upworthy
Badge
Tory Burch
Tory Burch Empowered Women
Empowered Women

Forty million American adults are functionally illiterate, meet the woman striving to help them

Forty million American adults are functionally illiterate, meet the woman striving to help them
True

When Deidra Mayberry was a child, she struggled with reading. Feeling embarrassed and ashamed, she did her best to hide it. And she was pretty good at hiding it. As her family moved around a lot, due to her parents' military career, she adapted and kept hiding it — making it all the way through school without anyone really noticing.

After graduating from high school, she started looking for support to improve her reading skills.

"I was turned away because I was over the age of 17, and other private options like one-on-one tutoring were financially out of reach for me."

Deidra promised that one day she'd do something to fix it. After struggling for years, and eventually finding support, she started a nonprofit to help other adults facing their own challenges with literacy. Now she's striving to help the almost 43,000,000 adults who still are struggling. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), 21 percent of adults in the United States (about 43 million) fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category.

For Deidra, college was the first time she experienced and understood what functional illiteracy was. Someone who is illiterate is unable to read or write at all, but someone who is functionally illiterate has some reading skills — they're just not strong enough to manage daily living and employment tasks.

She was able to graduate by taking extra summer semesters, spending long nights studying, changing her major when it got too hard, and getting help from her dad.

"I was so proud that I actually made it through college and graduated," Deidra says. "But once I started to apply for jobs, reality kicked in fast. I never truly fixed my literacy problems. Instead, I found ways to work around them in order to spare myself the embarrassment and shame that I already felt daily."

"I relied heavily on movies to teach me and give me exposure to things in life that would help me relate to others," she says. "This caused me to live a life of fear, limitations, and hopelessness."

"I felt unworthy because I knew I had this big secret — and thought if people knew, they would see that I had no value."

Deidra continued to live like this for years until she had a lightbulb moment.

"I was working so hard to hide my literacy struggle in order to make it work, but I asked myself, 'What if I worked just as hard to fix it?'"

She found the courage to tell a friend, who began tutoring her. "The hope, courage, and confidence she helped me find was the beautiful moment of empowerment that reminded me to create and provide a resource for people just like me."

That's exactly what she did. On March 12, 2020, she and another friend decided to start a nonprofit to help other adults that were functionally illiterate. And even though COVID-19 shut down businesses and sent people into lockdown the very next day, she didn't let it stop her.

"I just believed God was with me and the time was still now because people have been waiting for this," she says.

She launched Reading to New Heights, an organization that teaches adults the fundamentals of reading with one-on-one, confidential and virtual tutoring sessions with certified educators.

"The curriculum that our educators teach from allows our adult learners to revisit the fundamentals of reading and comprehension as if they are learning them for the first time," Deidra says. "Basic reading foundations such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, spelling, vocabulary and comprehension are exactly what adults struggling with illiteracy need in order to build competent literacy skills and fill the gaps that illiteracy causes in education."

And most importantly, these services are provided at no cost, so that anyone who needs them has access.

"Though illiteracy and functional illiteracy can affect anyone, people in low-income and underserved communities of color are more likely to be limited in education, income, and workplace advancement opportunities because of it."

"Illiteracy and functional illiteracy can be directly linked to higher prison populations, lower household incomes, and inaccessibility to quality healthcare," Deidra explains. "By committing to developing the fundamentals of reading, our adult learners overcome both the psychological and environmental limitations of illiteracy."

Since they launched, the nonprofit has been featured on Fox 4 News, which gave them the exposure they needed to grow from three adult program participants to 20 — and they hope to continue growing. They have also been accepted into an Incubator Program with the United Way, which is designed to support them while they build their business.

Deidra is one of Tory Burch's Empowered Women this year. The donation she receives as a nominee is being awarded to her new and growing nonprofit.

"It's kind of ironic, the very thing I was ashamed of and thought I had to hide for years was the one thing that, once I shared it, not only freed me but gave me hope and provided a way to help others," Deidra says. "I love that my story has been about helping others find the courage to share and take the first step to start their literacy journey."

To learn more about Tory Burch and Upworthy's Empowered Women program visit https://www.toryburch.com/empoweredwomen. Do you know an inspiring woman like Deidra? Nominate her today!

From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
empowered women
Pop Culture

William Shatner describes the profound grief he felt when he finally went to space for real

The OG Captain Kirk's real-life space experience holds important lessons for us all.

