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Carry on, continue, endure, prevail

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The words in this blog title are all synonyms for “persist”. And they’re all what we hope adult students will do, when they first join our literacy classes. We want them to succeed!

And yet, too often, a student who started well begins to falter. Maybe they miss a class on a dismal, cold, rainy evening, or when the car just wouldn’t start. Perhaps a lower-than-hoped-for test score makes them feel demoralized.

Or maybe we just don’t know why – one week they’re there, and the next week they’re not – and we never see them again.

What’s going on? How do we help ALL our students carry on, continue, endure – and ultimately, prevail?

There have been a lot of studies done on this topic, and often presented to literacy programs in the form of “retention”. You need to work out how to retain your students, some of the popular wisdom goes. 

But the concept of Adult Learner Persistence turns that on its head. Instead of working on ways to make the program do better at retention, how do we find ways to help adult students tap into their own personal motivations to persist?

The New England Literacy Resource Center did a marvelous study on this exact topic in 2008. 15 years later, their findings are still monumentally important and can inform literacy programs of all kinds and in all places. You can read about their findings and download the entire report here – and we encourage you to do so.

But we also want to make it easy for you – so we’re taking a look at the study and its core findings together on Tuesday, September 19. In this free webinar, we’ll look at:

  • Retention vs persistence
  • The 6 Drivers of Persistence:
  1. A Sense of Belonging & Community
  2. Clarity of Purpose
  3. Agency
  4. Competence
  5. Stability
  6. Relevance
  • The role Plain Language plays in Adult Learner Persistence
  • A practical look at the drivers in action

Interested in joining us?

Registration is open now for this free online training event.

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  • Conference updates
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Four Ways to Address Workplace Skills in the Classroom

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This is a guest post from Rob Jenkins of National Geographic Learning.

You can visit their booth at the 2023 Literacy Texas Annual Conference.

workforce skills

Beginning in 1992, the United States developed standards identifying workplace soft skills for workforce preparation. While these standards changed and new ones were introduced, the same underlying skills were always there: critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and technology skills.

Below we discuss four ways to address workplace skills in the Adult Education classroom.

#1 Teach Academic Skills

In workshops I give regularly, I enjoy presenting participants with several workplace skills and then asking them to address which ones might be good skills for students in the classroom. A few of them are: combine ideas and information, make decisions and solve problems, exercise leadership roles, manage time, and complete tasks as assigned.

Of course, the answer participants give is All of them. We suggest that teachers make the obvious link between workplace skills and academic skills as often as they can. Give students opportunities to lead, to manage tasks, and to solve problems.

You can do this in every class, and you might consider incorporating workplace-like simulations where students create projects. In Stand Out, we call these “team projects”. You can find them in every unit.

#2 Teach "Soft Skills"

We teach in context and incorporate soft skills like critical thinking into every lesson, so learning is relevant. These activities are NOT an afterthought that we do if we have time.

Students should be collaborating in every lesson. They should be solving problems regularly, and they should be applying what they have learned.

Of course, students are asked to fill-in the blanks occasionally and participate in dialogs that require substitutions, but if you stop there, student learning will not be as robust as it could be. As mentioned earlier, these soft skills are the skills they will need in the workplace.

An example of a team project from Stand Out, Fourth Edition

#3 Help Students Make Connections

It is not enough to incorporate these previous ideas. Students should be aware of why they are doing what they are doing.

Help them to see the connection between the activity they are doing in the classroom and activities they will be asked to do in the workplace. Point out that they will likely have to work in a team at work and communicate clearly to be successful.

For those not pursuing a job, no problem; these skills also help them in life and college!

#4 Help Students See Their Potential

In my experience, students who are asked at the beginning of the term what their goals are, regularly reply that they want to learn English. When probing deeper, students look confused because they haven’t thought that far ahead. If we are satisfied with these responses, we are doing a disservice to our students.

