qualities - communities - literacies

Local literacy work in Saint john

2012-01-28T12:25:00.000-04:00

You can dream, so dream out loud.

You know that your time is coming 'round.

So don't let the bastards grind you down.

- U2, Acrobat

In New Brunswick, literacy work is going local, and getting back to its roots.

Part of this is the result of a happy shunning. We only found out the provincial coalition was giving out $100 grants for Family Literacy Day events (seriously guys? $100?) because other people, who were contacted directly, called us up to ask for ideas and direction. Guess we've been exiled. Which is completely okay, because $100 isn't a very big price to pay for not getting co-opted or stage managed.

By the way, everybody around here got frozen out of that other big nation-wide family literacy fund-raiser Raise-A-Reader. As far as I can see, it didn't happen at all in New Brunswick this year (the Irving papers, I suppose, being busy scrounging money for their own in-school literacy program.)

Meanwhile, on the ground here in Saint John, there's family literacy stuff happening all over the place. We sat waiting to give our literacy sub-committee report at a community association meeting last week while six - count 'em - six people representing other organizations stood up to remind people about their own or someone else's seasonal family literacy event. At least eight such events happened or are happening in Saint John. They are happening at schools and community libraries, at seniors' complexes and recreation centres. Best of all, none of these are dependent on some sort of nagging, specially accredited "literacy professionals" taking the lead.

Thirteen years ago, the Saint John Family Literacy Advisory Committee formed up to try and build a network of family literacy resources, supports and programs in our region. Those were grim days - I remember because I was there. A hogshead's worth of promo campaigns and poster contests and Meet Franklin events and Read with Santa photo shoots and workshops and media stunts and celebrity readers later... literacy committees and sub-committees have formed all over the city to deliver neighbourhood libraries and storytent programs and family literacy celebrations and projects of all sorts. Many of these events and activities have been participant led and managed. (They've also been small scale events and projects - too small to get scooped up by the big dogs who are always sniffing around wherever there's money being spent.) That feels like success to me.

It also feels like the turning of a page. As if, maybe now, we hard core literacy workers can get back to doing what we're supposed to be doing.

Cause really, folks, dressing up like Clifford is fine, but for literacy people the work is something more.

It's helping people get better at the reading and writing and basic maths they meet in their everyday lives. It's helping them widen those lives when and how they wish. It's helping them build up strategies to compensate when the literacy barriers are just too high. It's helping them help themselves and their friends and neighbours to get better at reading and writing and basic maths and compensating strategies. It's helping them get past tests and obstructions and unfair treatment; and maybe helping them be a little less unfair toward each other.

All this other stuff - the studies and the surveys and the talking billboards and the Facebook campaigns and the promo parties and the flyers to send home and the television adverts and the round tables and the bookmarks and the grand openings and the sad, sorry shut downs - is just echo and noise. Echo and noise.

Meetings and networking are still important. Over the last year we - a sort of unofficial "we" of like-minded literacy people - have become more active in sharing, filling the local vacuum created as the LCNB slowly implodes. As well, professional development and resource creation are still important - we're doing some of that, too.

But the real thing is the work - the things you and I do and say when we’re sitting across the table from, or side by side on the sofa with, another human being.

It may sound silly, in a time of contracting social spending and an economic downturn, but I think 2012 is going to be a good year for literacy work - adult, family, community - here in Saint John.

:)

They'll name a city after us, and later say it's all our faultThen they'll give us a talking to, then they'll give us a talking toBecause they've got years of experience
- Regina Spektor, Us

Ordinary math

2012-01-23T20:13:00.000-04:00

"So... why is the 8 silent?" she asked.

Which has to be my favourite math question in months. I absolutely love helping people solve the mysteries of ordinary maths.

Family literacy, 2012

2012-01-21T23:27:00.000-04:00

I fielded a call at work the other evening. A mom was calling on behalf of her adult daughter. They wanted to set up an appointment to see about getting some GED-prep help. The daughter had hearing problems; not severe, but enough to make telephone calls challenging. So, her mom was helping out. I took the mom's name and number, and promised a call-back.

Family Literacy Day is nearly upon us again.

Developed (and since trademarked) by the umbrella group ABC Life Literacy Canada in 1999, this event "aims to celebrate adults and children reading and learning together, and to encourage Canadians to spend at least 15 minutes enjoying a learning activity as a family every day. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians across the country participate in this initiative in their homes and communities every year” (Literacy Alberta).

I've got to say, it's nice seeing Alberta recognize that Family Literacy Day can be celebrated in the home. Even nicer, Calgary's Further Education Society is hosting "its annual, week-long Reading Challenge."

During the week of Family Literacy Day, for every 15 minutes that a book is read or a story shared, we ask the public to visit our website and press the website “button” to add minutes to our reading tally.

By this point - January 21st - organizations all across the country have made their FLD plans. This week, the focus will be on promotion and recruitment - getting those families out to celebrate at the school or the resource centre or the mall or the town hall. (I've think I'm doing something with a seniors' library and maybe doing a gig with Geronimo Stilton.) These events will promote reading and related literacies, generate some news, and offer a nice bit of community warmth in the midst of our ever-bleak, Canadian post-Christmas chill.

Anyway, I was saying... I took the mom's name and number, and promised a call-back. I let her know she could tag along with her daughter for that first appointment - something I wouldn't normally have said - but the mom doubted that would be needed. She just wanted to help out with the phone call.

Later, I thought about that.

It's been a pet peeve of mine that so often Family Literacy Day celebrations are chiefly for and about families with young children. Sometimes, they seem to be almost purely for the children - as though family literacy and early childhood learning were synonymous. There are very few events or activities - Calgary excepted (Yay!) - where a family with teenagers would feel engaged.

We talk and write about the importance of the family in the nurturing of literacy and learning, but we sometimes act as though we believe the family's role ended when children turn 14. I don't think most of us do believe that - but we sure act like it.

Raise your hand if the family literacy event you'll be attending has a meaningful component for non-parents aged 14 to 34. (Put your hand down, Calgary.)

At work, where I offer adult literacy support and adult basic education (/GED-prep), I sometimes support my learrners' roles as parents or primary caregivers. Lending levelled children's books is probably the most obvious way I do that, but I also provide easier-to-read parenting and child development information and help people look up information about school or health issues.

But I almost never think of my adult learners as offspring. In fact, I'm very skilled at ensuring the parents of my learners are utterly excluded from what happens in my class. I'm skilled at it, and I pat myself on the back for treating 18 and 19 and 20 year-olds like independent, isolated adults.

Maybe that's been a mistake.

Look, there are lots of instances where parents so interfere with and undermine their kids that my learners, and everyone else in the building, applaud my tricks for getting Mom or Dad out the door. But where people live together as a family - say, older children living at home, caring for or being cared for by, their parents - why wouldn't I recognize the dimensions of family literacy in their lives?

Yes, it's harder. It's much, much easier for me as a facilitator to treat my learners as stand-alone units. Anyone who has worked in daycares or preschools or the elementary school system knows that parents are frequently whacky, demanding and unpredictable. So what? When did Best Practice become Things That Are Easier?

I don't know. I've got more questions than answers right now. And I haven't got much else to say.

Except it's coming up on Family Literacy Day, and what is easy for most of us is organizing an event for parents of young children, reading some Robert Munsch, giving away some books from last year's Scholastic book fair, and then giving everybody a Chinese-made ABC Life Literacy Canada pencil and a piece of pound cake.

If you want something harder, think about that quote from Literacy Alberta: "celebrate adults and children reading and learning together, and to encourage Canadians to spend at least 15 minutes enjoying a learning activity as a family every day." Now think about what your practice would look like if you were to take seriously your adult learners' lives as somebody else's kids, and if all your literacy work was, somehow, about "learning... as a family", about family literacy work.

Why I left Google+

2012-01-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

But it's getting harder to grin and bear it. I've been a happy Google ~~customer~~ product for a long time, because Google tools used to enhance the Internet. But as Google ships "the Google part" of its new Google+ identity, it's breaking the Web it once helped build.

Jon Mitchell, Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet, RWW

I dumped my Google+ account today. I'm hoping it won't pose problems for my other Google services (Blogger, Youtube, Gmail, etc.).

The last straw was what happened after I created a small album of Christmas photos on the service. The pictures went up, and were posted in an odd order (maybe the order I uploaded them?) which I couldn't find a way to edit. But then, other pictures appeared on my Google+ profile.

I should explain that Google, which runs Google+, also runs a photo-hosting service called Picasa. I have pictures in Picasa, because each time I put pictures in a blog post, like this one, Google hosts those pictures on Picasa. These pictures are semi-public, visible to anyone with the link - something needed for them to appear on Blogger - but not really accessible for browsing.

This morning, after my Christmas album went up on Google+, all these other albums appeared as well. Some showed up as private, visible only to me. Some surprised me by being set as "public", visible to anyone on the web. Many were semi-private. But there they all were. I struggled for awhile trying to figure out who could see what. I tried to learn how - and if - I could adjust my Google+ photo privacy settings without breaking the link between Picasa and Blogger. Failing at that, I tried to find some way to hide or turn off my Google+ photo tab altogether... and then I got fed up.

I don't want to have to do this. I don't want to worry. Not for the likes of Google+, anyway.

There isn't much reason for me to be on Google+. It isn't bringing anymore traffic to my blog, and doesn't aid in blogging. (Itself, it is a poor blogging tool: I'd rather use Blogger.) My friends and family share on Facebook, so it doesn't help with that sort of keeping in touch. The Facebook-like Google+ newsfeed is clumsy and hard to scale - it doesn't compare to how Twitter uses brief text-posts to keep me up-to-date with my community and local news outlets.

By the way, one of the nicest things about Facebook - which seriously doesn't have that many nice things - is its ability to show you what your page or profile looks like to someone else. Show me what my profile looks like to my mom, or my boss, or a complete stranger, you can say, and it will. That's a great feature for controlling who sees what.

Google+ didn't offer that, or much else of value. What it was offering was yet another opportunity for some sort of privacy error or web-gaffe. Share once, share forever is a bad plan. Google+ is just too clumsy, big and powerful.

I'm just hoping I've made it out with my email, blog and Youtube accounts intact.

Blogging on adult literacy, 2011

2011-12-31T15:03:00.001-04:00

and as usual this “academic” study uses assumptions which promote the economic interests of those who funded it.
Craig Murray, 2012 - Year of Crash and Opportunity

This involves the principle, of its nature alien to Socialism, that you must not protest against an evil which you cannot prevent.
Orwell, As I Please, 40 (1944)

1.
My Christmas reading has been the second volume of Hans Küng's biography, Disputed Truth. The book is thick with names from my wasted youth - von Balthasar and Claude Geffré, Raymond Brown and Walter Kasper, Karl Rahner and Yves Congar, J-B Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg - all the theologians who bewitched and bewildered me for a handful of years until, thank Marx, the political economists gave me a good shake and I went to work at a gas station.

This time, I find myself reading for the story of how theology has been shaped and driven by power relations in society. This is not a particularly religious story. It's part of a 600 year old story of Western humanities and sciences and the myths we create around these. This one strand of that story, tracing the relations between university theology, officially sanctioned beliefs, pastoral work and economics (which, we seldom remember, used to be a subsection of ethics) is my home country. But someone else could do the same thing by examining, say, psychological theories, practical counseling and psychiatry, the regulation of service providers and key socio-economic developments; or, say, the study of astro-physics, the historical links between NASA and the military, and the corresponding industrial-military economies. No matter what the strand, the story is always of the over-riding influence of political wealth and power on both intellectual theory and application, and the deceits good people use to avoid acknowledging this.

2.
Earlier this month, Michael Lind wrote a brief, exasperated Salon post in the wake of Christopher Hitchen's death and the tributes that followed. I don't know much about Hitchens - the only work of his I recall reading was his treatment of Orwell, Why Orwell Matters, which I found slight and odd and rather less interesting than almost any of Orwell's own essays - but one part of Lind's post hooked me. He writes:

But though he played one on TV, Hitchens was not an intellectual, if the word has any meaning anymore. Those known by the somewhat awkward term “public intellectuals” can be based in the professoriate, the nonprofit sector, or journalism. They can even be politicians, like the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But genuine intellectuals, as distinct from mere commentators or TV talking heads, need to meet two tests.

First, intellectuals need to produce some substantial works of scholarship, literature or rigorous reporting, distinct from the public affairs commentary for which they may be best known to a broad public. If you do nothing but review other people’s work or write brief columns or blog posts, it is easy to appear to be much smarter and erudite than you really are.

Second, genuine intellectuals base their interventions in public debate on the basis of some coherent view of the world. A dedication to rigorous and systematic reasoning, wherever it may lead, is what distinguishes intellectuals from lobbyists or partisan spin doctors who change their views according to the demands of a special interest or a party. It also distinguishes them from mere “contrarians” — the term Hitchens used to describe himself — who attract publicity by taking controversial stands according to their whims.

- Hitchens, gossip columnist of genius

It is often said of bloggers that they are "mere commentators" or "mere 'contrarians'” who "review other people’s work or write brief columns or blog posts" occasionally attracting "publicity by taking controversial stands according to their whims."