"William Shatner" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

William Shatner's trip to space wasn't what he expected.

Statistically speaking, the number of humans who have traveled into space is insignificant. But the experience of leaving our home planet and venturing into the great beyond is incredibly significant for the individuals who have actually done it.

One of those fortunate humans is actor William Shatner, who spent three years pretending to hurtle through space in his iconic role as Captain James T. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" series. As captain of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk was dedicated to exploring "strange new worlds," seeking out "new life and new civilizations" and boldly going "where no man has gone before."

Naturally, Shatner has spent a lot of time pondering what it would be like to actually experience leaving Earth, and when he took the opportunity to join Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin trip to space in October 2021 at age 90, he was able to compare how his expectations met up with reality.

Shatner shared an excerpt from his new book with Variety, and it reveals that his initial reaction to being in space was surprisingly dark.

"I love the mystery of the universe," Shatner wrote. "I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years…"

However, as he looked out the window of the spacecraft—a real one, not a screen on a film set—and looked in the direction opposite Earth, "there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold," he wrote. "All I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing."

As he turned back toward "the light of home," he saw the opposite. "I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her."

Then he had a stunning revelation: "Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong."

Again, this is a man who has spent much of his life thinking about space—not as an astronaut or astronomer or astrophysicist, but as a human being stuck on the Earth's surface, struck with wonder about what's out there. He explained what he had been wrong about:

"I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film 'Contact,' when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, 'They should’ve sent a poet.' I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

"It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral."

Shatner explained how this "sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner" for many astronauts when they view Earth from orbit. It's part of the "overview effect"—the profound shift in perspective that comes with seeing our collective home from a distance. With no visible borders between nations or peoples, it becomes clear that our divisions are all manmade, which can change the way we view humanity as a whole.

The experience left Shatner with renewed conviction to focus on what we share in common.

"It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement," he wrote, "and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance."

Just beautiful. Since most of us will never leave Earth, we can take inspiration from those who have, acknowledge our essential oneness and do everything in our power to protect our beautiful, life-giving home.

Shatner shares more of his reflections on life on this planet and beyond in his most recent book, "Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder."


This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
william shatner
Pop Culture

Researchers found the most effective way to stop misinformation online and it's pretty simple

It's called 'pre-bunking.'

via Tim Dennell/Flickr

New research shows how to fight misinformation.

The rise of misinformation on social media has been a monumental stress test for the world’s critical thinking skills. Misinformation has had a huge influence on elections, public health and the treatment of immigrants and refugees across the world. Social media platforms have tried to combat false claims over the past few years by employing fact-checkers, but they haven’t been terribly effective because those who are most susceptible to misinformation don’t trust fact-checkers.

“The word fact-checking itself has become politicized,” Cambridge University professor Jon Roozenbeek said, according to the Associated Press. Further, studies show that when people have incorrect beliefs challenged by facts, it makes them cling to their false assumptions even harder. These platforms have also attempted to remove posts containing misinformation that violates their terms of service, but this form of content moderation is often seen as insufficient and is often applied inconsistently.

via Mattias Berg/Flickr

How do we combat dangerous misinformation online if removing false claims or debunking them hasn’t been effective enough? A new study published in the journal Science Advances by a team of university researchers and Jigsaw, a division of Google, has found a relatively simple solution to the problem they call “pre-bunking.”

Pre-bunking is an easy way of inoculating people against misinformation by teaching them some basic critical thinking skills. The strategy is based on inoculation theory, a communication theory that suggests one can build resistance to persuasion by exposing people to arguments against their beliefs beforehand.

The researchers learned that pre-bunking was effective after conducting a study on nearly 30,000 participants on YouTube.

“Across seven high-powered preregistered studies including a field experiment on YouTube, with a total of nearly 30,000 participants, we find that watching short inoculation videos improves people’s ability to identify manipulation techniques commonly used in online misinformation, both in a laboratory setting and in a real-world environment where exposure to misinformation is common,” the recently published findings note.

The researchers uploaded videos into YouTube ad slots that discussed different types of manipulative communication used to spread false information such as ad hominem attacks, false dichotomies, scapegoating and incoherence.

Here’s an example of a video about false dichotomies.

Researchers found that after people watched the short videos, they were significantly better at distinguishing false information than they were before. The study was so successful that Jigsaw is looking to create a video about scapegoating and running it in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries are all combating a significant amount of false information about Ukrainian refugees.

