Frances

Years ago I decided to volunteer as a tutor in adult literacy. I was given a single student to get my feet wet. She was in her mid-sixties, a transplant from Georgia. Frances grew up the eldest of a large family, unable to finish grammar school as she was called upon to take care of her siblings. She married her high school sweetheart young and had an extremely large family of her own that also kept her too busy to further her education.

When I met her she was living with her husband in a trailer on the premises of their welding company. Her husband was very ill, and he felt it was imperative that she get some schooling to enable her to run the business when he passed on. There was no one else in the family he trusted to do it. Therefore, at his insistence, she enrolled in adult school classes at the local community college. To supplement her studies she decided a literacy tutor was required--me.

Frances was the kindest person with no bitterness, salt of the earth. She had been so sheltered by her circumstances that she had a trusting innocence rarely seen in adults. She was so refreshing to work with. However, the idea of running the family business appeared way out of her league, and she knew it. She could barely read nor handle balancing her checkbook. She was under tremendous stress--both caring for her husband and trying to cope with the idea of managing without him.

Frances was a very bright woman who had mistaken her lack of education for being unintelligent. She had tremendous common sense, and she had clever tricks to work around her illiteracy. However, now that her husband was near death those tricks would no longer suffice.

I began using literacy books with her, but soon realized she was too smart for them. Therefore, I developed my own curriculum custom to who she was. I taught her to type, because typing forces you to read. I taught her how to balance a checkbook and use a calculator. I had her read books for pleasure and then type up reports about them. She was coming along so beautifully that she quit the adult school courses, saying I was the best teacher she ever had.

Although I suppose the skills she learned through our sessions were helpful to her, I think it was my belief in her that was what was profound about our time together. She began to blossom under the light of that confidence I had in her. I wasn't sure how far she wanted to take her education. Certainly, it would have been cool to see her enroll in college and get a degree, but that was not my business.

After many months of working together, her husband became gravely ill, and with regret she had to give up our sessions. I sensed it was unlikely she would pick up her studies again. I called on occasion, but for a time we lost touch while she dealt with the painful loss of the "love of her life" and the transition thereafter.

A year later she contacted me, and we got together. The transformation I saw in her was amazing. She was sharp as a tack and confident. With a bit of help from an attorney friend, she was able to pull everything together and run the business. Along the way, she had to make difficult decisions like firing her daughter who was embezzling and applying tough love to her troubled grandson who ended up straightening out as a result. Her rare innocence was replaced by a street smart toughness, but still she was not bitter.

She never did continue with her formal education. She sold the business and met up with an old childhood friend in Georgia. She moved there and married him. I've since lost touch.

says that every human being has infinite potential, and all that is required is to unleash it. Through his micro-credit work, he has seen the unleashing of infinite potential in the poorest, most uneducated people. It is his ability to see infinite potential in everyone that assists its unleashing. He is like a mirror, not showing them who they could be--but who they are. And so it was with Frances and me.