What Lind, and others, would rather see is "some substantial works of scholarship, literature or rigorous reporting" based on "some coherent view of the world." A body of work, in other words, that is both internally consistent - the parts and pieces fit together and all point in the same direction - and that is more than derivative, more than talking about what someone else said or wrote.

I'm not convinced that publishing papers (but where?) or a book would constitute something more substantial than this blog. All the same, I tend to agree that the format helps me "appear to be much smarter and erudite" than I am. And it's less tightly organized than it might be; the themes and learning too scattered to allow easy access.

In fact, I'm not quite sure what the point of the blog is. In the past, people have written me, thanking me for what I write. I'm flattered, of course, but unconvinced. I suspect I mostly offer a sort of gruff, entertaining cheer-leading that says out loud all the sarcastic things we can't say in staff or funder meetings. I would rather be a source of comfort and encouragement for those who work alone in scattered neighbourhoods or outside our cities. But I'm probably too self-absorbed and grumpy for that.

3.
What to make of the blog, then, as we roll over into 2012? What's the point of it all? Do I just plod on, adjusting to changing economic circumstances, contributing to... what? What's the goal? How will I know when I'm done?

For that matter, how would I know if I was done with literacy itself?

I mentioned some papers I was reading and wanting to talk about (see here). Since then, I've done precious little writing about them, but did manage to add five more papers to the pile. These are, largely, way-point papers: they sum up where we are now in adult literacy work. A few also offer a bit of history, though it tends to be lukewarm.

I've long wanted to read a proper critical, political-economy of adult and family literacy work in Canada. We, too, have university-sanctioned and officially funded theories and histories that fit only poorly with front-line practice and memories. We, too, get shoved about by economic and political currents, adjust to our new course, and then, frequently, tell ourselves fairy tales to ward off despair. Sadly, I'm not competent to write a political-economy of Canadian literacy work. At best, I know enough to contribute. (I've an outline sketched out on a scrap of paper someplace around here, and written bits like this December 31st 2010 post.) I also want to create an account of literacy work in New Brunswick since 1980, which chiefly involves interviewing some people before they forget who said what to whom. But, in any case, these are hardly the topics for an 800 word blog post.

The thing I'm least likely to do is also the most helpful thing I could do: produce an honest, day-by-day account of frontline adult literacy and basic education work. There's too much self-censorship for that (chiefly due to a backdrop of government funding and stage management), and anyway I can't resist big idea writing. I will probably always tell the little stories, but there are gaps in my narrative that make it an unreliable record of failure and success.

Mind you, there are things I still want to say. I want to write about accountability and assessment. I would like to make an effort to better promote or defend my adopted theory - theories? - of adult learning and reading, of effective classroom design and management, and of my use of Choice Theory in my work.

And I very much want to speak to some of the larger themes of literacy theory and history in Canada. I want to explain, again, why universities aren't our friend, why we should shut up about Freire, why no politician will ever listen to research finding, why umbrella organizations need to be called to account, why... well, why a bunch of stuff.

I still want to write, and so I'll probably continue to blog for some time yet.

Still.

I do wish you would write. Even if you wrote badly, just once a week, I'd like to know what you're thinking, what you're doing, what you're going to do next, what you wish you could do but can't.

You know, when other people don't "write brief columns or blog posts" it's also "easy to appear to be much smarter and erudite than you really are."

I'm just saying. I'd do more and better if you did some too.

Okay. That's enough earnestness for now. I'm going across the street for a couple of bottles of Birell's malt. You should, too.

Happy New Year's, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Tests make us crazy

2011-12-19T14:36:00.000-04:00

If you don’t realize it’s crazy, If you can’t understand the source
Don’t reach too fast for the answers, ‘Cause it gets worse
- Headstones, Unsound

Some of us act crazy when we meet tests. Call it test anxiety or emotionality or whatever - it is a curious phenomenon.

We recently held a mock GED write at one of my workplaces. Though only one learner actually had a seizure, almost all of them suffered enough stress to score well below what their classwork would predict. This included people who had written the same indicator test in the same setting surrounded by many of the same people. The mock invigilator also reported feeling a growing sense of anxiety as the testing progressed. (I confess to pacing a bit outside the room, but mostly I was successful at distracting myself with paperwork and such.)

The tests had absolutely no significance. They really were "pretend" things. We aren't empowered to certify learners, and had no intention of treating them differently based on their results. We weren't even particularly interested in recording their results. We did it purely for the experience, and in the hope that it might lessen some of the anxiety they felt on the day of the real tests.

There was some last minute cramming, which is interesting given the GED's deliberate focus away from testing memory. For the most part, these are skill-based, multiple choice tests in which learners draw facts, inference or conclusions from information presented as prose, maps, charts or diagrams. The tests go so far as to provide common math formulas and calculator instructions. In other words, there's just not that much to remember.

There was also a certain amount of... um... piety or superstition or mysticism going on. A couple of my learners expressed the view that they "felt" they were going to pass "at least two" without being sure which two. They hoped - hard - for the best. Even I, when I had a chance to mark my learners' tests after work, made sure I was listening to positive music I particularly enjoyed. The next day, when it emerged that I had two more to mark, I remember feeling a spark of worry that I wouldn't be able to play my music loudly enough for them to receive the positive vibes or... whatever.

We go crazy when it comes to tests.

Here's one more thought.

I came to this work via basic adult literacy. In that domain, I was always aware of the level of textual or mathematical difficulty my learners were able to deal with comfortably. In the jargon of the work, I knew their independent literacy and numeracy levels. In point of fact - probably due to the advantage that comes with doing tasks in context - my learners often functioned at a higher level when they were out in the real world. But the point is, I knew how they were doing (as did they).

But when it comes to GED testing, I have no sure knowledge of how well they will perform. A few people do better than expected: most do worse. And the cause of this seems to have nothing to do with the content of our classwork.

I marked my learners mock GED tests with hope and trepidation and a carefully created WMP playlist because I really didn't know how well they would do even though they were people I knew well and had worked closely with over weeks and months and even years. I mean, I knew what they knew in terms of science or social studies or geometry. I just didn't know how they would test.

Tests are strange things. They make the world a strange place. They make strangers of us to each other.

Like you, I've read lots about test anxiety and stuffed my learners with Good Advice. That rarely does much good, can't hold a candle to our deep-seated superstitions, and runs the real risk of blaming the victims.

I mean, I'm a sensible, grown man, and yet I was worried about marking the tests while not listening to the Headstones. Deep breathing and positive self-reinforcement don't cure crazy like that.

Adult ed: You're doing it wrong

2011-12-14T16:04:00.002-04:00

[This] hands-on learning event... will model instructional design processes and address:
* Why should you care about learning styles? How do you deal with the issue?
* Why is the learning cycle the foundation of training? How do you build a cycle?
* When do you start planning the evaluation piece? What are some tools?

Whether you are an instructional designer, manager, consultant, or other training professional, this session will help you to inform your clients or leadership team about the need for solid instructional design in any training program.
- advert for training session

Yeah, um... no. This session wasn't hands on and it didn't do any of that.

I'm a little skeptical of adult learning principles (see here). Still, the principles can be useful insofar as they give us things to think about and encourage us to do a better job. And you, sir, could use some encouragement.

Let's start with "learning styles" - which, by the way, aren't really an "issue". Adult Learning Principles remind us to deliver information in a variety of ways so we can communicate better with an audience made up of people who learn best in different ways (seeing, hearing, talking, writing, doing and so on). Talk about it, but also write it out. Put up a chart, but also explain it verbally. Give people a chance to talk about it with themselves, each other or you. Allow them time and space to write it down, or to doodle thoughts across someone else's writing. Offer reflection time and reflective questions. Write out or talk through some scenarios, or offer exercises to allow people to apply ideas. Make sure you present ideas by moving from the individual to the general, and also from the general to the individual. And check in often. Ask, "Is that enough information?" "Do you need to see that again?"

What you can't do "about" learning styles is fit them individually into different slots in a linear learning process (often oddly referred to as a "learning cycle") such as ERGA or Experience - Reflection - Generalization - Application. You can't, as you proposed, offer something for the divergers in one stage, something for the convergers in the next, and then provide something for the assimilators. You can't make the first third of your process attractive to auditory learners, tailor the second third to visual learners, and wrap up with a kinesthetic third. If it's anything, ERGA is a unitary process. Nobody learns by attending to only one stage or step: all your learners have to pass through all the stages.

And what to say about your surprise announcement, "When we did the crossword puzzle, that was the experiential, hands-on learning piece..."?

Seriously? I thought the puzzle was an ice breaker. Dude, experiential learning has to be more than token. People may be surprised to find they've done hands on learning, but they should never be surprised to discover that their learning was hands on.

Nor does writing a sentence or phrase inside a picture of a sticky-note, twice, constitute two other instances of hands on learning. You might as well have said that "hands on learning takes place wherever learners have hands." (And let me just slip in here my suspicion that this odd reduction of hands on learning to writing is an out-growth of elearning systems that preclude practical, tactile, hands on experiences.)

By the way, even if you're not doing an ice-breaker, it helps if you find out something about your audience, and allow your audience to meet one another. The whole tone of the workshop would have struck me as exceedingly rude if I hadn't recognized the motif: the expert professor standing in front of his class.

Another free tip: don't serve a heavy, all-carb lunch immediately before you deliver a talk-heavy workshop in a room where the windows won't open. (And, yes, knowing your room in advance is also part of your responsibility.)

And maybe you didn't realize that, in a professional workshop setting, important written information needs to be available as handouts - handouts which mirror the powerpoints or wall-mounted, pre-prepared flip chart paper. And that flip chart paper needs to work with the actual sight-lines of the room. If it is not important, then don't bother us with it. In any case, if you find yourself saying to a full quarter of your audience, "Some of you at the back may need to stand up over here to see these [sheets of flip chart paper]" then you've pretty much failed.

(Please note: a trite "I don't do powerpoints" in no way excuses you from doing something useful for visual learners.)

While we're on the topic of prep, neither a 90 minute infomercial for your course, or a listing of the salient points good trainers (allegedly) need to be aware of, really counts as a learning experience - unless, I suppose, people came to learn about your course and, you know, a bullet-point version of all the terms you think people ought to know. Dude, if you have too much information to deal with appropriately in 90 minutes, plan to deal with less. Better to make one point well than to offer a cursorily look at a whole host.

You know, even an old fashioned lecture or essay provides a clear introduction, middle and conclusion. Done well, these provide concrete examples to illustrate generalized ideas. They use a minimum of acronym-laced jargon. They give their audience or readers every opportunity to divine what they are about to tell them, what they are telling them, and what they told them. You didn't seem to do any intro or wrap-up at all.

Oh, and this isn't university, so stop telling me that I have to use your model "or one very like it." I do serious work with serious people. Models either help me with that - and a helpful model is self-evident - or they make more paper piled up on the side of my desk. Let me say that again: helpful models are self-evidently helpful.

Telling me that, if you came to evaluate my program, the model is all you would be concerned with, only tells me you pretty-much missed the point of evaluation.

While we're talking evaluation..... Yes, evaluation is important, and it needs to be thought about from the very beginning. That's the not very interesting answer to "When do you start planning the evaluation piece?" But your idea that we ought to plan out our evaluation before we plan out our learning goals is not a formula for success: it's a formula for fraud.

Moreover, learning goals are best co-constructed. (Among other things this helps get around the sticky question of who determines the "needs" in a "needs assessment".) Even when certification is involved, quality facilitators - and I do mean facilitators, not testers - find out what learners already know and what they want to learn, how they feel they learn best, and how they want the facilitator to check in on the effectiveness of their learning.

Speaking of evaluation, in a workshop setting, it may be possible to ask people what they want to get out of it. That is, I think, the ideal. But it may not be possible, and that's okay too. But there really is no excuse for not checking in with people about whether or not they understand what you're saying, or have questions, or even care enough about it to go on.... And if you're going to trash the "happy, sad, mad" type of evaluation, you ought to have something to replace it that's more sophisticated than "Give me one word that sums up this workshop for you." [Up-date: on promised web evaluation; see below]

Was the workshop a complete waste of time? Um.. yeah. It mishandled learning styles, had a questionable take on evaluation, over-emphasized the value of models, and ignored key factors like positive relationships, a safe, nurturing environment, an individualized curriculum, and the opportunity for learners to experience and build upon small successes and shared, positive adventures.

But it did call attention to two interesting challenges.

One is the issue of clients. Who is the client in a classroom or workshop or training setting? Is it the learner who has come to learn, or the funder who is paying for the service? You touched on that when you acknowledged that at any moment "the Minister of Whatever" can declare a training need and expect us to move to meet it. But you blustered on saying something about how knowing the theory helped win some battles or not lose as many or something, and off we went to your world of theory.

I think you're wrong. I don't think knowledge of theories or research papers or acronyms are at all useful when it comes to dealing with the Minister of Whatever and his Business Roundtable on Social Spending buddies. I don't think it answers questions like "Who is the client?" or "What do we do when the wants and needs of the learner don't match the wants and needs of the funder?" And I think those are really important questions.