There’s an old saying, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach that man to fish and he’ll eat forever.” Pre-bunking does something very similar. We can either play a game of whack-a-mole where social media platforms have to suss out misinformation on a minute-by-minute basis or we can improve the general public’s ability to distinguish misinformation and avoid it themselves.

Further, teaching people to make their own correct decisions about misinformation will be a lot more effective than pulling down content and employing fact-checks. These tactics only drive vulnerable, incredulous people toward misinformation.


This article originally appeared three years ago.

From Your Site Articles
information
Parenting

Retired elementary school teacher shares biggest parenting mistake she saw during long career

Few people understand kids better than elementary school teachers.

Photo by April Walker on Unsplash
Retired elementary school teacher shares biggest parenting mistake she saw during long career

Few people understand kids better than elementary school teachers. Not only do they spend all day with kids, but teachers get to know their students' parents pretty well, too. From parent-teacher conferences to field trips and snack days, it's a collaborative relationship meant to foster their child's development. (And let's be real: what parent hasn't gotten a call from their child's teacher to discuss their *questionable* behavior in the classroom?)

Teachers are full of wisdom about kids, which is why TikToker @elenanico22 interviewed her mom Lisa, a retired elementary school teacher, in an advice video. She asked her mom to share her insights on the question: "What's one thing you saw people messing up with their kids?"

And her response was simple: "They didn't enjoy them." Elena asks her mom to elaborate, and she goes on to share, "Kids are fun. You’ve got to enjoy them. They wanted them to be something that — most of us aren’t exactly what other people want us to be — so enjoy the kid you have."

@elenanico22

Lisa says it like it is #momlife #momsoftiktok #momwisdom #momtok #momhumor #parenting #parentingwisdom

Of course, Lisa fully accepted her own daughter, and turns to Elena in the video and says, "I enjoyed you."

And the comments were flooded with positive replies from parents to her response. "Kids aren’t a chore, they’re a joy. 🥰," one wrote. Another added, "Parents are stressed, and they don’t realize how quickly childhood goes by."

ParentsKids Love GIF by Pudgy PenguinsGiphy

The post also resonated with other teachers and professionals who work with kids. "This is so true. I work in childcare and lots of parents literally cannot stand their kids. They get so angry when we close. They can’t wait to drop them off and pickup last minute. Breaks my heart," one commented. Another wrote, "Toddler teacher. Same. So heartbreaking. I saw it a lot when I worked with highly educated parents with high incomes." And another teacher chimed in with, "So true. As a elementary teacher sometimes playing Barbie Dreamhouse with my 4 y/o is the last thing I want to do but I always do because I know I'll be wishing for it one day ♥️." And another professional shared, "As a pediatrician, I agree."

The video concluded with another piece of strong advice from Lisa, who also dropped this nugget: "Never send your kid to school with carrots." The reason? She explained a story involving a prominent doctor at her school who was "super strict" with what his kids could and could not eat at school.

Carrotshamster GIFGiphy

"So of course what did the kids want? Everything they couldn't," she said. "You are bound to have kids who are going to have food issues."

And plenty of parents offered their thoughts on this. "Omg I love her! Please post more. As a mom I’m enjoying time with my kids, loving their personalities and so anti food restriction teaching them intuitive eating. Because I wasn’t taught those things," one commented. Another shared, "The food statement is so true. My son shared that a boy from his class (who has food restrictions) steals the other kids snacks at school! 🙈❤️😂"

Pop Culture

Mom realizes she's been duped by her 'sick' 5-year-old once she grabs a microphone

Sickness gone. Concert, on.

@dyweeeez/Instagram

Ah, the healing power of music.

Parents, is this situation relatable, or is it relatable? A mom named Dymond Edwards recently shared the impromptu serenade session given to her by her 5-year-old daughter Aryn Dennis after she was picked up early from school for having a "stomach ache.”

As we can clearly see in the Instagram clip, the supposed tummy issue is nowhere to be found as little Aryn, TV remote as a microphone in hand, belts out ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT” like she was performing at Madison Square Garden.

It’s hard to tell which is more funny, Aryn's unapologetic mic drop at the end, or Edwards’ face throughout…which is the face every parent has made at least once after realizing they were just duped by their kiddo.

