Literacy missions fulfills educator’s call to teach

Gena Heatherly was 12 years old when she gave her heart to Christ, but she gave her life to Him when she decided to become a teacher. Fresh out of high school and working as a secretary at the central office of Opelika City Schools, she felt God call her to teach.
   
“I observed that as the administrators worked and planned for the school year they often spoke about making decisions based on, what’s best for kids?” she said. She joined the quest in seeking the best for children with the certainty that teaching was her destiny by completing her elementary education degree and graduate work. 
   
“My first day in the classroom I knew the Lord wanted me to teach,” she said.
   
During the next 26 years her students — which included Tuscaloosa County schools’ second-, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders, Montgomery public school second- and fifth-graders and Montgomery public school parents with at-risk 3-, 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers — would benefit from her calling. 
   
Though Heatherly retired from public education in the spring of 2002, God had yet another calling in the form of literacy missions.  In 2001, the Alabama Baptist State Convention selected Heatherly as the first state literacy missions coordinator. 
   
While it is an unpaid position, she spends a great amount of time managing training in English as a second language, adult reading and writing and tutoring youth and children, as well as assisting churches in organizing literacy missions programs across Alabama. 
   
She is also the partnership coordinator and tutor trainer for Montgomery-based Partners in Education, an independent organization that provides businesses, groups and individuals the opportunity to become personally involved with schools by providing time, talents and resources.
   
Heatherly has spent most of her life surrounded by family and education. Her husband of 25 years, Frank Heatherly, also worked in education throughout Alabama before retiring after 36 years of public service. And while she is proudly settled into her volunteer role as literacy missions coordinator, her role as mother to four adults and their families brings the most pride.
   
Her interest in literacy missions began in early 1990 when she tutored at-risk children in a program at her home church, First Baptist Church of Montgomery.
   
Then in 1992 Richard Alford, an associate in the office of associational/cooperative missions for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, asked Heatherly to be a part of a new North American Mission Board (NAMB) pilot training conference for tutoring children and youth held at Samford University.
   
After the conference, she was one of seven state representatives that developed curriculum used by NAMB in the “National Literacy Tutoring Children and Youth” manual. 
   
She will also lead the National Tutoring Children and Youth Leadership workshop at Oklahoma Baptist University this summer.
   
But Heatherly is not one to boast.  To her, literacy missions is the key that unlocks a productive life for all citizens. 
   
“Literacy is part of the fabric of our lives,” she said. “When we shop, balance a checkbook, pay bills, drive our cars and go to church, we must read.”
   
She emphasizes the importance of reading the Bible, a songbook and church bulletin.  “Church is about reading.  Nonreaders or people who have a low reading ability are hindered and often excluded — even from meaningful worship.”
   
According to her, literacy missions programs in English as a second language, adult reading/writing and tutoring youth and children account for hundreds of baptisms in Alabama every year. “Sunday School classes, Bible studies and even new church congregations have started in Alabama directly as a result of literacy missions,” she said.
   
The foundation for an effective literacy program is Christ and volunteers with a heart for missions, according to Heatherly. “Effective literacy missions tutors need to be Christians with hearts full of love. Tutoring is a missions ministry that can change lives forever, even eternity.”
   
She adds that tutors need to be sensitive to God’s calling and encourages any interested volunteer to contact the Alabama Baptist State Convention for literacy training. “I encourage Christians in every community to attend the 16-hour workshop and then allow God to direct them,” she said.