The other challenge or problem has to do with the fact that most of us know what, in theory, we ought to be doing, but frequently do something else. Why? Is the theory wrong? Are we lazy or light headed? Do we lack moral courage or critical faculties? What are the forces at work - from without or within - that stand between all those "best practice" papers and our actual, day-to-day practice?

We need to know if we want real change.

I'm not great at short-session training. But even on my worst day, I've never presented a workshop as badly as that fellow did. They say he's director of a Diploma in Adult Education program at a university, as well as a long-time consultant in the adult training industry. Gawd help the adult training industry.

"CSTD does not issue refunds."

No, I shouldn't think so. Not with product like this.

Update

I was offered a chance to complete an online evaluation form, but it started with, "Your information (Required)." Yes? My information? Do you mean my workshop registration number? 766803?

No. You want my email address (again) and my phone number. Because phone numbers are important for evaluations because... Yeah, um... no. Don't call. It's not me, it's you.

(Losers.)

Christmas events 2011 (Part 2)

2011-12-13T09:45:00.000-04:00

Another Saturday, another couple of Christmas parties. Actually, I only worked one of them - "worked" being a silly word for the pleasantries of sharing a book or a carol in the afternoon sun - and forced my colleague to race off to read Night Before Christmas to the several hundred kids at the other one.

We did our colouring - reading - crafting corner thing again for a crowd of 40 - 50 kids and their parents. Two volunteers tended the crafting table, another the colouring table, and I gladly curled up in the reading corner. We had a passel of Christmas books of greater and lesser quality (as well as one or two board books, like Miss Mary Mack, that were just too popular to not take). The clear favourites were How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the real one) and Disney's Christmas Sing Along.

Kids wandered in and out of the corner. The most I ever had reading around me was eight, but I was never alone. At one point, a little girl came and sat down, picked up a Franklin Christmas story, and gamely said, "Let's see if I can sound this one out." Fearing that she couldn't - I remembered her from the summer - I encouraged her to read me Tale of the Christmas Mouse. She did, twice, and we moved on to other things.

And here's what stuck with me; this: in the middle of a Christmas party with cookies and colouring, stickers and markers and friends, she chose to take time to practice her reading.

Kids like to read, I swear they do. Kids like to read, and they like to work hard at reading more and reading better. Kids like to read.

If they don't, where they don't, it's because some adult has worked very, very hard to achieve that end.

Not literacy - more and better jobs

2011-12-12T16:28:00.001-04:00

It is ironic, though, that this OECD report (emanating from the employment and social policy side of the organization, DELSA) flags as the underlying causes of inequality precisely those policies which the economic side (ECO) advocated for so strenuously through at least the 1990s and much of the past decade as well.
...[The] first OECD Jobs Study of the early 1990s are prepared by ECO and advocated “flexible” labour markets to generate jobs. The key argument was that employment growth required labour market de-regulation, and that we should not be too concerned if the jobs being created were insecure and poorly paid. Relatedly, reports advocated major cuts to unemployment insurance and welfare programs which were seen as needed to make wages flexible and to reduce taxes. ... [Now] they tell us that the Canadian tax/transfer system offsets only 40% of any increase in market income inequality – one of the lowest proportions in the OECD – compared to 70% in the mid 1990s when Canada’s redistributive effort was at near Nordic levels!
Andrew Jackson, Mind the OECD Credibility Gap

You can read this in the CBC Business story, Wealth gap widens to 30-year high:

"Our report clearly indicates that upskilling of the workforce is by far the most powerful instrument to counter rising income inequality," [OECD Secretary General Angel] Gurría said. "The investment in people must begin in early childhood and be followed through into formal education and work."

It led some literacy people (who ought to have known better) to repeat the mischief that people are poor or struggling because they are under-educated. Tweeted one in-cautious soul:

As the rich-poor gap widens, Workplace Education is the most powerful instrument to counter rising income inequality. cbc.ca/news/business/…

But that's not what the report says; not in whole, and not in specific reference to Canada. What it says is, "Employment is the most promising way of tackling inequality. The biggest challenge is creating more and better jobs that offer good career prospects and a real chance to people to escape poverty," and "Reforming tax and benefit policies is the most direct instrument for increasing redistributive effects."

Most promising way? More and better jobs.

Most direct instrument? Reforming (a.k.a., "raising") taxes.

Certainly, education and/or workplace retraining are important. But we need to be very careful with statements like "Investing in human capital is key." Citizens are not "human capital." They are human beings: human beings who live here and raise families here and die here. If you really see them as "capital", as part of the cash, goods, property and other assets owned by a business, then fuck you.

Too, the statement "there must be sufficient incentives for workers and employers to invest in skills throughout the working life" fits very nicely with the ideas like subsidizing on-the-job training (to the benefit of the wealthy) while reducing or ending employment insurance or social assistance payments (to the determent of the poor)."The provision of freely accessible and high-quality public services, such as education, health, and family care, is important," they write. Yes it is. But only if "freely accessible" is not limited to employment-related programs and services, or schemes for convincing HDRCanada to pay for provincial programs.

I'm not very interested in anything the OECD says, by the way. I think we've allowed an awful lot of damage to be done to our nation by people who were happy to use shallow, jargon-laced OECS reports for cover. We don't gain anything by continuing to pay attention to what is in essence a lobby group for international banking and business interests.

But if you're interested, here's the "Key policy recommendations for OECD countries from Divided We Stand" section of the two-page COUNTRY NOTE: CANADA

Employment is the most promising way of tackling inequality. The biggest challenge is creating more and better jobs that offer good career prospects and a real chance to people to escape poverty.
Investing in human capital is key. This must begin from early childhood and be sustained through compulsory education. Once the transition from school to work has been accomplished, there must be sufficient incentives for workers and employers to invest in skills throughout the working life.
Reforming tax and benefit policies is the most direct instrument for increasing redistributive effects. Large and persistent losses in low-income groups following recessions underline the importance of government transfers and well-conceived income-support policies.
The growing share of income going to top earners means that this group now has a greater capacity to pay taxes. In this context governments may re-examine the redistributive role of taxation to ensure that wealthier individuals contribute their fair share of the tax burden.
The provision of freely accessible and high-quality public services, such as education, health, and family care, is important.

OECD (2011), Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising

A program that works (even when we're grumpy)

2011-12-07T10:07:00.001-04:00

It started off a lousy rotten day - wet and dark and gray as grimm - and nothing much changed the whole way through. (I got especially depressed after lunch, reading Matt Taibbi's Griftopia.)

When suppertime came, neither one of us was much in the mood for dragging our asses and the bookwagon through porridge-cold puddles. I mean, we really didn't want to go out there. Not even the Christmas lights helped: everything seemed dull and flat and lousy. I'd have taken a bitter, bedraggled picture for you but I forgot my camera. The first wagon of our ninth year - a wet, dark, lousy, rotten night. And our feet were wet.

Still, we went. Two little kids borrowed straight off. (Rotten kids.) And then a young mom yelled after us from her stoop: "Can we borrow some books?" And another mom borrowed John Saul books. (Whatever.) And a dad was excited to see the Frosty the Snowman board book. And somebody yelled that our Christmas lights looked great. (Idiots.) And a mom was grateful for the leveled books we brought for her and her son. He had moved up from Level A to Level D, she said. "I'm so proud of him." (Yeah, yeah. Did I mention our feet?)

Little kids borrowing - kids so small they can hardly stand - insisting on this book not that one. And parents saying but that's the one we just put back, and kids not caring one bit because that's the book they want. Kids not even born when we started the program. (What do they care if our feet are wet!) An eleven year old wandered up looking to borrow a chapter book - it was then we realized we'd forgotten to put the chapter book box on - and took something from the 12+ box. Some more parents, some more kids. We stopped to pick up some returns and found two Christmas cards addressed to us tucked in among them. (Humbug!)

Lousy, wet, dark, rotten....

Christmas events 2011 (Part 1)

2011-12-04T13:17:00.001-04:00

We've had our first Christmas wagon of the year, and our first Christmas party.

We used the little Eliminator battery to run coloured LED lights again, though I want to do more decorating. (As with last year, we tucked the powerbox into a plastic box with a notch cut in the side.) After we got going, I noticed our larger LED lights are running low (batteries, I suppose) and I forgot my flashlight so it was still too dark for proper browsing. All the same, we attracted some positive comment and lent out a passel of books on doorsteps.

We went to the Christmas party not quite sure what role we were to play. (The ask was, "Would you come and read?") It turned out they wanted a storytent-style book corner, which was okay with us. We had few kids sit and read - this was in a neighbourhood we visit only once or twice a year, so families don't know us well - and one adult engage us to ask an adult learning program. But that's what event-tents are like, and we're okay with it.

The party featured a delightful little-kids' choir, as well as Bernard the Magician. It was interesting watching Bernard work and adapt to his young audience. As the show went on, he used fewer puns, and went with more slap-stick. He called out volunteers, supported them to ensure they were successful, and gave the larger audience cues for when to clap and exclaim - four and five year olds learning how to be the audience of a magic show. I found myself thinking of it as a learning event. He had to adapt to his environment and audience to reach his objectives: they, too, had to adjust their behaviour to work with him toward the common goal of an entertaining show.

Later today, I'm going over to the office to prep for next weekend's parties (we're taking part in two) and add to the wagon's decorations. I also want to dig out decorations for my classroom so we can start decorating on Monday.

'Tis the season.

Papers about adult literacy work

2011-12-02T11:00:00.001-04:00

As you know, I took a small and possibly annoying part in the "Beyond the IALS" conversation. Tannis was on there and posted a number of papers from this year's "Practitioner perspectives on the changing landscape of adult literacy," an Adult Education Research Conference institute or conference or some-such. (To see a host of interesting conference papers, see here.)

I've been reading three of those papers repeatedly and concurrently. Weaving the stories of one through the prism of the others: finding plainly stated in one what the others hinted at. If we had time, if we were in one of those comfortable restaurants where they didn't mind you lingering long after the meal (and had a handy flip chart) we could talk about them and the many, many ideas they hold. But, alas, we are not. And I confess to not being quite sure how to start.

Well, maybe I can start by telling you about them.

The paper that first caught my eye was Certification for what? Practitioner perspectives on the changing landscape of adult literacy education by Suzanne Smythe of Simon Fraser University. I found this to be a wonderful, short, thought-provoking paper demanding happy and angry and sad and emphatic margin notes.

I next read Essentializing the experiences and expertise of adult literacy educators by Christine Pinsent-Johnson. This paper talks about the way the new Essential Skills framework - and, to a lesser degree, IALS testing methodology - are changing the way facilitators are taught and/or required to support literacy learning, "discounting both research and practice based knowledge of literacy and adult learning."

That last paper made repeated reference to Richard Darville's work, so I moved straightway to reading his Unfolding the adult literacy regime. In the abstract, he writes, "A quarter-century’s development of a regime that promotes and regulates adult literacy has diminished the space for responsive and relational literacy work." Here, "regime" has the precise meaning of a system of control or management made up of related assumptions, regulations and power relationships. Darville suggests "an ensemble of governmental, administrative, academic and media processes" determine this regime; and though I am not confident he succeeds in "mapping their connections" he at least acknowledges that what happens in Canadian literacy classrooms is increasingly determined by the media, far away think-tanks focused on trade and international economic development, civil servants, and pollsters.

I've stuck these papers up on Google Docs, not out of any disrespect to the AERC, but simply to ensure that they will be there - somewhere - when I want them. Go and read and write.

We'll talk more later. :)

Marshall Adult Ed 'Reading Skills Stories'

2011-11-25T10:22:00.001-04:00

I mentioned making binders a couple of posts ago. What I meant was compiling binders of print-outs of the Reading Skills Stories from the Marshall Adult Education website.

These printable, pdf resources are made up of a one page reading and a one page worksheet, and are grouped into levels of reading difficulty beginning with Reading Level .7. I slip them into plastic sleeves, asking my learners to write out their answers on loose-leaf or in a scribbler so as to reduce printing or photocopy costs, and arrange them in 1" binders. I like the 1" binders because I can fit three levels at a time: in other words levels .7 through 1.5 fit in one binder, levels 2 through 3.5 fit in another, and so on. Then, I leave it to my learners to decide which level they want to work at, and which particular stories interest them.

The short passages offer a mixture of workplace, or work-seeking, themes and family-based stories; the latter, focusing equally on the lives of parents and children's needs. Although the site has been around for a while, remarkably few passages are dated. For example, in Using TV Wisely reference is made to the Dora cartoon, while one of the workplace themes is about cell phone etiquette at work.

I don't necessary enjoy all of the passages. Some of the poetry is too icky sweet for me. The story Remember Your Passengers is fairly horrific. The passage titled What Can One Person Do? misses the point that Dr. King's genius lay in building alliances and mobilizing large groups of a cross-section of citizens. Too, some content is specific to the United States (Zip Code or This Land is Our Land). Also, I'm sorry that there isn't a way to download a whole level at once as a zip file.

But these are small points. The really great thing about these passages is that if you work through enough of them - literally read and answer them yourself - you begin to see how to make your own stories and questions, pitched to a particular level but based on your own learner's lives and experiences.

