Literacy for its own sake

So after a weekend progressive dinner in our community, I find that some people don't really care how literate they are in some respects. I consider myself fortunate to be in an academic community (in this department) where there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer, and no one literacy to learn. There's so much 'world' out there to learn. From Susan Watson I've learned a lot about teaching English. From Susan - I'm sorry - I keep thinking of you as Susan Gale, and I know I'm wrong - I've learned how much I still have to learn to consider myself educated. From Holly I see how to listen more. From Lisa I learn I have memories to share. From Annie - eventually I'll learn to pronounce your correct name - I learn how much there is in the world that affects so many populations and I see a very different perspective. From Dr. Muth I've learned that my energy is sometimes a good thing. So my generative blog for today is simply to say thank you for opening me up to a new literacy.



Joyce M.

TESOL, Immigration Reform, & Literacy Practice

TESOL Welcomes President's Call for Expanding Education, Immigration Reform Date: 13 February 2013 In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Obama highlighted the vital role that education plays in supporting the U.S. economy. The initiatives outlined in his speech—advancing pre-K education and secondary schools—hold promise, but they will not be fully effective unless they take into account the needs of the fastest growing population of student in U.S. schools: English learners. As President Obama noted, pre-K education has been proven to benefit young learners, and it especially benefits English learners, who are often in need of such services. Expanding the benefit to millions of young learners is overdue. However, the proposed reforms for Pre-K and high school must include resources to support educators and meet the unique needs of English learners. Without expanding the number of trained ESL and bilingual educators and providing training for all educators who work with English learners, these reform efforts will fall short of serving many of the students who could most benefit from them. While most English learners in U.S. schools are born in this country, many of their parents are not, including many who are undocumented. TESOL International Association supports President Obama’s call for comprehensive immigration reform. Many of the reform proposals include learning English among the steps along the path to citizenship for immigrants, and TESOL International Association and its members stand ready to work with the President and Congress to provide these services to those adult English learners who wish to pursue them. The current system for providing English language and civics education, however, is at capacity, with waiting lists in many locations. Immigration reform will likely result in an increased demand for these services. Expanding the current system to meet this demand will be very difficult without additional resources. Immigrant integration is a critical component of comprehensive immigration reform. TESOL International Association therefore strongly urges the President and Congress to include resources for immigration integration, especially English language education, in their proposals. These efforts will help build strong communities that continue the long U.S. tradition of respect for cultural and linguistic diversity.

I found the President's SOTU speech very encouraging, especially on immigration reform!  I predict immigration and citizenship issues will be the TESOL trend for the foreseeable future.  Virginia DOE Office of Adult Education and Literacy published their 5 year strategic plan that specifically addressed English literacy and civics education.  Civics education has 4 components: history, government, citizenship-naturalization, and civic engagement.  The civic engagement component is a broader umbrella that accommodates the kind of critical pedagogy we have approached in ADLT 650.  There is a need for English language learners (ELLs) to use their voice on this issue.  To realize any kind of reform, people need to engage society on this issue.  This is an example of taking literacy into practice, why literacy is action.  This is why I was about to jump out of my seat last Tuesday night!  Anyway, my program just received it's EL/Civics grant, enough to take us through another 6 months.  We operate on the brink, one step at a time.  But, this is what we live for!  This is why, at least in my humble opinion, literacy doesn't belong in the classroom, it belongs out on the streets (Internet, TV, mass media).  If you have  non native speakers/ELLs in any of your programs or work environments, please engage them in conversation on this issue.  Ask for their opinions, what changes they want to see, or how important reform is to them.   I hope it's an important issue for you, too. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this post.   Susan Wa

Working with Adults

I teach adults; working with adults is, in my opinion, more difficult than working with children or adolescents. I have taught Sunday School, coached sports, and led Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts. When you work with children (I will use this word to cover both children and adolescents), there is a definite distinction between the leader of the class and the students. When working with adults, there's a different dynamic. The students know they need to be there, but they're not in the habit of taking instruction from a stranger. People are sometimes better computer learners because there's not the interaction between adults requiring social skills. I have to balance what I need to teach them against getting them to accept me as a teacher. I have five minutes at 8:00 a.m. to make these people trust me. I have to give them confidence that they can learn and make them comfortable enough to take instruction from me. When reading Belfiore, I was struck by how the researchers interacted with the employees. In most cases, the researchers learned, rather than taught. Teaching software requires the ability to teach software, not a redundant statement. I know teachers who couldn't teach software, and software users who couldn't teach it. This class is reminding me of why I enjoy my job.

America's Perfect Storm Part IV

I found America's Perfect Storm unsettling because of something that isn't mentioned. There's a lot of information, data, studies, and recommendations on how to improve literacy in American adults. What isn't addressed in the Policy Information Report is how to help those who don't want to become literate. What about all of the people who don't have the desire to return to school, to learn, to become literate? What about all of the people who are content to get by on what they receive? There are so many people who are living their lives without literacy, without numeracy, and don't want to improve their skills. I become concerned when I read papers that address the lack of resources for those who need to become literate but don't find anything about motivating those people who do not wish to avail themselves of these resources.

