Looking back on Adult Learners’ Week award winners Friday, November 9, 2012 - 11:16

On the up: The rewards of adult learning, illustrates the breadth of adults’ experiences as learners over the first 21 Adult Learners’ Weeks and reinforces that winning the award is only part of the process. For most people, learning is an on-going lifelong activity that creates economic, social, personal and community benefits, as well as individual benefit.

Previous award winners share their experiences of learning, winning the award and the impact on their lives, including:

• Donna Crutcher who has gone from being a woman experiencing domestic abuse with very low self esteem and few skills, to working as a teacher and active community volunteer.
• For Julie Cummins, dismissed by her teacher at school as being ‘thick’ and a ‘failure’, learning has given her the confidence and courage to enter higher education.
• Jackie Smith’s learning has led to her involvement in local politics and turned her into a passionate and articulate advocate of disability rights.
• For Scott Cator, learning has helped him to live a happy, stable civilian life after a career in the army was brought to an abrupt end by post-traumatic stress.
• Yasmin Shaikh’s story illustrates how volunteering was a key step towards rewarding employment after learning helped her raise her sights and escape deadening work as a ‘sweat shop’ machinist.
• Paul Cano-Lopez describes how learning helped him re-evaluate, retrain and rebuild his career after the onset of arthritis brought his career as a plasterer to an untimely halt.
• Attending college gave Christine Townsley the skills and confidence to aim higher, get better jobs and run her own business.
• Learning helped Pam Haywood-Reed into a well-paid job as a development officer for an older people’s charity after years spent in low-paid jobs cleaning or working in factories.
• For Mary Gilmartin, who gained a degree at the age of 73, learning has been the key to a more engaged and active life.
• John Jellye describes how learning gave him a sense of direction, making life feel worth living and getting him into work for the first time.
• Declan MacIntyre describes how the responsibilities of becoming a dad prompted him to tackle his problems with reading and writing.

Paul Stanistreet, co-writer of On the up, said:

“Involvement in adult learning and the recognition that an Adult Learners’ Week Award brings, can have a lasting impact on the lives of individuals and on their family and community. What these stories and short learner portraits have in common is what they tell us about the power of learning to open doors, to unlock potential and to give people the confidence and resources they need to transform their lives and the lives of those around them.

The stories in On the up demonstrate the richness, challenge and breadth of adults’ experiences as learners and the profound and positive effect that learning has on different aspects of life. A number of learners describe how a bad initial educational experience dented their sense of self-worth, made them think of themselves as failures or as ‘thick’. Many were failed by the education system first time around. Some were written off because they were distracted by their lives outside school; others were dismissed as stupid because they had dyslexia – establishing a pattern of exclusion which would continue for much of their lives as adults. These people deserve their second chance.

Learning gives adults another chance. It boosts their self esteem and gives them the confidence to achieve their dreams. Enthusiasm for learning, once caught, can be infectious; it opens up new aspirations and life opportunities and through sheer inspiration gives countless others the motivation and desire to follow in their footsteps.”