By the way, these stories are also computerized. That is, rather than printing out the sheets, it is possible to read the stories and answer the questions online. The stories appear in a pop-up box, along with an audio tool so that learners can have the story read to them (though this needs a plugin that was missing or not working in my particular Firefox, Chrome and I.E. browsers).

In any case, do go check them out.

Marshall Adult Education is associated with Sonoma State University (located just north of San Francisco). Their reading resources were created in partnership with the National Head Start Family Literacy Center.

Individualized, learner-centered professional development, part 1

2011-11-24T09:57:00.001-04:00

It started, perhaps, two springs ago.

A colleague and I were complaining to each other about how, well, complainy we were getting. It was nearing the end of a long winter, so we weren't in the best of physical or mental health - not ill, you understand, just not fit. It was also nearing the end of another contract - at least, the end was on the horizon - and we were growing aware of the gap between what we'd hoped to accomplish this year, and what we were likely to given the time remaining.

In any case, we were grumpy.

So, we decided to get some help. We designed a professional development session, for and by ourselves, based on choice theory. We sought out someone who worked in the field as a CT counselor, and who also knew something about our jobs. Then we spent four hours refreshing our understanding of CT and sorting out plans for moving forward in a better state of mind.

I say it started then, because the next spring we found ourselves in the same position (perhaps not quite as grumpy, but nonetheless ready for a CT session). We again organized our own PD, outside of work hours, in order to talk and reflect and plan with the guidance of a skilled professional counsellor.

By this time, I recognized that what we were doing resembled the unfortunately named "Choice Theory Focus Group Sessions" Bill Glasser described in his book Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health. This is an interesting little book because of its anti-institutional tenor. At a time when his CT-based William Glasser Institute was looking more and more like a pyramid scheme (spend thousands of dollars in formal workshops to become certified to deliver workshops to others as they spend thousands... etc.), here he was saying, you know, you could just get a bunch of like-minded people together in your living room and talk. (To which the Institute promptly responded with a "Focus Group Curriculum".)

There were caveats: he didn't think these should be therapy groups or interventions or attempts to meet the needs of people who were likely to try to harm themselves or others. He writes:

The people in [a focus group] are not there to hear extensively about your past or present unhappiness, ... or ... how much pain your are suffering or how unfair life has been to you. They will be interested in hearing about how you are applying the choice theory ideas of this book to your present problems. And in helping you to learn to do this more effectively as the group continues to meet.

But then, CT, as he imagines it, isn't just about counselling people with psychological troubles. It's also - maybe more - about giving people tools to self-reflect on their choices, and so choose differently, maybe becoming a little less unhappy, frightened, unhealthy and alone.

So, as I say, we planned a second round this spring. And then a third and fourth in the summer. We brought another colleague on board: she, too, was experiencing some uncertainty and frustration in her work. We organized our time around the question, How can we do this work and stay emotionally and physically healthy?

(And I'm going to stop there for now)

Snow days

2011-11-23T16:36:00.001-04:00

A snow day today.

Which might have meant a relaxing morning sitting by the hot-water pipes reading long, careful essays on the state of modern literacy, or Greece's economic future, or sauropods.

Alas, there was paperwork to do; forms to be filled out online and inexactly replicated by hand. Then there were the many printed and photocopied bits and pieces of science, social studies, language arts to organize into binders by theme and reading difficulty. And, I had a learner - I always have a learner on storm days, cancelled classes be damned.

Actually, the learner was a bit of good luck, because he brought up the matter of finding the volume of spheres - golf balls, let us say - and the empty space created when we pack them in square or rectangular containers.... and so what does that mean when you have a whole tractor-trailer load of these things? How many cubic metres of empty space are being hauled about on our highways?

These questions filled enough of the morning that not until after lunch were we able to get to the important question of how to find X when X and X+7 make up two sides of a right-angle triangle whose longest side measures 13 units.

Well, that might have gone quite badly had we not, somewhat by accident, found the answer to X-squared plus 2X equals fifteen or some such nonsense last week.

In any case, we solved it, and I got my paperwork done in spite of such pleasant diversions, and he went home early, so I created two more binders.

Which left me thinking how little time there is, always, even on a snow day when classes are cancelled, to just read a book, or scribble out an encouraging note to a colleague, or really clean that spot on the sink behind the taps.

Look, now it's 4:50 already! And how dark it is out there with the snow still falling!

My evening classes are cancelled as well, of course.

Still, I think I should slip out for supper - or what supper I can find - and come right back for a little while. Just in case someone shows up. And just in case they don't.

Confusing literacy with talking on the phone

2011-11-20T20:42:00.001-04:00

Is literacy really just talking?

I now have 490 unread emails in an AdultLit folder in my email inbox. The vast majority of these come from Google. I feel I ought to keep up with the field, and so, each day, at my request, Google Search sends me an email containing four to eight stories about adult literacy. Unfortunately, the content of these emails - the literacy news and views they send my way - so vex me that I generally just avoid opening them. Instead, I file them for later - a silly and useless compromise with myself.

Tonight, I thought I'd take a peek at one of these gems. This time, Google sent me five items:

an Ontario job posting for a part-time (10-15 hrs per week) adult literacy facilitator;
a post from a library blog (with very generic copy&paste information about America's reading problem and how libraries can help);
a 3-day old media release wrapping up last month's Bow Valley College conference on international literacy surveys;
a NALD hosted resource on helping children and families learn about "other cultures";
and an op-ed piece from India.

It was this last that caught my eye: Change literacy's definition, a column published on the LiveMint website - LiveMint being the web version of Mint Money, a journal on personal finance and markets which makes up part of HT Media (which, in turn, harkens back to the 1924 newspaper Hindustan Times published by none other than Mahatma Gandhi).

"Change literacy’s definition," urges Osama Manzar. He states:

India’s literacy rate has increased six times since the end of the British rule—from 12% to 74% in 2011. Yet, India has the world’s largest population of illiterates and, at the current rate of progress, it will take until 2060 for India to achieve universal literacy. Global literacy experts say 70% of Indians are functionally illiterate—that’s twice the official government estimate.

Now these are odd numbers. Surely, if there's a 74% literacy rate (what wonderful news! a better than 500% increase in literacy since independence!), there's a corresponding 26% "illiteracy" rate. Twice that would be a 52% illiteracy rate. If those "global literacy experts" say there's a 70% illiteracy rate, that would be thrice the official count. I must say I look for better math skills in a personal finance journal.

As for the claim that "it will take until 2060 for India to achieve universal literacy", this surely is also incorrect. If the population improved 500% - or even a more modest 250% - in some 65 years, it will hardly take another 45 or 50 to close the gap. (Though I feel bound to point out that "universal literacy" seems like an unlikely event given the reality of uneven cognitive abilities and physical health among human beings.)

In any case, there's a crisis - there's always a crisis - and the question is: what does India do about it? Simple, says Manzar. Stop thinking of literacy as the ability "to communicate in writing or through reading" and instead define it to include oral communication through "cellphones, multimedia, the Internet, etc."

"We’re illiterate not because we’ve lesser resources," he writes rather confusedly, "but because of a mental block to using newer technologies." He's apparently unaware that we've been talking on telephones for more than 100 years. In any case, he is clear about the value of moving the goal posts:

The best way to achieve complete literacy is to adopt the mantra that the medium is the message. The ministry of communication and information technology, along with stakeholders from civil society, telcos, academic institutions and value-added services companies, has started working on mass digital literacy through mobile phones. Content is already being generated, consisting of text, audio, video, animation and so on. This indicates we may have to consider changing the definition of literacy from being based on written communication to the oral medium.

It's astoundingly easy, apparently, to raise literacy rates. You show up at someone's house, offer them a telephone, and say, "Congratulations - you don't have a literacy problem anymore!"

And this, friends, is why we need a modest, sensible definition of literacy which begins with littera and litterarius; with letters and their odd and pleasant worlds.

And also why I'm reluctant to read those other 490 emails.

Institutions of higher of learning then and now

2011-11-19T19:04:00.001-04:00

Students sitting on a sidewalk, not moving when the cops said move, not obeying....

We know that the formal excellence and numerical extension of education need not correlate with increased social stability and political rationality. The demonstrable virtues of the Gymnasium or of the lycée are no guarantor of how or whether the city will vote at the next plebiscite.... In other words, the libraries, museums, theatres, universities, research centers, in and through which the transmission of the humanities and of the sciences mainly takes place, can prosper next to the concentration camps.... We know of personnel in the bureaucracy of the torturers and of the ovens who cultivated a knowledge of Goethe, a love of Rilke. The facile evasion; "such men did not understand the poems they read or the music they knew and seemed to play so well," will not do. There simply is no evidence that they were more obtuse than anyone else to the humane genius, to the enacted moral energies of great literature and of art. One of the principal works that we have in the philosophy of language, in the total reading of Hölderlin's poetry, was composed almost within earshot of a death camp. Heidegger's pen did not stop nor his mind go mute.
George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle

There aren't many people around today who still remember events in Germany between the wars, or the general, if sometimes uneasy, support much of the economically struggling population gave to the rise of the Nazi party. Of course, it isn't like that now. It's different, and it will always be different in different eras, cultures, economies....

But somewhere, near the start, it must have looked a little like this.

The police chief explained that the officers were "concerned" for their own safety. I suppose they were. Rising unemployment and civil unrest makes every mortgage-holder a little anxious.

Whenever I cite this material, I am met with the objection: "Why are you astonished? Why did you expect otherwise? One ought always to have known that culture and humane action, literacy and political impulse, are in no necessary or sufficient correlation." This objection sounds cogent, but it is in fact inadequate to the enormity of the case.... [It] makes a mock of ... a vision common to Jefferson and to Marx, as it was to Arnold and the reformers of 1867. To say that one "ought" to have known is a facile use of language. Had the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century understood that there could be no presumption of a carry-over from civilization to civility, from humanism to the humane, the springs of hope would have been staunched and much of the immense liberation of the mind and of society achieved over four generations been rendered impossible.
George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle

Adult literacy today

2011-11-16T19:53:00.001-04:00

Maybe it was me. Maybe I didn't sell it or lacked confidence.

Anyway, for a few moments I had a very low level adult literacy learner.

He arrived at the building on time, but didn't make it into the classroom right away. When he got as far as the doorway, about ten minutes later, he asked about what he should work on. I had prepped a sheet of sentences using the cardinal directions, as well as some worksheets (link, link), and I showed these to him. I also showed him the little bit of reading and writing we had done when we first met (a very short visit). He said he wanted to work with the sentences.

I offered him a spot to work, but he was painfully uncomfortable. He asked to work alone in an empty classroom. I said okay, and helped him get started. Then, I left him alone, intending to check in on him every five or six minutes. Once when I checked, I saw that he had printed "She is going over West" and "I am going West."

"How's it going?" I asked. He asked, "Do you mind if I leave early? I have a chance to get a drive."

We talked about that. I pointed out that he had left early on his first night, had not come on his second night, and that now he would be leaving on his third night. "At some point," I said, "you might want to consider if this is working for you. Is this working for you?"

He said he liked reading the short sentences, even though it was hard. He said maybe he should stick with his other tutor, who he worked with thrice weekly. We talked about what he did there. Was it the same? No, he said. He only read single words, one at a time. If he got them right, he said, he got a check mark. If he got them wrong, they circled the word. He said he wanted to read words in sentences, "the way they actually appear in stories" and not "one at a time on childish sheets with alligators on the side."

(When we were talking about him leaving early to get a drive, I asked if he had far to go. "Yeah," he said. "Well, I'm going over west. That's why I was writing those 'west' lines." Given the chance, adult learners will write about their own lives.)

I suggested he take the sentence sheets with him, and show them to his tutor as an example of the kind of thing he would like to do. He said, "Cool" - but that's what he always said. "If I ever come back here," he said, "I want to be able to at least read a book and sit in class like everyone else."

We said goodnight, and he left.

Once, I had a class he would have been comfortable in - a class where all the learners struggled to read basic sentences; where we all read aloud and together; where we wrote short, meaningful sentences exactly like "I am going West."

How and why that changed is a complicated story, and one without any particular villains.

And maybe it was me. Maybe I didn't sell it or lacked confidence. Anyway, for a few moments I had a very low level adult literacy learner.

Makes me a little sad.

Family and community literacy updates

2011-11-10T11:47:00.001-04:00

Bookwagon in November

We were caught by the time change this week. By 5:30, children were peering hopelessly into dark boxes of books and asking, "Don't you even have a flashlight or something?" Time to dig out the lights, I guess. In any case, it was an okay night. We picked up another new family. I lent a pile of those Sookie Stackhouse / True Blood novels that have gotten so popular. Junie B. Jones was, I guess, the other big draw of the night.

In other news, we're quickly getting booked up with Christmas parties and workshops and such. In fact, I think I have exactly two free weekends between now and Christmas. In some cases we're reading, in others offering our craft-art-book-blanket corner. We're giving away books in one neighbourhood, and maybe contributing to a basket in another.... I'm not sure how much I enjoy these things, but I do value the chance to talk with some parents we might not otherwise see.

Finally, a young mom who struggles with reading stopped by to see me. She returned the PRACE Pageturners I'd lent her as well as some children's books. (Though not all - her young son steadfastly refused to give back Five Little Monkeys.)

