Faces & places

Tony and Sue Buttino, Dawana Martin, Tiffany Goins

Tony and Sue Buttino

Helpers. Advisors. Friends. Motivators. Support people.

These words are how Tony and Sue Buttino describe themselves and their life work.

Tony Buttino has devoted his life to helping others, with a special love for helping people improve their reading skills—from serving as a tutor for Literacy Volunteers of America (now ProLiteracy), to leading development of an Emmy Award winning children’s literacy program as creator and co-executive producer of Reading Rainbow. While at WNED TV in Buffalo, NY, Tony also served on the PBS LiteracyLink advisory board.

Sue Buttino, Tony’s wife, shares his passion for helping people and changing lives. She devoted much of her life to raising five children, being there for 19 grandchildren, and serving as a pastoral associate.

Together, the couple volunteers in a prison ministry and works with homeless families. Their efforts underscore their belief that all people deserve a chance. Their passion has sparked their children to work with the homeless as well.

"The Bible tells us to serve and be servants," Tony says. "We think that is an ongoing value."

Perhaps that is why Tony and Sue originally said no when Milli Fazy, former director of sales and marketing for KET, offered them jobs as educational consultants for KET Enterprise, a division of KET devoted to adult learning and literacy.

"We are far from sales people," says Sue. "Neither of us wanted to be in sales." Still, the Buttinos thought about it for a while and agreed to try. Turns out educational consultant was just another way to describe being of service to others.

As educational consultants, the Buttinos help adult educators find the strategies and materials they need to help learners achieve their goals.

"We love seeing the pride on a teacher’s face and hearing these teachers talk about the success of their students," says Tony. "We love the look on someone’s face when he can read the printed word for the first time or when she now has the skills for a job that will support her family."

Adds Sue: "We realized that we are really just serving and guiding people. We are friends and advisors to people who need help in the adult education field. We are helping them (educators) find materials that would help their students turn their lives around."

Much of the Buttinos’ assistance to others now begins at conferences and meetings. The Buttinos display and discuss educational materials KET produces specifically for adult learners. This gives them an opportunity to meet one-on-one with adult educators and administrators and explain various ways to help adult learners.

The events often combine workshops, speeches, and award ceremonies. This gives the couple an opportunity to also meet the adult learners.

"At my first conference there was a speaker who was a former GED learner who had come to the U.S. not speaking English," Sue recalls. "Someone befriended him and talked him into getting his GED diploma. Along the way people kept encouraging him and supporting him. He was then a janitor at the hospital he worked at. Now he is an engineer at that hospital. He totally changed his life. This is a mission we can enter into and embrace."

Sue spoke of another learner, this one a former inmate who had earned his GED credential, then a bachelor’s and finally a master’s degree. He had written a book about his journey.

"When you see the life-changing things that happen to people in adult education, you are honored to walk the journey with them," Sue says. "We go to a lot of conferences and get to hear a lot of these stories. Often, it is not us encouraging them, but them encouraging us."

In addition to helping educators meet their students’ needs, the Buttinos also set up literacy days in their service area of Maine, Connecticut, and New York (excluding New York City). They have already held literacy days at public television stations WXXI and WNED, and are planning a literacy event at the Binghamton Public station WSKG.

"We find that we can be a catalyst to bring people together," says Tony. "We believe in helping people with bettering their lives. Now we are finding that same niche in adult literacy."

As a television producer himself, Tony says he also appreciates the quality of the KET materials he now represents and the fact that KET produces complementary videos, workbooks, and online materials to reach learners in multiple ways.

"They see people in the videos that are like them, and realize that they might be able to pull this off," Tony says of the learners using KET products. "A person is painting a house, for example, but doesn’t know how much to charge. The workbooks show them how to figure that out."

And Tony has a word for the adult educators: "Keep up the good work.

"These are not great paying jobs, but these teachers believe in their students. The teachers are such a force in their students’ lives.

"People come first with us, and I think they know they do. What someone else calls customers, we call friends. We believe in what these teachers and students are doing. This is what motivates us."

Epilogue
Tony and Sue Buttino were named the top sales team at KET this past year. But like all the awards they have won, the value the couple found in the designation was different from what many would.

Go back several decades to when Tony was winning awards for his television literacy series, Reading Rainbow. As a way of celebrating, the entire family developed a tradition of getting dressed up and going to Central Park to take a carriage ride with Emmy in hand. But that’s not what any of them remember first when they think of the awards.

"While we were on the carriage ride, we would see the homeless and poor sleeping on doorsteps in boxes," Tony recalls. "We were zigzagging around them. What the children wound up seeing was not the glitz of the Emmy but the needs of the people. They all wound up trying to help the homeless because of this experience."

This latest award also came with a reality check as Sue fought cancer this past year and had to go through surgery, chemo, and radiation.