Students will be more motivated to learn if they have long-term goals. We suggest that teachers look for ways to introduce their students to opportunities. Help them be aware of career choices.

For example, if they are learning about health, we share information about careers like nursing and provide information about average salaries, education, and the size of the workforce. Then we ask them to reflect on what it might be like for them to pursue such a career.

For over thirty years, workforce preparation has been addressed in standards and through funding in the United States. Adult Education programs look for new ways to meet the needs of their students while addressing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).

The simple answer to achieving these goals is through effective instruction. Good teaching, simply stated, is when students are actively participating and developing skills which are relevant to life, college, and career.

sample lesson from Stand Out

To learn more about the fourth edition of Stand Out visit ELTNGL.com/StandOut.

Author: Rob Jenkins

Rob Jenkins is a popular presenter and author of English as a Second Language topics. He is a retired faculty member from Santa Ana College School of Continuing Education where he taught ESL for 27 years and served as faculty development coordinator for 20. He was honored with several faculty awards from his college and the Best Practice of Model Program Award in 2013 from the Association of Community and Continuing Education. Rob and Staci Johnson received the 2013 Heinle Outstanding Achievement Award from National Geographic Learning for their textbook series, Stand Out.

Volunteers filling the gap

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"In a nation whose education system is among the most unequal in the industrialized world, where race and geography play an outsize role in determining one’s path to success, many Americans are being failed twice: first, by public schools that lack qualified teachers, resources for students with disabilities and adequate reading instruction; and next, by the backup system intended to catch those failed by the first."
ProPublica

In December 2022, ProPublica published an article about the ongoing literacy crisis in the United States. This blog post is the third in a series of reflections on that article.

More than 43 million adults in the United States can’t read, write, or do basic math above a third-grade level, and when you look at the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, that number balloons to a staggering 130 million. 

You’d hope that the majority of those folks could be in classes, catching up – but no. Only around 3% of adults who need literacy classes are actually getting them. 

There are many reasons for that – the ProPublica article that inspired this series of blog posts goes into some of them – but a crucial issue is the availability of classes. Whether a class has a cost; whether the location is convenient; whether a prospective student can fit the times into their already packed schedule – these are all factors, along with the availability of instructors.

"We found that in some states, programs keep adults on waitlists, unable to meet demand. Some students succeed in these programs, but many drop out within weeks or months, before they are able to make progress. Students often find themselves in overstuffed classes led by uncertified part-time or volunteer teachers... And most programs across the country lack the specialized staff to help adults with learning disabilities that public schools failed to have diagnosed."
ProPublica

For decades now, when professional instructors aren’t available (or are unaffordable), adult literacy programs have often turned to volunteers. Millions of American adults can read, write, and speak English because of the efforts and dedication of volunteers.

Volunteer support is a core activity for Literacy Texas. Regional symposia, our online resource library, on-demand training and professional development on our YouTube channel – these are investments in the quality of volunteer-led classes around the state.

Because if an adult student is going to organize their work schedule to get to class, and find childcare and the gas money to make it across town and be in their seat every Tuesday and Thursday evening – shouldn’t we offer them the highest quality lesson?

This blog post is a reflection on the ProPublica article, “A Fifth of American Adults Struggle to Read. Why Are We Failing to Teach Them?” Find previous installments here and here.

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  • Conference updates
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The tension between learning and earning

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"In a nation whose education system is among the most unequal in the industrialized world, where race and geography play an outsize role in determining one’s path to success, many Americans are being failed twice: first, by public schools that lack qualified teachers, resources for students with disabilities and adequate reading instruction; and next, by the backup system intended to catch those failed by the first."
ProPublica

In December 2022, ProPublica published an article about the ongoing literacy crisis in the United States. This blog post is one of a series of reflections on that article.

Folks with low literacy usually don’t need someone to point that out to them. They’re usually crucially aware of their lack of skills – and what that lack is stopping them from achieving.