She told me things were a little better, and she identified some strategies she was using. She let her son hold his own book when she read another to him, which worked out for both of them. She had purchased a "hooked on phonics" type kit (I only winced a little). She pre-read books with her partner and had him help her with difficult words. She had created a list of irregularly spelled words.

All this was great stuff, and I told her so, adding only that it would help if she wrote something everyday. "Like a diary?" she asked.

"Sure," I said. Then, suddenly uncomfortable with the prospect of having recommended maudlin journaling, I added, "Or about the birds in your yard everyday. Or about your son. Or the weather - you can write about anything."

"Call," I said, "if there's anything we can do to help" - knowing she never would.

Well, okay. In terms of family literacy, things are better for her than they were before. That's not nothing.

One last note. I've been a little off blogging for a month or so. There are a couple of reasons for that - some more dramatic and interesting than others. One of the ordinary but dominating reasons is that Google redesigned Blogger, making it extremely unresponsive (i.e., things don't work when you click) and unpleasant to use. In fact, I've giving serious thought to making the jump to another platform - which, in practical terms means Wordpress, I suppose. I'd been staying with Google in the hopes of eventual, tighter integration between the several tools I find useful (Youtube, Picasa, Docs, etc.) and Google+, but... that seems less and less likely as Google (like everyone else) steadily retools to be mostly about audio-visual presentations in a mobile format. I'll keep you posted, of course. Just an FYI. If you're going to start blogging, I can no longer recommend Blogger as a useful platform.

Bookwagons after dark

Libraries

2011-10-29T21:30:00.001-03:00

The Bookwagon

To prevent their rivals from creating manuscripts for their library, the Ptolemies banned the exportation of papyrus, to which the Pergamum librarians responded by inventing a new writing material... parchment.
- The Library At Night

Do you really imagine that books can harm me? Is naivete really your armor?
- Something Wicked This Way Comes

Canada's National Library Month is nearly over, and I never wrote the post I'd intended to write.

I was going to write a little about changes to libraries. About how they started off as state-protected, and carefully gate-kept, reservoirs of knowledge for use by the ruling class. About how technology, private profit, and the middle class combined to create early circulating libraries (circa 1750-1800 in Great Britain and the colonies; perhaps a century earlier on continental Europe) where you could rent a book for a small fee. Then came the great, democratic, public service libraries; the free public libraries founded first through some rich family's gift, and more recently through public funds.

I was going to talk about the widespread closures of public libraries in the States and, less often, Canada. About the idiot op-ed writer for the Irving-owned Miramichi newspaper who, having purchased an eBook reader, argued for an end to wasting tax dollars on paper-book libraries that - he said - no one uses and no one wants.

I was going to link to Jeff Chang's In Defense of Libraries, and pull some interesting bits from Alberto Manguel's wonderful The Library at Night. I was going to write about my own experience with the Saint John Free Public Library - an important friend when I was on welfare - and the sign they used to have: "Libraries will get you through times without money better than money will get you through times without libraries." And about how, later, they helped me host an adult literacy group for a time (see the wrap-up post here).

Occupy Wall Street

I was going to talk about the outlaw libraries that popped up at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston. About St. Paul, Minnesota's Little Free Library, Ireland's tiny Library in Lisdoonvarna (photos here and here), and the phone-booth library in Somerset, England (see here or here).

Library in a Phone Booth

I was going to talk about our work helping organizations and neighbourhood groups establish libraries (seven and counting) and the new seniors' libraries we've begun work on (one in each of five different seniors' complexes). About the Anglin Drive neighbourhood library, a volunteer-run library in a public housing neighbourhood, where they added a storytent program and are now studying our bookwagon document for ways to outreach to the 100 families they want to serve through the winter.

The Bookwagon

I was, I confess, going to write all this and more, because I thought somehow libraries were in danger; are in danger. I agreed with Naomi Klein's view of libraries under threat. "Sharing is under siege," she said in a speech to the Joint American Library Association/Canadian Library Association Conference in 2003. "It is the sworn enemy of the global market - which is why so much of international trade law is designed to criminalize sharing" (See, "Why Being a Librarian is a Radical Choice").

Occupy Boston

But preparing for this post, and looking at this spillage of links and photos and stories of grass-root and innovative libraries, I can see that I was wrong. Government funded public libraries may disappear, but in the Western World - I don't know from the East - libraries are here to stay. They have become a mainstream of our culture - of our learning, celebratory, literate culture - and neither banks nor bureaucrats, kings nor elected leaders, will find it easy to put them back under lock and key.

Little Free Library, St. Paul

Using children's books with adults: Family literacy (part 2)

2011-10-21T06:52:00.006-03:00

Week four. She read through Something For Nothing, struggling with the many ways Joseph's mother described his clothing ("splotched" "tattered" "droop"). It really was too hard, but she chose to take it anyway. She also borrowed Mercer Meyer's I Just Forget and The Paperbag Princess. Then we turned to adult materials and her reading / writing work.

But just before we did, I asked, "Do you like this? Borrowing these books?" waving generally at the stack of titles.

"Yes," she said, as though it were obvious. "I read them to the kids."

So, why don't you just go to the library and get these books.

"No way to get there. And I don't know what I'm looking for."

What do you mean you don't know what you're looking for?

"I don't know which books are easy and which books are hard."

What do your kids think of this?

"They love it. I'm reading more to them more often."

Then she added, "It'd be nice to have something to read - something easy and not too hard in adult books." (Which was only a small reminder that I'm supposed to be writing the fourth Liz Tracy book for her to read.)

So far, so good. But these things are always precarious.

Precarious.

I met another young mom recently; one who was driving in from outside the city. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Reading," she said, in a defeated voice. "I want to work on my reading 'cause I'm not... well at it."

I said, "Stay here a minute. I'll be right back." Then I dashed across the hall and grabbed my PRACE Pageturners. I deliberately started her off with What?, a humorous level 1 reader.

"Read this - to yourself, not to me - and tell if it's too hard or too easy or just right or whatever." She read it and pronounced it too easy.

I handed her Peanuts, a slightly harder reader. Same thing. I gave her Spare Parts, a high 2, low 3 humorous story. Still easy, she said, so I gave her Bikini Sandals. That one slowed her down - she'd tell me later there were some words she didn't know - and she said, "That was kind of easy but kind of not."

I spread the four books out in front of us, and said, "Pick one of these books and tell me what it's about." She gave me a good summary of Peanuts. "Pick another," I said; and so on until she had retold them all.

"Well," I said, trying hard to appear confused, "you read these books okay, and showed that you understood them.... Why do you say you don't read very well?"

"I want to read books to my child. But sometimes I don't know the words, and then I get frustrated."

Ah. Now I knew what her goal was: family literacy. We talked a little about her child, and about reading with kids. Then I left her again, and returned with my small stack of easier-to-read board books. She took a moment with each, and then picked out three to read at home; after which we turned to work with some adult materials.

Then, her partner's work schedule changed, derailing both her transportation and her childcare.

I haven't seen her since.

Precarious.

Beyond IALS: Engaging others in conversation

2011-10-16T15:57:00.001-03:00

Dear Literacy People Who are Sick of Counting Stuff that Doesn't Matter - go here: Welcome to "Beyond IALS"
- via Twitter

There's a new web discussion happening, maybe, that wants to get beyond (or maybe beneath) the "literacy-work-as-testing-and-reporting" paradigm. In particular, they say they want to see literacy funding and efforts go into meeting needs in our community, rather than into yet another nation-wide survey:

Our goal is to insert into the discussions and proceedings of the [IALS Institute in Banff, Alberta from October 23 – 25, 2011] critical perspectives on IALS and its impact on adult literacy in Canada.

Tracey's tweet about it sent me over to the website, but it's still pretty beta, and missing some relevant information. That least, that's what I was thinking when voiced my reservations in this commment:

Yeah, well… okay. I, too, think it’s time to give less attention to “expensive, macro-level literacy surveys.” Which raises some interesting questions about this blog. First, I suppose, is this one: who are you, and where do you live and work? (If being anonymous is importsnt, I understand, but I still need to know something about the context of your work, experiences and intentions.) Are you hoping to present a pan-Canadian vision, or an assemblage of local visions? Is your goal a multitude of well-funded adult literacy programs and supports, or an “adult learning system”? Why are you concerned about the “uncoordinated” state of the “adult learning system in Canada”? Isn’t “uncoordinated” just a negative word for “locally organized and managed according to local needs and priorities”?

For 10 years now, I’ve watched trans-Canadian and international groups pop up, ask for my thoughts and opinions, and then offer to better “coordinate” my work. Give me a reason to hope this effort is any different.

P.s., IALS and the OECD aren’t much of a problem, really, except for those people who choose to take them seriously. It’s the diversion of money allegedly intended to help adults with very poor literacy skills into Workplace Essential Skills (job prep) programs and GED (college prep) programs … a diversion largely driven by the provinces’ (and provincial groups’) dual reliance on the federal government and business groups for funding. Anyway, we could all help out if we stopped citing IALS numbers in our papers, funding proposals and press releases, refused to discuss them with the media, and insisted on talking about local, on-the-ground literacy needs and programs.

By the way, another comment came from Margerit Roger, who had a lovely op-ed in Literacies #9, the issue devoted to barriers, on the hidden assumptions that hinder too much of our work, and the ways we can choose to change this.

I particularly liked when she wrote:

For example, hiring or entrance criteria are often based strictly on academic credentials, which creates barriers to some individuals and ultimately affects the workforce or economy. A more holistic process suggested by someone with an understanding of literacy-related inequities might include recognition for prior learning, to acknowledge the fact that people can acquire skills and knowledge outside educational institutions.

Of course, these types of systemic changes require individuals in positions of authority to challenge their own assumptions and beliefs, potentially requiring a change of mind and heart.
"Seeing the forest and the trees" Literacies, #9 fall 2008, p.42

But she also wrote this: "Engaging others in conversations and projects thus becomes an act of community-building, a chance to improve literacy about literacy. This engagement of new people and energies also feeds the eternal hopefulness of literacy work."

So, there. Don't take any wooden nickles. But do go visit them, and get engaged.

___
Note: they've already updated some information. See, Who and what is “Beyond IALS”?

Learning alphabetical order

2011-10-15T19:10:00.001-03:00

...one of the best-known English language alphabet songs, and perhaps the one most frequently referred to as "the alphabet song", especially in the United States. Music for the alphabet song... was first copyrighted in 1835 by the Boston-based music publisher Charles Bradlee, and given the title "The A.B.C., a German air with variations for the flute with an easy accompaniment for the piano forte".
- Alphabet Song, Wikipedia

Wikipedia tells me that "John Harris is often credited with introducing the now-familiar alphabetic format in 1704 with his English Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves." But this seems wrong. I mean, he may be "credited" but he shouldn't be.

My recollection - and you must forgive my fuzziness - was that the first alphabetized book of knowledge was a bestiary published in the late 1200's by the (I think) Benedictine Konrad de Mure, rector for a school near Zurich; though it may have been the Franciscan Bartholomew, a.k.a. Bartholomaeus Anglicus or Bartholomew the English. Ivan Illich, who has wasted even more time on medieval history than me, points to Albert the Great (c. 1250) as an early source of this method.

In any case, we're looking at a tendency which is about 800 years old. (The alphabet itself, in contrast, is about 3000 years old.)We're also looking at an unnatural tendency. Consider the days of the week, laid out either chronologically or alphabetically:

Monday	Friday
Tuesday	Monday
Wednesday	Saturday
Thursday	Sunday
Friday	Thursday
Saturday	Tuesday
Sunday	Wednesday

There is no doubt that one is more commonsensical than the other.

We who work in the field are familiar with the obstacle learners face while looking up a word when they are unsure if it starts with "j" or "g", "c" or "s". Add to this an uncertainty about the order in which "j" or "g" or "c" or "s" appear, and a phone book or glossary becomes nearly useless. And yet....

Two stories.

I'm reading with some kids in the storytent. We finish a book, and someone hands me Dr. Seuss's ABCs. I open the first page, and they immediately begin singing "A, B, C-D, E, F, G...." I join in, and we sing our way through the book three times before moving on. This isn't an unusual thing, by the way; this repurposing of a book. Quite often, when I open a nursery rhyme book to "Little Miss Muffet" the children sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." Such is the way some children's rhymes supplant others, I suppose. But in the case of the alphabet song, I'm aware that the children, in singing the song together, are building a needed intellectual tool for the future. This is an important thing, this singing.

Around about the same time, I meet with an adult learner who reads at a very low level. Among his goals is to memorize the order of the alphabet. He understands perfectly well that, in our society, we tend to collate (sort and arrange) written information in any number of "looking up" places - dictionaries, phone books, office filing systems, library catalogs - alphabetically. Using these tools, these shared sources of information, requires a knowledge of alphabetical order. This is knowledge he needs.

Now, when I, personally, am filing a folder labeled "Thomas" or "Unemployment" or "Waiting List" I always sing, just under my breath, the second verse: "q r s / t u v / w x / v and z." Like the children in the tent, I sang this song over and over, until I had a reliable mnemonic device.

But what will this guy do? I mean I can hardly teach him the song. Well, I could, but we've just met and it would ask an awful lot of our relationship.

