2011 Adult Educator of the Year

The 2011 Adult Educator of the Year award was presented to Karen Stanley.

Karen is an outstanding instructor and provides a very high quality learning environment. With Karen’s encouragement and guidance, her participants have been very successful in continuing their education. She researches and provides participants a variety of options for vocations and successful employment.

Karen is a very positive role model. She never will let her participants say, “I can’t do that” or “I quit.” She always shows them that there is an alternative way to succeed in whatever they are trying to accomplish, and she is their biggest cheerleader.

Karen has overcome many obstacles and great tragedy. When you meet her you never know she has ever had any problems because she is a very positive person.
She lived in Florida the year there were so many deadly hurricanes, one right after the other. After that, she and her husband decided to move back to West Virginia. Karen has also survived the death of her adult daughter, her adult son, and her only sibling, a brother. Then, in 2010 Karen was struck with the devastating loss of her ability to speak.

She never let any of these thing affect her ability to be an effective instructor. Karen became very proactive, and researched ways in which she would be able to continue to be an adult education teacher in the SPOKES (Strategic Planning in Occupational Knowledge for Employment Success) program.

She has been able to adapt her telephone to allow her to answer calls. Karen uses technology for speaking to her students, and she has added voice instruction to each SPOKES module. In addition, she has a tablet that she can write on and answer questions when she works one-on-one with her students.

When asked if there were any side effects concerning the way she was now giving instruction, she said, “. . . the students talk a lot more, and I listen to them more.”
West Virginia’s ABE/SPOKES program is privileged to have such a positive, energetic, caring, intelligent, and successful instructor.