But the devil’s always in the details. Someone might know they need to take a class – but how much will that class cost? How far away is it, and how much will they pay in gas or bus fares to get to and from the class?

Most crucially of all – how does a low-income person fit classes into their week?

ProPublica reporters heard time and again that in communities stricken with low literacy, programs had to close sites because not enough students had enrolled. Meanwhile, more than two dozen adults in these hot spots told us that a lack of transportation or child care or busy work schedules prohibited them from attending classes.
ProPublica

How would you manage that Catch-22? You can’t afford not to work – but all you can get is a minimum-wage position with an inflexible schedule. Maybe you need a second job in order to make rent. Maybe it’s an exhausting job where you’re on your feet all day. And family and home responsibilities like making sure kids do homework, caring for babies or elderly relatives, cooking, cleaning, and laundry don’t take a break.

How do we solve the tension between learning, and earning?

The article highlighted Skills for Life, a Detroit program that provides paid time to learn alongside a city job. It was the turning point for Steve Binion, whose story is outlined in the article. And once someone’s broken the dead-end link of low literacy and low pay, their prospects improve dramatically – along with those of their family and the community.

What can we learn – and emulate – from these programs that work?

This blog post is a reflection on the ProPublica article, “A Fifth of American Adults Struggle to Read. Why Are We Failing to Teach Them?” Find the previous installment here.

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  • Conference updates
  • Regional symposia
  • Online training
  • Advocacy 
  • …more!

When $9 is far from enough

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"In a nation whose education system is among the most unequal in the industrialized world, where race and geography play an outsize role in determining one’s path to success, many Americans are being failed twice: first, by public schools that lack qualified teachers, resources for students with disabilities and adequate reading instruction; and next, by the backup system intended to catch those failed by the first."
ProPublica

In December 2022, ProPublica published an article about the ongoing literacy crisis in the United States. This blog post is the first in a series of reflections on that article.

$9. That’s how much the state of Texas currently allocates for adult education, per eligible student.

What can you buy with $9 these days? That won’t even get you two dozen eggs in most grocery stores. What do we think it can realistically do for the almost 5 million Texas adults in need of literacy help?

Across the United States, only around 3% of the adults who need literacy help are getting it – a figure that holds true for Texas as well. And despite our best efforts across the literacy field – and the valiant intervention of nonprofits, libraries, and other programs to help fill the gap – that number hasn’t changed in any meaningful way in decades.

While we try to figure out what’s to be done, people, families, communities, counties, states, and the entire nation are all suffering. 

"In other wealthy countries, adults with limited education who were born into families with little history of schooling are twice as likely to surpass their parents’ literacy skills. Here, one’s destiny is uniquely entrenched... If there were local programs that could teach adults the reading skills they never got, those parents could help educate their kids and get better jobs... The entire county would benefit."
ProPublica

It’s a sobering picture.

Shouldn’t every person in America have the opportunity to learn to read?

This blog post is a reflection on the ProPublica article, “A Fifth of American Adults Struggle to Read. Why Are We Failing to Teach Them?” Look for more blog posts on this topic in coming weeks.

Get Texas literacy updates

Make sure you’re on our mailing list so you don’t miss any news:

  • Conference updates
  • Regional symposia
  • Online training
  • Advocacy 
  • …more!

Literacy for Joy

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This coming Saturday (February 26, 2022), close to 100 authors, educators, volunteers, and others dedicated to literacy and learning will gather for the first regional symposium of the year – the South Texas Literacy Symposium. 

South Texas usually kicks off our calendar of symposiums, and this year there’s extra delight and anticipation, since the event is back to being in person, and literacy folks from Edinburg, the RGV, and nearby will see each other – some for the first time in a while.

There’s always some added zing to the South Texas symposium, too, because it’s part of FESTIBA – the UTRGV Festival of International Books and Arts. The theme of Festiba in 2022? Inspiring Creativity & Innovation Through Arts and Literacy.

