AALL Volunteer of the Year Award:
Mary
"Mimi" Murphy
PCAE's
El Pueblo-Liberty Learning Center (EPLC) was only two months old in December,
1999 when Mary "Mimi" Murphy first began to grace us with her
presence. Since then, as much as
this center has become a part of the community it was designed to serve, so has
Mimi become a part of the learning community that is EPLC.
Retired
for several years, Mimi had become a professional volunteer, donating her
considerable energies to a hospital and child welfare agency.
But neither could satisfy her love for reading and literacy work.
As a volunteer, with EPLC's literacy lab, Mimi works with dozens of
students every year, all of whom are reading below a 5th grade reading level and
with most below a third grade level. Like many volunteers, she has no formal
literacy training and yet she is called upon to work with those who are most in
need of special attention. Her
students regularly deal with a variety of learning disabilities, difficulties
and self esteem issues among other barriers to learning.
Yet her patience, empathy, passion, warmth, respect for the students'
life experiences, and for lack of a better word, kindness, make her an effective
and beloved figure to not only her students but to her supervising instructor
and fellow volunteers, whom she also helps to train.
At 72 years young, Mimi put in over 200 volunteer hours this past fiscal
year. In spite of these impressive
numbers however, she reminds us that the heart of the educational experience is
in the quality and not quantity. A
volunteer who challenges and inspires, Mimi Murphy is an educator in the truest
and best sense of the word.
Jim
Lipson Advanced Program Coordinator -
Volunteers