"To do that and still get to feel a sense of mission was such a blessing," Tony says. "We can only look at the year and be at peace and rejoice."

Flexibility makes getting a GED diploma possible

"I can do that."

That was Dawana Martin’s immediate reaction when she happened upon a GED Connection program on Warner Cable one day. After she watched the program, Martin called an 800 number for more information. "I am going to do this," Martin promised herself after the call, but she had made promises to herself before. Too many other commitments kept her from following through.

And Martin certainly had plenty of commitments at the time. She was a single mom with two teenage boys. She was also raising her brothers and a nephew in her Columbus, Ohio, home. "I kept telling them to go to school, to stay in school," she recalls. "I had to practice what I was preaching."

Martin had actually taken classes at Columbus State, but she couldn’t move forward until she earned her GED. Timing on the GED classes was the problem.

That problem was solved with the flexibility built into GED Connection. Martin could choose to watch broadcasts of GED Connection on TV, work online, study with the workbooks, get help at a learning center, or use any combination of these methods. The cable company even offered GED Connection as part of their On Demand programming. That meant Martin could watch whenever it suited her.

Still, Martin had one other obstacle: no money to purchase workbooks. Because she was on public assistance at the time, Martin qualified for a program through the Ohio Literacy Network that provides free workbooks for those who cannot afford them. The workbooks are part of a home study program designed for people who don’t have the resources to come into a learning center—whether that obstacle is transportation, child care, income, or something else.

Martin now had a green light to move forward. She also had her children’s support.

"Since my kids are older, when I found a subject area that I wasn’t handling well, I would ask one of them to help," she says. "The boys enjoyed that. My oldest son would come in at night and quiz me: ‘What is an acute angle? What are the degrees of an acute angle? What did you work on today? Let me see your workbook.’"

Even Martin’s youngest son got into the act although he was only in the sixth grade at the time.

"He would help me with the geography," Martin recalls. "Mom, I know how to do that,’ he would say."

A little serendipity also helped. Martin went to church one Sunday and discovered they had a GED preparation program. They gave her the TABE test and helped her understand her strengths and weaknesses. Martin studied there, focusing on her weaknesses.

"When my workbooks came, I not only worked on my weaknesses," she says. "I went along with the program in the books. I learned how to check my answer all on my own."

"I would also go to the church program every Tuesday and Thursday. They thought I was ready to take the test, but I didn’t feel comfortable yet. I wanted to be sure I understood geometry."

When Martin was convinced she was ready, her church paid for her to take the GED Practice Test. She passed every subject.

In June of 2009 the family had a lot to celebrate. Martin’s son graduated from high school on June 4. Then 10 days later came the "proudest day of her life" for Dawana. She received her GED with her family watching.

My son recorded the entire graduation," she recalls. "I saw him drop a few tears. I held the diploma in the air and I was like, ‘We did this. We did this together.’"

Armed with her GED, Martin is now working full time at Job and Family Services. She is also taking classes at Columbus State. Her new job provides her with a flexible schedule so she can work, care for her family, and earn a college degree.

"To be honest, I was able to do it because of GED Connection On Demand and because of The Vineyard (her church)," Martin says. "I was able to pay attention when the kids were asleep and the house was quiet. It was as a beautiful, wonderful thing. If I can do it, anybody can. Sometimes I can be stubborn and be bad about procrastination. I couldn’t find an excuse because the On Demand was there anytime I needed it. Getting my GED has seriously changed my life."

Spring 2010

Gasoline was $4 a gallon. Tiffany Goins was pregnant with her third child. Her husband, Robert, had kidney failure and required dialysis four days a week. Despite the obstacles, Goins wanted to earn her GED® certificate so she could get a better job. She just couldn’t figure out how.

Then came a breakthrough moment. Goins saw a flyer from the Ohio Literacy Network (OLN) and OLN’s Lisa Larson told Goins about GED Connection, a GED preparation program where she could learn from television, workbooks, and/or internet lessons.

"In that moment, getting my GED went from being some impossible situation to a situation I could make work for me," Goins recalls.

Larson donated the workbooks and provided the videos. Soon, Goins, who loves to read, was rolling through the workbooks. When she found a section that challenged her, Goins met with OLN instructor Diane Kricer.

"They were perfect," Goins says of the workbooks. "They started from easy and went to hard. They even had pages where they explained how to do the problems."

As Goins studied, her children often asked what she was doing. Goins explained she was studying and why. "Mommy we’re studying for school, too," her children would reply. "That was all the motivation I needed," Goins says.

On October 12, 2009, Goins earned her GED certificate. "I broke a generational curse; neither my grandparents nor my parents graduated high school, and I needed this GED to show my kids they can do it." says Goins.

"Once you accomplish this, you start feeling good about yourself," Goins says. "You want to keep on accomplishing things." Now her children know they can do it, she says. "My kids are going to be scientists and doctors."