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Autumn E. Bedwell
Title: Family Literacy Specialist
Office: 3600 West Broad Street, Suite 669
Phone: (804) 827-1937
Fax: (804) 828-7539
Email Autumn
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
-Maya Angelou
I received my Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary English Education from Virginia Commonwealth University, where I was a magna cum laude graduate and a member of the academic Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. I completed my student teaching at Armstrong High School in Richmond and was the first student teacher from the VCU School of Education nominated for the Richard Meade Award, dedicated to the memory of the late Richard Meade of the University of Virginia for his contributions to research in the teaching of composition and in teacher preparation.
My career in family literacy began in 1991, when I was hired by the Even Start Family Literacy Program located at Woodlawn Learning Center in the city of Hopewell as an Adult Education Specialist, a position which evolved the following year into Adult Education Coordinator for Hopewell Public Schools. I worked with parents and children from Even Start as well as Head Start and Virginia Preschool Initiative, all of whom were serviced at the site. I coordinated the daytime and evening adult education programs and taught GED and ABE classes, as well as parenting and employment skills. I procured funding to provide critical support services for our preschool families - both transportation via a local van service and daytime and evening on-site child care for infants and school-aged children. I also developed curriculums in workplace training and citizenship, the latter for both ESL students and native speakers of English. As a side venture, I initiated and directed a theatre group, the Even Start Players, eventually comprised of parents from all three preschool programs. Together we wrote and produced musical “fractured fairy tales”, which we presented with much success at the local elementary schools.
I have written numerous grants offered at the local, state and federal levels to fund various efforts, the most lucrative award being the federal six-figure Twenty-First Century Community Learning Center Grant, which supplemented the Even Start Program for its final three years. I have also served on grant review panels at the Virginia Department of Education to evaluate family literacy grants and recommend applications to be funded.
For my work with the parents and children of Woodlawn, I was honored by the Virginia Department of Education with the SOAR Award in 1999 for curriculum development and the Adult Educator of the Year Award in 2000. I was also named Outstanding Adult Education Employee of the Year by Hopewell Public Schools in 2001.
More recently, I have served as an academic instructor at the Fort Lee Army Education Center, where I prepared military personnel for the English and mathematics sections of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) exam. I have also worked for Prince George County Public Schools as the homebound teacher for students who could not attend regular classroom sessions due to physical, psychological, and/or emotional reasons. Most recently, I was employed as an education specialist in Petersburg by Pamplin Historical Park & the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, where I developed and presented educational programs on various aspects of the Civil War.
I am delighted to be a member of the PEELLS team working with our program families to help break the cycle of intergenerational illiteracy, as I find my greatest joy in helping others to reach their fullest potential. My other personal interests include cooking, winemaking, writing, theatre, art, traveling, and keeping up with my two daughters, ages nineteen and twenty-five, both college students and aspiring writers who share my love of learning and the liberal arts.
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