Stop for a moment there. Look at those words in italics. Read them over again. 

Inspiring Creativity & Innovation Through Arts and Literacy.

Literacy is many things. It’s the passport to a better life, through further education and a good job. It’s a way to traverse life with confidence and understanding. For some, it’s a pathway to a brighter future beyond incarceration.

But let’s never forget that literacy is also for joy. It’s for inspiration. It’s for creativity. It’s for innovation. It’s for art.

When we sit alongside adult students and their families as they learn, we’re helping bring joy into their lives. Because whatever else it’s for, literacy makes possible a richness in life that can’t be replaced. And not only is that important – it might actually be one of the most important things.

Interested in joining us at the South Texas Literacy Symposium? Registration closes at the end of the day on February 23. Reading this later and missed out? See our full calendar of 2022 symposiums here and maybe catch another later in the year!

Student Goals

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4 Things You Must Consider When Developing Adult Literacy Curriculum

No matter what age we’re working with, our students learn best when motivated. Whether internal or external, practical or aspirational, the stronger the “why”, the better they perform. As educators, we must never lose sight of this, even as we coordinate our students’ educational goals with various state and federal standards. 

As we set our instructional intentions, we need to keep (among many other things!) these four things in mind:

1) Blended Learning: Don’t just wheel in a television.

Of course, nowadays it’s more likely to be a projector or a Youtube link, but multimedia should no longer be thought of as a supplement. The pandemic provided an opportunity to explore technology as the foundation, as a flexible way to cater a lesson to each student’s needs, learning style, and living situation. The Online Learning Consortium defines blended/hybrid learning as “integrating online with traditional face-to-face class activities in a planned, pedagogically valuable manner.” 

Technology isn’t a novelty anymore. Inside the classroom and out, it’s essential to understand and use it skillfully. 

2) Upskilling: Preparing for the test that matters. 

“Upskilling is the process of acquiring new and relevant competencies needed today and in the near future.” (Digitalhrtech.com) It’s an understatement to say that the world is evolving. People hoping to find meaningful employment need an increasingly diverse set of skills and experience to keep up with this change. Dallas is #3 in the nation for job creation in the tech industry. We need to be aware of these broader changes happening around us and consider how they will affect our student’s goals. That means not only knowing but keeping tabs on our student’s goals, and supporting their needs through how we curate our instruction.

Upskilling can include digital skills (social media, UX/UI), analytics skills (critical thinking, research), soft skills (creativity, persuasion, communication), and many other skills that we’d do well to integrate into our classrooms.

3) Family Literacy: Who’s teaching who?

Teaching an adult means teaching the citizen, the parent, the employee, the friend, and all the other roles that person has taken on in their life. Family literacy means recognizing and fostering the parent’s role as a primary teacher in their children’s lives. Read talk more about the ties of family to literacy in this article. 

4) Health Literacy: The gap between the textbook and real life. 

Specialized language can be difficult even in our mother tongue. One particular area where this is true is with medical jargon, pharmaceuticals, and simply navigating our health system. Simply being able to read complicated instructions doesn’t equal meaningful comprehension. Is there a way to meet your student’s goals, comply with state and federal standards, and address challenges like health literacy that students might not even be aware they must face? 

But how?

You see the importance of these considerations, but creating an effective instructional strategy can be daunting. Thankfully, the 2021 Literacy Texas Annual Conference offers solutions to this challenge. Join us August 2-4 as speaker Ann Beeson presents “Student Goals & Instructional Standards: Coordinating your Curriculum and Instruction for Success”. She offers the resources and strategies you’ll need to keep your student’s goals front and center while also staying on target to achieve external standards.
Visit https://www.literacytexas.org/calendar/2021-literacy-texas-annual-conference/ to register and learn about the other speakers and sessions offered at this extraordinary event.

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