I suppose I can do drill and kill. You know, provide some "sort these words into alphabetical order" exercises. (But has anybody ever learned the alphabet that way?) Maybe I can create a business card sized "cheat sheet" for him. We can use the phone book in each class. I can assign homework. But still....

Well, as it turned out, poor health and some other matters scuppered his efforts to attend class. But I haven't stopped thinking about the question he posed.

How do we help middle-aged men learn the right order to the alphabet? How do they do it in ESL classes where the learner comes from a culture that uses a totally different script?How do you do it? Did it work? How long did it take?

How 'bout if I played A, You're Adorable in all my classes?

Reframing, perspective and critical reflection

2011-10-14T12:59:00.001-03:00

In my 21st century workplace, I work with paper and computer files holding roughly (but not exactly) the same information, I record attendance in three different places, fill out two different exit forms, supply information to two separate databases, and manage two different work-related email accounts.

I'm not complaining: I'm just saying things haven't exactly been streamlined.

A few years back, when we were all talking about "accountability" - which I put in quotations because what we were really talking about was tracking and managing for efficiencies - it was fashionable to complain about increased paperwork or excessive paperwork or, well, paperwork. These days, I don't complain, mostly. Instead, I reframe things so that I can think about things positively (and avoid getting sick, grumpy and old).

Let me explain.

Picture this. You come home from your job, and then go out and serve as a volunteer tutor for someone who wants to improve their reading or get ready for a test like the GED. Maybe you put in two or three hours a week at this. Maybe you give up an afternoon each weekend.

You meet this person in their home, maybe, or maybe at the public library - it depends on hours of availability and comfort levels and so on.

What paperwork you do, I guess, you do at home.

Now... suppose you do a good job, and your name gets around. Suppose somebody comes up to you and says, "I'll give you a room to work in, if you want. I'll give it to you for free. You can store stuff there, put things up on the wall, arrange it to suit yourself. Also, I'll make sure you have a working internet connection. I might even be able to find a working computer and printer for you. I can offer free photocopying as long as you use it only when you need to."

Well, that's a pretty good deal. You can now do your volunteer tutoring in a well-equipped, dedicated space that's way better than a table in the back of Tim Horton's.

But maybe the deal gets even sweeter! Maybe this kindly soul says they'll throw in some administrative support - a phone line with an answering machine, or even a real, live person to answer the phone.

And then, suppose they say they actually want to pay you for your time. Maybe they'll pay you enough, and for enough hours, that you can quit that other job and make a fulltime career out of what you used to do as a volunteer!

Gee, you think. That might be alright. What's the catch?

Well, they say, the catch is that you can't help just one person. They want you to offer help to 6 or 8 or 10 people at a time.

Okay. What else?

Well, they want you to give them an hour a week for a staff meeting up-date thingy - for which you'll still get paid.

Okay. What else?

Well, they want you to give up a full day - still paid - every other month to do some professional development.

Okay. Anything else?

Yeah. Paperwork. They've got some crazy whacked forms they'd like you to fill out on a regular basis. It'll probably take you 20 to 30 minutes each day.

That's it?

That's it.

So, tell me. Would you go for that? Or is your independence important enough to you that you would rather remain a volunteer, working out of your car, helping one learner at a time for an hour or a couple of hours each week.

I'm not judging. (I actually do both.) But I am going to insist that a little bit of paperwork - and even a crazy lot of paperwork - is a small sacrifice for what you can get from a paid position in a well equipped, supportive literacy organization.

I know that not all facilitators get extra paid time to do paperwork: they only get paid for "contact" hours (i.e., time spent interacting with the learners). But, then, volunteers don't get paid at all.

Like I say, I've done both. I prefer the money.

I'm not talking here about "every cloud has a silver lining" stuff. I'm not talking about reframing as turning problems into opportunities. (Most paperwork really is crap.) I'm talking about shifting my perspective so that problems become less problematic; become a small price to pay.

When it's time to fill out another form, or sit in on another staff meeting, I don't grouch about it. Instead, I set it in context. I reframe it. I remember that I could be working alone, with no infrastructure, no support.

And at my own expense.

Using children's books with adults: Family literacy

2011-10-13T16:49:00.000-03:00

Storytent had wrapped up. We were getting ready to write the report. And so we embarked on a door-to-door survey with families we knew had attended.

At one house, meeting a mom we'd known for some time, we asked, "What would you miss most about the project if it wasn't here?" She answered, "The kids not being able to get to read books. They’re not canceling yous are they?" Dodging that question a bit, we asked, "Do you have any stories you can share?" She answered, "They don’t read their books to me, they look at the pictures and put them away." Then she added, "I can read them to them if they’re certain books. But I can’t read certain books."

I stuck both those answers, and what they said about her perceptions of the value of reading and her own abilities, in the back of my head. Then, a few weeks later, I had a chance work with her directly.

The first week, before we met, I went to Coles and picked up 8 or 10 books of differing degrees of difficulty. I targeted the "c" through "k" guided reading scale - Brown Bear Brown Bear through to Frog and Toad or Wocket in my Pocket. I showed them to her, and asked if she thought she could read any of these books to her children.

"Maybe."

Which ones? Are there any here you would like to borrow?

She tried Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, but was defeated by the nonsense words: "Skit skat skoot" and so on. There were some superhero books her kids would like, but they too had odd words she was unfamiliar with: Gotham, Metropolis, bat-a-rang. She passed over Mortimer and tried Up, Up Down.

To her surprise, she read it aloud with no real difficulty (a few self corrections). Then, she read near-effortlessly through Make-Up Mess. There was also a Lego brand book on firetrucks or firemen that she found easy to read. So, she took it, along with the two Munsch, and we turned to adult reading and writing materials.

When we met on our second week, she complained, as only a successful learner can, "These books were too easy!" (Later, she told me she had read the other books to her partner first to make sure she knew all the words. "That way he could help me if I needed it.")

She looked through the pile, and settled on two Frog and Toad books and Brown Bear Brown Bear. She was uncertain about Frog and Toad due to the length, but I showed her that she could think of each one as 5 separate books in one, and that seemed to please her.

On our third week meeting, she said the Frog and Toad books were "tricky" and "had some hard words." These books are usually rated a "k" - along with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom - so that gives me a pretty good idea of where she's at. The "c" book, Brown Bear Brown Bear posed no problems.

Looking over what we had left to pick from, she chose Mortimer, Mercer Meyer's The New Baby, and, with reservations ("I'll trrryyyy these") Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Batman and Friends.

Meantime, I'm going shopping for "h" books (e.g., Goodnight Moon), "i" books (e.g., Something From Nothing) and "j" books (e.g., Cat in the Hat, Jillian Jiggs, Owl at Home, Peter’s Chair or Where the Wild Things Are). I'll set aside some "k" books (maybe Donald Crew's Harbour, or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or Madeline) which I think we have. And also some "l" books (like George and Martha Round and Round, or The Paper Bag Princess, or Whistle for Willie).

If we don't have them, I'm sure I can find the right titles at Coles.

I'm sure I can.

But here's the thing: having the right books is awfully important for adult learners (or children) who learn to read better by reading more at the right level. That last post I did about changes to our local bookstores wasn't just a personal whine. The availability of books matters to our work.

It is ridiculous to suppose we could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a promotional campaign to get parents to read to their kids, and then be side-lined for want of a half dozen ten-dollar books.

But, then, we seem to be living in ridiculous times.

Finding good books

2011-10-12T14:27:00.001-03:00

The company has revealed to its employees that it intends to install a new inventory program in its stores, purchased from Wal-Mart. The system offers no control to workers in individual stores, and will not change the selection of product according to the store they are sending the books to, except in terms of size. Thus, the Chapters I worked at, with its huge clientele of students of English as a second language, will lose its selection of ESL textbooks. It will also presumably eliminate several areas that account for a significant portion of the store's sales, including their corporate sales department and the ability of the music section to sell local independent artists' work. All in all, the store is completing its transition from an example of classic capitalist exploitation - that is relying on human skill for the creation of surplus-value - to an efficient, mechanised example of the modern service economy.
Dale McCartney, Closing the book on Chapters, March 2004

The first sign of what was to come was an announcement by Borders Books at the end of August that the chain would be setting aside dedicated sections for products from Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc.

Borders’ explanation was, their sales of books were declining and they felt this was because people were migrating to electronic reading devices. This despite strong evidence that ebook sales at that time were accounting for a lot less than 10 percent of publishers’ revenue.

Soon after the Borders announcement, Chapters-Indigo in Canada announced that they intended to be Canada’s largest retailer of toys and games for the upcoming Christmas season. Not to be outdone, Barnes & Noble announced that they too would be setting aside significant chunks of space for toys and games.
Richard Day, Issues in Book Retail, Feb 2011

I had an exciting book-week last week.

First, I found out that a new John Sandford novel was coming out Tuesday, October 4th. I stuck my head in Coles Books (part of the Indigo-Chapters-Coles chain) late Monday just on the chance. A pleasant young man assured me they couldn't release the book before the 4th. Not to worry, he said. There were two copies out back. (Two! Only two! What's going on here!)

So I went over Tuesday and cleaned out half their inventory of new Sandford titles.

Then, Wednesday, Jacques Poitras was in town, signing and selling copies of his new book Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border (Goose Lane Editions). I wanted to go, but had class. So, instead, I went back to Coles at lunch in hopes of finding a copy.

"Do you know if you have Jacques Poitras' new book?" I asked, mangling his last name as only an anglophone can.

"How do you spell his last name?" she asked, turning to the computer.

For me, this was the point of disconnection. She wasn't going to search the Coles store, much less answer my question. She was going to search the computer. But computers need precise information (Google search being the exception) and I didn't know how, precisely, to spell his name.

"He's the author of the history of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery," I said, with diminishing hope. "The author of The Right Fight. And his new book, called 'An Imaginary Line' or 'The Invisible Line' or something just came out."

"Nooo...," she said. "I don't see it here."

"All right," I said. "I just thought you might have it. He's in town doing signings tonight."

"No," she said, smiling a little at my foolishness. "He can't do signing unless its in the bookstore."

I didn't argue. I just went to the university bookstore the next day and picked up a signed copy.

What was foolishness, I suppose, was to think someone working at a bookstore would know what books were on the shelves just because I ~~always~~ mostly know what books are in my bookwagon, or my storytent, or the bookroom where we keep our spares. But that's because books are important to me, and I think about them a lot.

Cheryl and I both are book people. That makes it easier for us to work together, and also explains the thoroughly bookish nature of all our projects. Consider our storytent program: we set up a canopy on lawn, put down a blanket, spread out some books, and read to ourselves until kids come by who want to read with us. It's hardly a sophisticated program. Some people have trouble recognizing it as a program at all. But it works exactly because of its simplicity; and the fact that we take care to have terrific books.

To get these books, we used to take a road-trip to Moncton or Fredericton to visit the bookstore Chapters. Later, we got an Indigo Books in Saint John, but it turned out to be a different kind of place. The children's books section, for example, featured a hard, noisy floor and ride-on toys. The rest of the store had fewer books, and more stuff (notebooks, CDs, lamps, toys, knick-knacks). And now, I understand, the Fredericton and Moncton Chapters are being made over into the Indigo model. At least, that's what Cheryl says - though I can't find my notes from the last time she went to Chapters. (I remember I wrote down what she said because she doesn't usually swear that much.)

Anyway, I see there's a bit of news on the wires about the Indigo-Chapters-Coles chain further decreasing their book holdings in favour of bottled water and toys and such. See, for example, this piece from the Toronto Star ("By now, regular customers have noticed lamps, clocks, scarves and other Indigo-brand lifestyle products displayed in priority areas where book tables once stood").

The executive types say the changes are a reaction to the ebooks and internet bookstores; to falling sales caused by the new technology. See, for example, the PricewaterhouseCoopers report cited in the Sydney Morning Herald (Oct 4, 2011). The report is clearly daft - the accountants describe what Indigo's doing as "an example of an independent bookseller leveraging people’s affection for books" even though Indigo is anything but an "independent bookseller" - but it confirms the trend. I think these stores are being run by people who don't much like books. Certainly, they don't make it easy to buy them.

But then, few of the bookstores around here do.

One major, on-going barrier we face in the storytent and bookwagon programs is the difficulty purchasing books we know to be popular. We can't buy Yummy Yucky or Quiet Loud anywhere in Saint John, though the much poorer Tubby is on sale in a couple of places. We can't buy any of Byron Barton's books, and can only sometimes find copies of classic Munsch. It's been a while since I've seen Sheree Fitch's Mabel Murple or Toes in My Nose for sale anywhere. No one in town stocks Donald Crews' Freight Train or his Sail Away.

Luckily, Scholastic and a few other catalogue sales places sell some of these titles. We can order them. But that distance-sales is exactly what the local bookstore and chainstores say are hurting their business.

Go figure.

The big chain theory was built on the premise that books could be sold like soap powder: computers would track sales in each store, group of stores, and chain-wide, and would determine what to keep on the shelves and what to drop. That model never really worked. The best bookstores have always been those where there is an element of “hand selling” — where staff know and care about books and can advise individual consumers, “if you liked that, I think you will also like this.”

