asked that her last name not be used. "My children have grown up and I've got to do something for me. I don't care what people think."
And so, Mary — who moved to the Springfield area from her native Lebanon when she was in her early teens and worked "48-hour days" in a convenience store, who said she "doesn't really" read or write Arabic, who moved to Berkshire County in the 1970s and busied herself with children and family, who "never went to school but wanted to so bad," who started catering more than a decade ago and forced herself to memorize telephone orders because she couldn't write them down — decided, as a middle-aged businesswoman, to learn how to read and write.
It's a rainy afternoon, and three Literacy Network staffers are in the "shoebox" — the affectionate term the employees use for the tiny office in the Lee Library.
From here, the 16-year-old organization — proudly propelled, 100 percent, by "local students, local tutors and local funders," according to education director Tricia
The service is free to residents or workers in South Berkshire who are over 16 and not enrolled in school.
"We're the best private school in the Berkshires," joked Mary Spina, the Literacy Network's associate director of education.
Eighty-five percent of the students are enrolled in the Literacy Network's English as a Second Language courses, and the remaining 15 percent are in the reading program, designed for the functionally illiterate.
Farley-Bouvier attributed the lower enrollment in the reading program to the shame and isolation associated with not knowing how to read or write in a society that's morphed from agrarian to technocratic over the span of barely two generations.
"We talk about 'No Child Left Behind,' and you can debate if that's an appropriate legislation or not," Farley-Bouvier said about the federal mandate. "But we're working with those people who already got left behind."
Literacy, according to the National Institute for Literacy via the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, is defined as "an individual's ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society."
The definition of reading and writing proficiency has changed over the years.
"A hundred years ago, it really didn't matter if you could read to a cow or to the thread machine," Farley-Bouvier said. "Now you need to be literate in English, and you need to be computer literate. Someone who doesn't have (those skills) is at a severe disadvantage."
An illiterate adult, she said, is someone with a "below-fourth-grade reading level" — a simplified way to describe an individual who cannot comprehend the most basic written information.
She said the Literacy Network's average reading student goes from "functionally illiterate to comfortable" in three to four years, and one student has been with the organization for 15 years.
Illiteracy goes beyond the sufferer, Farley-Bouvier said, adding that it's an economic and safety issue for the entire county.
She relates the story of a student who was referred to the Literacy Network by the courts after he incurred several traffic violations.
"The court discovered he couldn't read," Farley-Bouvier said. "So now we have someone operating a tractor-trailer who is unable to read the road signs. That's a problem."
But how can someone who is illiterate get a driver's license? What about the paperwork and the written part of the driver's test?
"I studied for it," Mary explains.
"But you can't read," Sarah replies, with wonder in her voice.
"Once I put my mind to it, I can do anything," Mary says. She also says a relative helped her.
"You memorized it, maybe," Sarah says.
A 2003 study by the National Assessment for Adult Literacy estimated that 5 percent of the U.S. population is "not literate" in English.
"Not literate" was defined as being able to respond verbally — but not in writing — to a series of basic questions.
Berkshire County has no data on literacy rates, but in an assessment four years ago, Massachusetts officials found that 9 percent of adults had "below basic" reading skills, and 23 percent didn't have the basic reading and writing skills needed to comprehend instructions on medicine bottles or to read and understand the most basic written news stories.
The battle is to find struggling students, and help them, long before they drop out or disappear in school systems.
"You've got to fix it early," said Kevin G. Tobin, clinical psychologist for the Pittsfield Public Schools and an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "(Illiteracy) is a recipe for social disintegration. There are more people in the professional middle class in India than there are in the entire working population of the United States. You think we're not replaceable? Think again."
Tobin has seen what a reading-disabled work force can — or can't — do.
"Someone asked me to explain why their employee was always screwing up," Tobin recalled. "And I explained it was because the employee couldn't read the instructions on the box he had to ship out."
Tobin cited National Institute of Health and Human Development data that said 23 percent of 12th-graders in the United States remain below the basic reading level — meaning enough reading to get by in society — and that figure doesn't include dropouts.
He did say, however, that the detection — and subsequent better treatment — of students with reading disabilities has gotten considerably better in the past decade, and there are teaching programs such as Lexia and Corrective Reading that aid illiterate adults.
Tobin said Pittsfield's assessment system tests students from kindergarten through third grade for reading disabilities, and students who fall into the "at-risk range" are monitored weekly or biweekly.
The program, called AIMSweb, has been used by the Pittsfield Public Schools for the past seven years.
In its modern incarnation, illiteracy often stems from dyslexia, a broad term for a physiological reading and writing impairment that affects, with varying severity, "12 to 20 percent" of both the school-age and the adult population, Farley-Bouvier said.
Karen Wallace, executive director of the Pittsfield-based Literacy Volunteers of Berkshire County — which offers free one-on-one tutoring to the public — said internal circumstances aren't entirely to blame; a disruptive childhood and a lack of support from parents can cause students to fall behind in reading and writing skills.
"Some people have a lot of complicated family situations," Wallace said. "And there are a lot of coping strategies to find ways to cover the truth. Getting over the hump is tough."
In some cases, illiterate parents are "outed," she said, when their children surpass them in reading comprehension and discover the parent wasn't really reading the words printed in the bedtime story book.
"People are embarrassed by their inability (to read and write) and don't want anything to blow their cover," Wallace said.
Literacy doesn't happen overnight, Farley-Bouvier said, and even a one-hour lesson is draining for both the student and the observer. To watch Mary struggle with the language is akin to trying to sit still at a prizefight.
Looking at Sarah, Mary says, "I don't know how she can stand me."
"No, no," Sarah replies. "She doesn't realize it's as rewarding for me (to teach) as it is for her."
Mary starts making a fist as she sounds out the syllables. After a moment, she looks up at her tutor.
"If I could do everything different," she began. "I would."
"That's hindsight," Sarah replies. "What's important is that you came forward. That's the hardest thing."
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