Daphne Greenberg

Daphne Greenberg

Dr. Daphne Greenberg emanates warmth, a trait that’s highly desirable in a featured speaker for this year’s TEDxPeachtree conference.  Daphne’s warmth is seconded only by her passion to eradicate the epidemic of adult illiteracy—a pairing of traits that makes for the kind of activist that creates real change.

Daphne is Professor of Educational Psychology and Special Education at Georgia State University. Georgia State is part of a program that is spearheading efforts to study and understand adult illiteracy across the country. The program was recently awarded federal grant money to build and fund programs that tackle the unique challenge of evaluating and building literacy in adults reading between a 3rd and 8th grade level.

Daphne has already encountered some interesting challenges in her first year as the principal investigative researcher for Georgia State University’s branch of the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy.

“One of the problems we have is that our tests are geared towards children,” Daphne said of the early stages of her research. “When you think about it, we have an interesting dilemma. If you or I were to take a test in reading, we wouldn’t be tested on sounds, because that would be way too simple for us. Testing that is geared towards adults would be way too hard for our adults, so we have to give them tests based on children’s tests. But are those tests really appropriate? We’re looking at that as well.”

The program faces some challenges, such as transportation barriers for students and the balancing act that many of the program’s participants have to make in their lives to commit to returning to school and completing education. Daphne is, however, consistently inspired by the strength of will and dedication that her students show to their learning process.

“The students keep me going,” Daphne said. “It’s watching them and admiring their commitment, their bravery, their realization that the time is now to make a change in their lives, even though they could be facing all kinds of adversities and major odds that make it difficult to go back to school—but they’re doing it.”

Daphne defines Catalyze as “spurring to action.” When asked about her own catalysts for reaching her goal of sharing literacy with others, she had a number of fantastic answers, including her own struggle to learn to read and how connected she felt to the students committing their energy to learning. Her words about the process of seeing her autistic older brother’s long game of learning victories were perhaps most poignant of all, and reflective of the need to celebrate the long-game victories of learning just as much as the explosive, faster achievements that many adults are accustomed to seeing.

“By living with my brother, he taught me the importance of patience and celebrating very small moments of progress, because those moments are amazing for that person,” Daphne said. “I think that my experience with him helped me appreciate that sometimes learning is really slow, but when it happens it’s amazing. It’s so exciting. You take all of those little steps and they add up to bigger steps. Individual pieces of improvement might not be that major, but when you add them all up, all of a sudden a person is reading or writing.”

This intelligent, warm, compassionate Atlanta resident is working very hard to impact people’s lives for the better, and to gain deeper insight into the perplexing modern problem of adult illiteracy. Daphne’s talk is something you won’t want to miss, so be sure to get your ticket for the 2013 TEDxPeachtree conference while they last.

 

Katie Grills

Katie Grills is a marketing professional and resident of Atlanta’s Historic Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. When she isn’t playing catch with her dog, Katie likes to hone her culinary abilities, read short fiction, and explore the intricacies and oddities of Atlanta’s neighborhoods.

One response to “2013 Speaker Spotlight: Daphne Greenberg”

  1. […] Daphne Greenberg illuminated the problem of adult illiteracy and the difficulty not only in solving it but in recognizing it. Adult sufferers of illiteracy have excellent coping strategies that allow them to tell time, order from a menu and even run a company. By alerting us to the problem, she opened our eyes to a solution. […]

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