Photo by Erin Bloodgood
Bianca Johnson-Ortiz
Bianca Johnson-Ortiz
From a young age, Bianca Johnson-Ortiz learned the value of education from her mother who studied to receive her GED and eventually her bachelor’s degree while raising her family. Johnson-Ortiz was graduating from high school when her mother finally got her bachelor’s degree after studying for eight years.
As she was coming of age, she watched her mother’s dedication to learning. “I always admired that process and knew that was something that was deeply connected to my childhood, my education and my life moving forward,” she said.
Her mother never finished high school because she dropped out to take care of her own mother who suffered from health problems after years as a migrant worker. Johnson-Ortiz’s grandmother worked in many hard labor jobs throughout her life and eventually came to Milwaukee from Texas because of the manufacturing boom.
This is a similar story that many Milwaukee families share. Now the Manager of Adult Education Programs at Literary Services of Wisconsin, Johnson-Ortiz has dedicated her career to providing education services to adults. She says their services exist because there are fundamental flaws in our systems that are not addressing low literacy in communities like hers.
Cycle of Low Literacy
“There’s an ongoing cycle of low literacy that impacts individuals, families and communities. If we’re not tackling the core reason why we have problems with low literacy, then that cycle just continues,” she said.
While Literary Services does not do the work to address those core issues, they do provide support and education to adults to help them with their personal goals. Their programs range from foundational reading programs to helping students receive their GED or high school diploma. “We can continue to support the adults that leave K-12 instruction and help them enter the workforce, but there’s always a core missing—that individual support those adults didn’t receive when they were children,” said Johnson-Ortiz.
Literary Services shines in the way they cater instruction and programming to the individual. Their instructors assesses where a student is and helps them build skills starting from that point. Students receive a combination of one-on-one tutoring alongside class-based instruction.
In her role, Johnson-Ortiz manages volunteers and instructors and creates learning plans for students at all skill levels. She trains instructors to understand the value of adult education and cater to the individual goals of each person.
Over her 10-plus years of educating adults, Johnson-Ortiz has seen what can happen when an individual learns to read or receives a diploma—similar to the positive effects it has had on her own family.
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“I’ve witnessed how much of a change that’ll make to a family unit and how it ripples into the entire community, into their workplace and into their child’s education. They can become so much more engaged in [their child’s] education when they understand the impact [education] makes, and it just continues to grow from there,” she said.
Johnson-Ortiz says it’s never too late for someone to learn new skills and seek educational solutions that will help them find new opportunities. When an individual improves their education, it grows the community.