I don't know how much television people watch, but I watch more than my share, and watch it during the daytime. There is a capital D Discourse that is in danger. I see a lot of commercials for online universities. I don't know how much people know about these, but basically you pay up front for your degree and then take classes, most of which, if not all, are online. There's a literacy that's being lost in doing this. The commercials take the position that learning isn't always best in a classroom, that "you're an individual and want to learn your way". As I see it, there's a problem with this. There are literacy skills learned in a classroom that aren't learned if the person is never in a classroom for lectures or discussions. In a classroom setting, you learn to listen and you learn to discuss. If everything is done on someone's own time, they never learn the importance of punctuality or politeness. They don't learn the respect for the professor's knowledge. The student is learning information and using their available skills to complete assignments. I learn so much more than what is being taught in class, and I couldn't get that by being in front of a computer. That's my take on it.

Defining Digital Literacy

Adult education programs often fall short of addressing the digital literacy needs of low educated, low literacy English language learners, many of whom may not have Internet access on demand. Adult ed programs do a decent job of providing access through libraries, skill source centers, and adult education settings, however, access is only the beginning. Digital literacy encompasses a skill set that must be learned and practiced so that it can be put to use in an online setting. To that end, digital literacy is a competency for teachers, too. It is not enough to publish lofty goals for adult education programs using buzz words such as 21st century skills or technology integration without a professional development component. The most needy learners require skilled teachers. Program resources devoted to data collection and reporting do not address the digital literacy needs of these learners or their teachers. Valid data and program success, in this writer's opinion, begin with teachers.

I've been following blogs and postings by David Rosen, who pointed me in the direction of a technology self-assessment tool http://www.adultedonline.org/index.cfm If you want to assess your own digital literacy skills / technology integration, give it a try. Furthermore, I am sharing David's definition of digital literacy. I think his words get to the heart of what it means to be digitally literate, for us and our adult learners.

re-posted courtesy of David Rosen  http://davidjrosen.wordpress.com 

At one end of the spectrum digital literacy means basic comfort and competence in using computers, smart phones, electronic tablets, and other web-accessible devices. Toward the other end it means what some call information literacy, the ability to judge the quality of information one receives through electronic means. If literacy is getting meaning from print, then digital literacy is getting basic meaning from what you read — or have read out loud to you – through the use of a digital electronic device. It is also, at the higher end of the spectrum, sorting out wheat from chaff, using the higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

For me digital literacy involves reading widely, keeping informed, knowing when and how to be critical and when to embrace new information, new ideas. It also means how to approach new technologies – hardware and software – skeptically, fearlessly, and with enthusiasm. It means being limber in how one thinks, agile in using technology, expecting as normal seismic shifts in new information and communication tools.

Digital literacy is also fun. Unlike print literacy, we expect through digital literacy to be offered visual and sound embellishments of text. Digital magazines should be beautiful to see and hear. They should be interactive, with opportunities for talking and writing about what we read with others.

Digital literacy opens a door to digital learning. We are seeing the dawn of online courses, digital chautauquas and online study circles. We are also seeing the early stages of using digital technologies to learn anywhere, anytime, and as fast or slowly as one wants, with more easily accessible and better learning resources.

David J. Rosen, Ed.D. is President of Newsome Associates in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. His interests include integrating technology in the adult education classroom, using technology for learning outside the classroom, and education and employment for out-of-school youth. He is an implementation advisor for the Learner Web, a major national adult learner support initiative.

Yahoo! News No Book Library?

Yahoo! News Yahoo News No Book Library

Any thoughts?

Opportunity Index

opportunity index

If you have a few minutes, you might want to check out this link or read more about it in the recent  OVAE newsletter.  The Opportunity Index provides a composite score for each county in the U.S.-- "a measure of opportunity at the community level."  Reduced to numbers, Virginia is ahead of the national average.   Sources are Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau, produced by Opportunity Nation & Social Science Research Council. One of the factors in scoring opportunity is education.  Here's what SSRC says about education:

Access to knowledge is a critical determinant of long-term well-being and is essential to individual freedom, self-determination, and self-sufficiency. Education is critical to people’s real freedom to decide what to do and who to be. Education builds confidence, confers status and dignity, and broadens the horizons of the possible—as well as allowing for the acquisition of skills and credentials. Globalization and technological change have made it extraordinarily difficult for poorly educated Americans to achieve the economic self-sufficiency, peace of mind, and self-respect enabled by a secure livelihood.
Access to knowledge is measured using two indicators: school enrollment for the population age 3 and older, and educational degree attainment for the population 25 years and older. A one-third weight is applied to the enrollment indicator and a two-thirds weight is applied to the degree attainment indicator. Both indicators are from the American Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau.
  
It was not clear to me whether the GED credential is considered degree attainment, or if enrollment in ABE programs is considered "enrolled"  in this methodology.  While I agree 100% that knowledge is the key to long-term success, I question whether we should judge knowledge by degree attainment only.

Jim Crow Adult Literacy Policy?

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/28/163717277/undocumented-students-take-education-underground 

Thank you Susan Watson for setting up this blog. This NPR piece seems like a nice introductory post, since it involves undocumented adult literacy learners, state policies designed to suppress their learning, and one university's attempt to undermine (literally) this policy. It helps put a face on the state of adult literacy policy in the US and the systematic undermining of structures that legitimize our field: a career field (paid positions), rigorous teacher preparation (formal and non formal), and curriculum that recognizes and supports the dignity of learners. 

I recently was told  by an unnamed influential literacy bureaucrat in our state that the problem with the regional budget  proposals submitted last summer was that they are written by "literacy types" rather than business types. So I guess even the few remaining full time adult literacy jobs in the state are off limits to adult liteacy educators. What's going on? Are we a profession, or a charity?