Operators of those stores understood the seasonal ebbs and flows of the business; they knew from long experience in the trenches that certain books sell steadily all year while others are more incandescent, attracting a lot of consumer interest for a brief period before flaring out. They stocked accordingly. Computers working on sales “models” don’t get the differences. The buyers working behind the computers tend to have months of experience, rather than decades, and many don’t reach the point of understanding their market before they are moved on, up or down or sideways.
Richard Day, Issues in Book Retail, Feb 2011

But clearly, these are advantageous changes for the company. Part of this is the layoffs engendered by the changes - certainly there is much less management in the stores, and likely fewer employees as well.... When I started at Chapters, though, I thought it was one of my better employment options. After all, the job appeared to be about books. Ultimately, though, as Chapters' new changes demonstrate, the job was never about books; it was about profits. The changes over the next few months are only the final stage in a process intended to secure as much of these as possible.
Dale McCartney, Closing the book on Chapters, March 2004

Canadian Council on Learning running out of money

2011-10-11T11:50:00.003-03:00

So. A bit of good news this morning.

Those perpetual prophets of doom, the Canadian Council on Learning are running out of money.

October 2011

It would be okay to have one less voice telling us old people can't read, our kids are stupid, parents are negligent, literacy workers ineffectual and our schools are a complete waste of space.

Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, the bad news is Paul Cappon wants us to create and fund a new organization (he calls it an intergovernmental council) to, you know, track stuff, complain full time and mutter dark warnings like this:

June 2008

2011 Storytent

2011-10-05T19:52:00.000-03:00

question: Do you have any stories you can share?
answer: Every time they see you guys they’re screaming and yelling to go outside. They yell “Storytent! We’re going outside!”
Parent Survey Response

We've finally gotten our 2011 Storytent reports written and sent out. Between our first tent, on June 28, and our last tent, on August 25, we held 69 storytents and ran 6 bookwagons. All told, we served 148 different children and 27 different adults. Counted by total units of service - and this includes the 6 bookwagon trips - we served a child on 780 occasions, and an adult on 52 occasions.

Excluding bookwagon, our storytent-only numbers are 640 child and 30 adult units of service. You can see that bookwagon makes a big difference in how many adults we serve, which is why we reinstated bookwagon after the second week. We'd originally planned to cancel it until fall - a way to deal with reduced funding - but recognized that we were missing an important avenue of contact with parents.

Storytent children’s ages ranged from 18 months to age 15, falling heavily on the preschool end. This was a planned development: we located our tents this year with little kids in mind. In previous years, we ran tents twice per week in four or five locations. This year, we ran once per week in eight locations. We reasoned older children could follow us about so long as we were in their end of the neighbourhood (on one side of a street on Monday, for example, and the other side on Wednesday). On the other hand, younger children and their parents would find it easier to access us if we were closer to their homes (on their side of the street) at least once per week.

The number of books individual children recorded reading over the summer ranged from 3 - 222. In total, children recorded reading 4330 books over the nine-week period (3551 from Summer Reading Club participants and 779 from other participants). As well, children and adults borrowed 869 books through the Storytent and Bookwagon programs.

I've lost count of our 9-year total of books borrowed (it's somewhere around 60,000) or storytent books read (about 35,000) but it doesn't matter, really.

A more interesting number - which I don't have - is how many different books this represents. Certainly, less than 1,000. Less than 500? I don't know.

Another interesting number is how many of the kids we served were born in this neighbourhood sometime in the last nine years. How many grew up with storytents and bookwagon being a normal, expected part of their lives?

There are lots of numbers we could crunch, if only we had the time.

Anyway, next year is year 10. We're already planning ways to celebrate and spend money and such. After that, well... who can say?

question: What would you miss most about the project if it wasn’t here?
answer: The kids not being able to get to read books. They’re not canceling yous are they?
Parent Survey Response

Plans for fall and winter

2011-09-09T23:30:00.000-03:00

The other night the geese passed over, sounding like a gaggle of hockey fans. When periodic tropical clouds aren't pressing down on us, Nova Scotia is visible across the Bay in the clear, autumn light. Fall has come.

And so has my fall and winter schedule. Starting next week, I'll be hosting a GED prep class full days Monday through Friday, as well as a basic adult ed and/or adult literacy class on Monday and Wednesday evenings.

I also expect to start literacy tutoring again on Friday evenings (and maybe Tuesday after bookwagon - I've got 2 adult learners to whom I'm dropping off materials of increasing difficulty).

We're going to stay with our Tuesday suppertime bookwagon for the winter. As well, we're starting another community libraries project: this time setting up four user-run libraries in provincial seniors' housing.

Most of this work - the library project, the classes - will be paid work (Yay!) and will continue on until next summer - when we'll be completely distracted by our 10th year of Storytent. The rest of it, I guess I do just for fun. :P

Other than that, I'm collaborating with someone on an easier-read social studies workbook(s). I am glumly aware of having done nothing on the Liz Tracy front, and have some other writing I've been poking at with no real progress being made. I really think it's time we wrote another publishable paper, though I can't think where to publish. We are getting ready to revise the Storytent how-to based on the past 5 year's worth of learnings as well as what we're hearing from others who have adapted the program to their communities.

Write, write, write. And read - I have another pile of unread books growing by my bedside.

And blog, of course. I've been not-blogging quite a bit this summer, freeing up time to do other things, human things, lovely outdoor things.

But fall has come. They're into daytime single digit temperatures in Ulukhaktok. Our days are still warm down here, but still... As the season passes, I expect I'll spend more of my days indoors, calling out to the rest of the country. Canada, simul prorsum. We've miles to go before we sleep.

I work in literacy

2011-09-08T15:25:00.009-03:00

It's been a happy International literacy Day thus far. The last time I looked, the media, and their friends in business and government, were still ignoring us.

About 8 this morning, Atlantic time, I checked the websites of the Guardian and the Independent, both newspapers in the UK, and found no literacy stories (Note: something would appear in the Guardian 6 hours later). Nothing showed up on the Scotsman or at the Irish Times. Coming west, I checked my local CBC website, and then I looked at the website for the Toronto Star and the Ottawa Citizen. So far so good. I looked at two papers in Australia - The Australian and The Age - as well as The Hindu. Nothing. I checked in with the Real News Network, with Straight.com and with Aljazeera. Good, good. Ditto South Africa's Mail & Guardian online And, I looked at my twitter feed.

And there was the only cloud on the horizon. CBC Edmonton's morning radio show, Edmonton AM, was doing a spot on literacy.

I checked in a couple of hours later, and caught them hauling out all the familiar chestnuts of misunderstanding, exaggeration and over-simplification.

For example, they explained the new "broadened" definition of literacy, by which they meant the narrowing of literacy to workplace essential skills or on-the-job literacy. They ignored family literacy and this year's theme, the link between literacy and peace; literacy and political justice was completely overlooked. (On the positive side, they didn't try to call smarter investing "financial literacy".)

Next, they blithely described as "literacy problems" both the situation where someone is promoted into a job without adequate training ("you know, where someone gets promoted and promoted and promoted and then they can't..."), and the situation of ESL learners, as though I were made less literate when my neighbour added a Persian script to the signage in his store.

They convoluted remediation and compensation when they explained the value of workplace literacy by giving an example of a company that has replaced print with icons or images to accommodate non-readers.

They trotted out decade old stats (40% of adult Albertans functionally illiterate) as though Alberta's excellent adult and family literacy workers hadn't accomplished much of anything in 10 years. They also made the magical claim, based on "talking to academics and economists" (i.e., someone who read OECD literature from the late 1990s), that if only 1% of adult Albertans (about 25,000 people) would improve their literacy enough to, say, pass the GED, the province would produce and sell an added $3,000,000,000 worth of products and services.

Finally, they looked forward to a noontime event where another book in the Good Reads series was being launched. Unfortunately, they managed to call these "books for adults learning to read" which pretty much describes Alberta's excellent Grass Roots Press Readers, but not the reading level 5, 6, and 7 Good Read books. Hopefully, at lunchtime, someone will be able to correct them or take their mics away or something.

Still in all, I'm hopeful. Another year like this - another year of widespread media silence - and we may have a chance to rebuild the public understanding of our field: what we do; who we serve; what our service looks like; why it's important; the many ways people can help.

One day, we might even have the chance to say something like this:

"My name is Wendell, and I work in literacy, which means I help people - children and adults - learn to read and write and do some basic math.

"I also help people with other kinds of learning. I help them learn about computers. I help them learn about things they need to do to get or keep a job. I help them prepare for tests like a driver's test or the GED. I help them learn more about their children and ways they can support their children's learning. I'm involved with many kinds of adult and family learning.

"But today, on International Literacy Day, I want to talk about my literacy work - my work with people who can read only a little, or not at all, and who want to change that."

One day. But not yet. Not today.

Thank you, Mr. Layton.

2011-08-22T17:22:00.004-03:00

Thank you, Mr. Layton. We'll do our best to carry on.

Jack Layton's Letter to Canadians

Informal life-long learning

2011-08-14T22:03:00.004-03:00

... you should see my world, meet my kind
before you judge our minds
BTO, Blue Collar

I was running behind on Saturday, as usual, and so I grabbed a cab uptown. It was a company I don't often use, and the first thing I noticed when I opened the door was the driver's struggle to right himself on his seat. Admittedly, he was doing well for a man who appeared to be a hundred-and-five years old. But my eyes fell on the package of cigarettes and medical puffer stuffed down between the seats, and I faltered.

But then, after we got going, and I had a chance to breathe in the mixed and chemically enhanced scent of the three different pine tree air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror, I found it easier to ignore all that and just hum the better parts Crosstown Traffic from the third Jimi Hendrix album.

Taking cabs always provides food for thought.

Often, I use a company that employs people from the middle and farther east. I flatter myself that I do some good engaging them in conversation; repeating their uncertain questions in the Queen's English and answering in plain language. But this is sheer vanity on my part.

These are very smart men and women who, when they find out what field I work in, seize a couple of moments of one-on-one tutoring for their own reasons. My only advantage in these conversations is that I'm not going anyplace I haven't already been, and I'm insisting on doing it in English. These cab drivers speak three, four, five languages, and are constantly heading into new territory. (The gentleman who started the company speaks Uzbek, English and Russian, and is a trained oil and natural gas technician.) I find their confidence and courage astounding - all the more so given my sheltered existence.

There have been a couple of times when I've been, um... less able to connect successfully. Usually, the trouble pops up when a driver misspells my destination on their dash-mounted GPS device; at which point I'm forced to argue against evidence provided by a computer.

Truth be told, I feel a little embarrassed at times. Could I change jobs, languages, continents without having a complete nervous breakdown? For that matter, will I have the strength work full days when I'm a hundred-and-five?

Seems unlikely.

This, by the way, is what authentic life-long-learning looks like: struggling to make a buck or a life in a strange place, time and language. I'm sure it's almost always difficult. I'm sure it's chiefly driven by economics. And I fear it's practised least often by middle-aged, English-speaking, fully employed white guys like me.

So, here's to cabbies from everywhere. :)

Why it's good to get things wrong

2011-08-08T00:02:00.000-03:00

He told me math was the one that worried him, and listed a range of things he felt uneasy about; from long division through algebra. I asked him where he wanted to start, and he said algebra. I don't know why he wanted to start there. But that's okay. Not everything is my business.

So, I set him up with a workbook and some introductory exercises. He found them pretty easy, so we turned the page. The next bunch seemed pretty easy too. Well... it was late and I was tired and a tad grumpy, so I waved my hand at him and the book and said, "Just... keep trying pages and tell me when you get to something hard or you stop getting everything right."

Then I sat down with an account of Fred Walker's 36th Division trying to cross the Rapido River in January 1944.

I'd just gotten in little way toward the river, when another fellow finished a bit on maps and such, and said, "I got five wrong."

Out of?

"Out of fifteen," he said. "That's not too bad, is it? Not too good either, is it?"

Realizing those weren't rhetorical questions - and never having been able to distinguish between "too good" and "too bad" - I decided to stall. I showed him how 10 out of 15 could become 67 out of 100, and how that became 67 per cent.

"Yeah, but is that good or bad?"

Well.... Well, let's look at what you got wrong.

Which we did. Turns out he was missing information on how longitude and latitude worked - which made several questions impossible - and had mistaken a river for a boundary line on another map. So, we talked long. and lat.; and incidentally why the equator is hot, and how hurricanes form, and whether the climate in Russia is much like our own. All good stuff.

After which, I finally had an answer for him.

Getting five wrong isn't bad, I said, because it gave us five chances to locate some information you were missing. It gave us five chances to learn. It would have been better if you had gotten ten wrong, because then we could have learned twice as much. But five wrong isn't bad.

The worst case, I said, pointing over at algebra guy, is when someone gets everything right. If he keeps getting everything right all night, I'm going to start worrying - in fact, I'm worried right now. Getting everything right means no learning, and that means a wasted class. We only have two classes a week, so to go a whole class without learning anything....

To which algebra guy said, "You can stop worrying. This is getting harder. I'm going to need help soon."

Well, good, I said. And went back to 1944.

