IN HER OWN WORDS

Phyllis Newland founded The Learning Place in 1990 and served as its volunteer director until her death in December, 2003..
 

  The Learning Place was conceived as a different model for delivering volunteer literacy service to the inner city.

   After many years of working in adult education and nationally organizing volunteer adult literacy programs, I found that too few adults from the inner cities enrolled in volunteer or any adult literacy programs. Many times the programs were too far from where they lived; they didn’t have bus fare and many other barriers seemed to keep them from programs. The Learning Place is an attempt to bring individual services to the adults in the neighborhoods where they live.

 In talking to people in the inner city, I was told by one woman, ”We need a place where we can go for whatever reading or learning need we have”. Thus The Learning Place got its name.

  At The Learning Place  both tutors and students can get the support they need to be successful. We can be more flexible because students relate to the center and if their tutor leaves, they know they will get another. We can follow up immediately if a student is having difficulty keeping appointments. The student  sees others who are having the same difficulties thus they are not alone.

  Our motto,” We learn from each other,”   says we all have a chance to learn and all are learners and all are teachers.  We all work together to support the centers and help each other.

Literacy leader’s lifework recalled

“She gave me the world” says student of Phyllis M.Newland
By Frank Brieaddy, Staff Writer, The Post-Standard   

     Phyllis M. Newland was drawn to the mission of developing literacy skills 40 years ago as a mother working with a learning disabled child in Oregon

     She became a passionate advocate for the cause after meeting Frank Laubach, founder of the world’s foremost nonprofit literacy agency.

     She spent her career developing and implementing user-friendly adult basic learning programs across the nation for Syracuse-based Laubach Literacy International – now ProLiteracy Worldwide – and retired in 1987 with the desire to establish a model neighborhood learning center.

     Newland, 77, founder of The Learning Place with two locations in the low-income Syracuse neighborhoods, died Tuesday (Dec. 23,2003) evening at her home after a lengthy battle with cancer.   

     She was the volunteer director of The Learning Place until February, when her illness forced her to cut back her involvement.

     Her approach was the very essence of grass-root activism, according the Linda Church, associate director of special projects for ProLiteracy Worldwide.  Newland’s idea was to have learning centers within walking distance of the homes of people who needed the help, open whenever the learners had time to meet tutors.
   She wanted learners to “Go in a place where the coffeepot was on, where they were greeted when they walked in, where they were welcomed,” said Church, who was hired at Laubach Literacy 30 years ago by Newland.Those who stayed to improve their basic skills were immediately incorporated into the operations

      About 190 adult students were part of the learning family at The Learning Place’s offices on East Genesee Street and Lincoln Avenue last year.

     “They felt, and they do feel, a part of it,” said Church. “That’s what she wanted, people to be respected

     Etrendia Collins was an early student of Newland at The Learning Place. “ I didn’t know anything and I was shy and scared,” she said of the time before her lessons. “She just gave me the world. Without her, I’d still be hiding somewhere. She gave me my smile.”

    Born in Delena, Ore., Newland developed an interest in literacy as a parent trying to help her children. She was so impressed after hearing in person Laubach’s “Each One Teach One” philosophy of universal literacy that she helped to found Oregon Literacy in 1966.

    Although she had no formal training in teaching, Newland became an expert in literacy. She packed up her Volkswagen in 1973 and for a trip to Syracuse and what she thought would be a two-year stint with Laubach Literacy to develop urban adult basic education programs, Church said. In Syracuse she developed programs for six cities from Alaska to New Jersey.

     “She really believed in people having the tools they need to take charge of their own lives,” Church said.

    Her work with The Learning Place earned her a citation from the national Points of Light Foundation, The Volunteer Center’s Volunteer of the Year Award, J.C. Penney’s Golden Rule Award and The Post Standard Achievement Award.

    The Learning Place has struggled financially in the past two years and Newland put off her retirement.

    “She was very, very committed to her mission and her program, even when she was very ill in recent years,” said Marsha Tait, senior vice president of ProLiteracy Worldwide.

    Newland is survived by a grandson in Tigard, Ore., Matthew Phair, and several nieces and nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.

    Her associates are asking friends to contribute to the Phyllis Newland Memorial Fund to benefit the Learning Place, with headquarters at 1443 E. Genesee St., Syracuse13210.