Watch, and prepare for cuteness overload with those adorable “Apa tapa tays”:

Talk about a miraculous recovery! However, as many noted in the comments section, Aryn very well could have been feeling anxiety, which manifested in stomach pain. As one person put it, “Maybe the stomachache was anxiety. Now she’s where she is comfortable and she belongs. Stomachache gone.”

Another echoed, “Tbh it’s like when you have a headache at work but as soooon as you home you realise work was the headache ../”

Others were quick to defend the little one, who might have just needed a mental health day. One person shared, “I did this once for a ‘headache’ my mama knew I was lying but picked me up anyway & took me to McDonald’s back when they had the play place w/ the ball pit & to Barnes & Noble & read me books. In my 30s & still a fond memory.”

So who knows? Maybe there was never a tummy ache, but it's certainly going to be a sweet memory to hold onto, especially since it was all caught on tape.

And of course, there were plenty of comments that were just pure comedy:

“Singing is healing 😂”

“She left the stomach ache at school.”

“My mama would’ve took me right back! 😂😂”

“Stomach ache not mouth ache. Sing princess.”

“She looked around at school and said ‘that’s enough today-ing here for today.’”

“Is the stomach ache in the room with us?”

“As your daughter’s attorney she won’t be answering any more questions.”

“The stomach ache was the stage fright for this concert she knew she was gon be puttin on😂😂😂😂”

Whether it was because of actual stomach cramps, mental overload, or because she was just done with “todaying,” this little girl needed a break. Kudos to mom for giving her that…Hopefully next time it won’t mean disrupting the workflow with a living room concert.

From Your Site Articles
humor
Heroes

Woman who gets all her food from supermarket dumpsters only spends $100 a year on groceries

"I've only been sick one time because I ate a bad apple."

via Vanessa Hernandez/Flickr

An abundance of food taken from a dumpster.

In the United States, we have two big problems that should help solve each other, but unfortunately, the problems persist. According to the USDA, it's estimated that between 30 to 40% of the food supply in the U.S. is wasted. So, wholesome food that could help feed families instead winds up in landfills. At the same time, about 18 million households, or 13.5% of the population, are food insecure.

Five years ago, Sofie Juel-Andersen, 30, of Denmark, who was living in Sydney, Australia, was told by her sister that she could save a lot of money and prevent food from being wasted by diving into dumpsters at her local supermarket. Initially, Juel-Andersen was skeptical about her sister’s idea. “My sister sent me a photo of some hidden treasures she’d found dumpster diving. I knew about it, but I’d never seen it as an option to put food on the table,” she told SWNS.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

After Juel-Andersen made a few successful hauls and saw the amount of money she was saving, she was hooked. “What I found was insane. It was filled with food—some of it had expired, but a lot hadn’t,” she said. “It was like a treasure hunt for me. I quickly realized that there was so much good food in the dumpsters I didn’t need to go shopping anymore.”

After moving back to Denmark in 2022, she continued dumpster diving and has been so successful that she hardly ever has to shop at the grocery store. She estimates she only spent $100 in supermarkets in 2024, primarily on toiletries such as toilet paper and toothpaste. This allowed the restaurant manager to have a lot more money for traveling.

Her success as a dumpster diver has made her popular on TikTok, where she can share an important message about food waste.


Why do grocery stores throw out good food?

Why are grocery stores throwing away so much good food? “I believe grocery stores throw out food because of the following reasons; the first is there's a small mark on the product or it's in a bag where one item is rotten,” she told Newsweek. “The second is they have a new shipment of a product, so they throw away the old ones which are closer to their sell-by or best-before dates. Thirdly, grocery stores may get rid of one product in a large container where another has been damaged.”

So how does Juel-Andersen avoid getting sick eating food she finds in dumpsters, a lot of it close to or past its expiration dates? "My main source of food is food from the dumpsters, and I've only been sick one time because I ate a bad apple,” she shared on TikTok. “Which was completely my own fault." She added that she avoids eating food that is "moldy, looks bad, or smells bad. I am very cautious of what I take."

Even though dumpster diving should never be the solution to the problems of food waste and insecurity, Juel-Andersen’s brave and creative approach to the problem has inspired an important discussion about sustainability and resourcefulness. Let’s hope that in the future, we can bridge the gap between surplus and need so no food is wasted, and no one goes hungry.

From Your Site Articles
food
Trending Stories