Education

Directions for this passage: Numbered portions are marked [n]…[/n] (underlined on paper, highlighted online). Each numbered portion matches the question with the same number. Paragraphs are numbered for reference.

Afraid of Paper

Paragraph 1 My grandmother Teodora left school after the fourth grade to work on her family’s farm, and for most of her adult life she hid the fact that she could barely read. She memorized the shapes of street signs, [1]asked cashiers to read prices aloud and she claimed[/1] she had forgotten her glasses whenever someone handed her a form. When she was fifty-two, a flyer taped to the door of a laundromat changed that.

Paragraph 2 The flyer advertised free evening reading classes for adults. The classes, which were taught by a retired librarian and two volunteers from the nearby high school, [2]was held[/2] every Tuesday and Thursday in Room 12 of the Hollis Street Community Center. On the first night, Teodora arrived [3]early, before the class started, ahead of time,[/3] and chose a seat in the back row.

Paragraph 3 Her instructor, Mr. Okafor, began with the sounds of individual letters rather than whole words. [4]Because Teodora already recognized many words by sight, the drills[/4] felt childish to her at first. She told my mother that she planned to quit after the second week.

Paragraph 4 [5]As a result,[/5] she stayed. By November she could sound out the headlines in the neighborhood newspaper, and by spring she was reading picture books aloud to me over the phone, pausing to spell the words she did not yet know.

Paragraph 5 Years later, I asked her why she had finally answered the flyer. She said she was tired of pretending. “I didn’t need to be the smartest person in that room,” she told me. “I just wanted to stop being afraid of paper.”