I'm not an employment counselor

2011-08-07T00:20:00.000-03:00

In these programs emphasis on growth and stabilization of the economy is misguided without an environment in which job vacancies await the trained worker. Prime Minister Trudeau is reported to have said that many jobs remained unfilled because of excessive wage demands of the unemployed and their unwillingness to relocate. However, a job vacancy survey... indicated a monthly average of only about thirty-eight thousand five hundred full-time positions available at the end of 1971. With an unemployed population in excess of six hundred thousand, this represents less than seven per cent of the unemployed. No manipulation of qualifications of the supply of labor at present without work can possibly result in a sizable reduction in their number.
Harish C. Jain et Robert J. Hines
Current Objectives of Canadian Federal Manpower Programs
Relations industrielles, vol. 28, no. 1, 1973, p. 125-149.

So, a guy walks into a bank with a contact sheet, a large envelope and a binder... which ought to be the start of a good joke, but it's not.

Back in the day, Jenny Horsman always had a section called “But I’m Not a Therapist” in her presentations on the intersection between violence and adult learning difficulties. In it, she would help us sort out what we could do to support our learners, what we could do to find additional support for our learners, and what we might think about in terms of staying true to our original role of adult learning provider.

These days, I sometimes feel the need to cry, "But I'm not an employment counselor."

On the one hand, I don't want to accept responsibility for helping people find meaningful work in the midst of a long-term economic downturn. It's not my interest, it's not my skill-set, and it seems like it would be too depressing for words.

On the other hand, I reject absolutely the business class' suggestions - and outright insistence - that the economic well-being of my fellow citizens depends on how well education services are provided. I don't employ people, I help them learn. I also don't get job creation tax breaks or a privileged seat at the table. I don't even know where the table is.

All of which might help Karen Farrar and the good folks at Literacy Link South Central forgive me for being exasperated with Workbook 4 of Essential Skills to Search for Jobs (2011).

The book starts with the story of Tony:

Tony had been unemployed for over a month before he got his first real break. He was standing in a long line at the bank with his Employment Insurance (EI) cheque and fell into conversation with the man in front of him who had just finished having his house renovated.

Turns out the renovator was short of workers, and renovation was Tony's trade. Bingo! The guy at the bank gives Tony his card, saying, "Call me tonight, and I'll give you the contractor's cell number."

“Great! Thanks!” said Tony, taking the business card and stuffing it into his jacket pocket.

After Tony had finished in the bank he walked out into the warm sunshine. He peeled off his leather jacket and slung it over his shoulder. The business card slipped from his pocket and fell unnoticed to the ground.

And so, when Tony gets home, he finds that he has lost a great lead on a job. Drat!

HoKay. The lesson here, obviously, is be careful with those business cards. Which is thin, I guess, because the author actually sets out four lessons:

Tip #1 - Create a document that contains all of the important information you have for your job search leads.
Tip #2 - Use a daily journal or notebook to keep track of your job search.
Tip #3 - Keep business cards and scraps of paper in one place.
Tip #4 - Buy a binder or folder to use as a Job Search Organizer. Use it to keep all of your papers together. During your job search you will have a lot of paper to deal with.

Now, these are good tips for sure. But there's a problem. You see, when Tony got home and took out the document he had created for important job search information (tip #1), he discovered that he had lost the business card. Consequently, when he opened his daily journal to record his job search progress (tip #2), all he could do was draw a series of frowny faces. Then, he put his journal back in the binder he used as a Job Search Organizer (tip #4), and reflected on what had gone wrong. Consulting his guidebook, he read:

If you don’t have a business card holder or if you (like most people) mislay cards easily, record the information on your contact sheet. Or, use a large envelope. Use a three-hole punch to make the envelope fit into a binder. Keep the envelope of business cards and pieces of paper in your Job Search Organizer binder.

Which is why, from that day forth, Tony took that three ring binder everywhere.

Turns out a decent wallet would have worked almost as well, but, what the hell.

You know, the thing about experienced drywall guys with no jobs is that they're experienced drywall guys with no jobs. What they need is a network or organization able to hook them up with somebody who needs them, even if only temporally.

The paperwork and the filings and such - that's good bread and butter stuff for guys like... well, me. Guys who make their money creating lists and ideas and inventive ways to present the same information (hustle all the time - always be ready for work - you don't know where the next job is coming from - get a plan for keeping names, numbers and addresses straight). But we ought not impose our comfort with filing cabinets and Rolodexes on others.

Nor should we pretend that Tony is the author of his own misfortune, or that it could have been prevented had he followed tips 1 through 4.

Like the lady said: most people mislay cards easily. Tony doesn't need tips. If he'd gotten the business card safely home, the rest of the paperwork is unnecessary; since the business card didn't get home, the paperwork is useless.

And here's the big thing - Tony doesn't need educational materials, essential or otherwise. Tony has a viable skill for which there is a market. What he needs is a decent employment agency with an up-to-date job board, a way to register his own skills and contact info, free phones, and a staffer who specializes in connecting workers with contractors.

In the 1970s, we called them Manpower offices - a sexist name, but a pretty good idea all the same.

The problem with them, of course, was that they couldn't remedy a shrinking manufacturing sector or the realities of seasonal work:

Subject to political pressure, the Department of Manpower has responded by withdrawing its apparent emphasis on economies growth and concerning itself more with the creation of jobs for the unemployed. For two reasons, the attention of the public is focused more directly on this department of the government than on the Bank of Canada or the Minister of Finance. First, the Department has intentionally created a high profile... and substantial publicity. Secondly, the public little understands the working of monetary or fiscal policy. Therefore, when economic woes befall the country, the public looks to Manpower and as indeed apparently do many members of Parliament. By imposing in this Department the herculean task of reducing unemployment, the government and public alike will tend unjustly to accuse Manpower programs of failing to alleviate problems.
Harish C. Jain et Robert J. Hines.

Did you see that? Manpower "created a high profile... and substantial publicity" which led the public and politicians to "unjustly... accuse Manpower programs of failing to alleviate problems."

In June of this year, New Brunswick lost almost 2,000 jobs, and those it kept had fewer hours (CBC: Statistics Canada reported 3,600 full-time jobs were lost in the month compared to an increase of 1,700 part-time jobs.). Worse, full time employment fell by 9,400 jobs between June 2010 and June 2011. As a whole, Canada gained just over 200,000 full time jobs over the past 12 months, meaning New Brunswick did worse than the nation on average. Then, in July, we lost an additional 1,500 jobs.

By the way, according to the Chronicle-Herald, "Nova Scotia shed 5,000 full-time jobs from June to July and saw the country’s biggest percentage increase in the unemployment rate during that time, according to new figures from Statistics Canada." So, that's not good either.

Think about that. Think about the authors writing that "no manipulation" of the qualifications of unemployed workers can "possibly result in a sizable reduction in their number." Then think about how politicians and the public will view us - the adult literacy field - if we continue to generate a "high profile... and substantial publicity" based on claims that training can alleviate unemployment.

I promise you, it can't.

It can't, and false promises will not help the long term viability of the literacy field - a field which actually can do some good - the useful, popular work of helping people get better at reading, writing and math.

Widening access to adult learning support

2011-08-06T18:23:00.011-03:00

Since the 1980s, federal and provincial government polices have supported a range of public awareness efforts and programs to encourage and help adults to develop literacy skills. However, despite the availability of programs and growing public awareness about adult literacy, only five-to-ten percent of adults who may have reading difficulties actually enroll in programs (Long, 2002).
Mary Norton, Widening Access (2005)

I was approached by a gentleman who wanted to know what his adult learning options were; especially in terms of one-on-one help with GED prep.

I told him about Read Saint John (a Laubach organization) and their waiting list and their policy of prioritizing their wait list based on need. I reminded him of the several small-classes that run through the winter in Saint John, and of their waiting lists. And I talked only a little - because I know only a little - of the GED Online options (fewer now that the province has restructured that side of the Department). He knew more or less about all of these, and wanted "an opinion" (his term) about getting started sooner. "I'm tired of just staring out the window," he said.

I asked some questions about his ideal learning situation: how many hours a week? morning, afternoon or evening? how long at one time? where? alone or with others? also asked about some of the things he'd tried in the past, and why he felt they helped or didn't help.

Then I offered to meet with him Friday evening, and loan some materials he could use on his own or with the help of his partner.

The materials I prepped included a math workbook (originally fractions and decimals, but we traded for whole numbers and word problems), a book about the space race and first moon landing (about reading level 4), and a home-built workbook (reading levels 3 through 10) with short readings and questions about Earth and outer space. We talked for awhile about the content of the GED tests, and about strategies for improving one's reading level. We did a little math together. We made tentative plans for a follow-up meeting. And, well, that was that.

This wasn't an odd occurrence - I suppose something like it happens three or four times a year. About half the time, it results in a successful referral to another agency (with greater or lesser long term results). The other half of the time, I supply materials up-front; again with greater or lesser results.

The ideal, for me, would be a funded class held two or three times a week at a central location to which I could invite interested learners. But that's problematic.

For one thing, I don't know what "central" means when the people who approach me tend to live in one of four not-very-close neighbourhoods. Well, I suppose it means "in the center" which is another way of saying equally inaccessible to all of them. Anyway, there are few appropriate classroom spaces, and fewer free ones. Meeting places are more common - personally, I like libraries, but I've spent time in doughnut shops as well - but less useful.

Secondly, there's no funding for the sort of ad hoc pick-up game classes I envisage - at least, none we can find. I don't blame the government for this. As a citizen and tax-payer, I'm a little uneasy about some of the more, um... innovative candidates for public funding. (Which is why we put together a more substantial, rigorous and conservative proposal, that didn't get funded, and that I am cranky about - but more on that another time.) Sometimes, I imagine a classroom for 40 learners and a walk-in situation. There would be no attendance commitment, but the numbers would be fat enough to mirror an eight or twelve learner class with an 80 to 90% attendance rate. Even so, I'm not sure I could harvest the 300 weekly learner contact hours I'd need to impress a serious funder.

Thirdly, done right, a regular, structured class would knock me out of storytent and bookwagon and some other community literacy work I do. So, basically, I'd need big-but-part-time funding. And maybe that wouldn't work either.

(There's a reason parents and poor folks are still encountering barriers to literacy and basic adult learning programming - if it was easy to fix, it'd be fixed by now.)

So, anyway, a guy approached me, and I met with him and left him some stuff. Maybe something good will come of it, though maybe not.

How it is.

When doing good isn't enough

2011-07-30T22:30:00.007-03:00

So, here's a fun story: State funding eliminated for local services (July 30, 2011 Williamsport Sun-Gazette).

It seems that a Pennsylvania one-on-one adult literacy program that expanded to include GED prep, workplace essential skills and ESL programming, as well as a full-component family literacy program - a place that "served almost 900 families and 5,000 adults since 1990" - is closing. Its funding has gone elsewhere, including to a research institute, the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy at Penn State University.

The Learning Center is attached to the James V. Brown Library, which appears to be a joint city-state supported library. The funding in question came from Pennsylvania's Department of Education. Over the past several years, apparently, the amount of funding declined until, this year, the Dept. decided there wasn't enough funds for the program to remain viable - and so, the funds went elsewhere.

Let me say that again. The State withdrew funds because the program had too small a budget to be viable, and the program had a small budget because, over the past several years, the State has been giving less and less money. From the article:

Three years ago, The Learning Center's funding was cut by 15 percent. Last year, funding was cut by 18 percent. This year, the program's funding was supposed to be cut by another 18 percent. Since funding became so low, the education department decided to look at consolidation.

The university, of course, has all sorts of money, and so that's where the State decided to spend at least some of its adult and family literacy monies.

Linda Herr, the Learning Center coordinator, questioned literacy funding going to a university: "They never provided direct services to adult students. They never taught classes. They never volunteered. They're a research program." At the Learning Center, however, three ESL learners "became citizens" and 57 adult learners earned their GEDs, in the 2010-11 grant year alone. The video above gives a good overview of their approach and commitment.

You know, I could work in that place, er, except... they're closing and... *awkward*.

Anyway, success stories and excellence are all good and fine, but they pale beside the simple power of social capital. ( Certainly, here at home, it's been hard to compete with the university for public and charitable funds and support.)

Admittedly, neither Williamsport's Ms. Herr, nor Williamsport Sun-Gazette reporter Alyssa Murphy, are disinterested parties: "Our funding went to Centre County, 80 miles away," Herr is quoted as saying.

But what makes it their funds?

The article also says, "The state Department of Education instead provided the money to literacy programs in Northumberland County and State College." I dunno. Maybe Northumberland Country and/or Centre County have more pressing needs. The Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy at The Pennsylvania State University does seem to have one of those vague, familiarly useless mission statements:

To advance the field of literacy through collaborative research, development, outreach, and leadership to improve practice, expanding access to high quality education and enriching the lives of individuals and families.

But maybe State College does more useful things with it's money? I dunno.

And I don't care enough to find out.

I just note the familiar tenor of exasperation that doing a really good job - doing everything you promised you'd do, and cheaply - isn't enough to secure political and financial support.

It ain't 1980 anymore. Nor even 1970. It's a lot more like 1911 - when social class mattered more than performance, education was often seen as a perk, and there were as-yet unseen national financial and military disasters lurking just around the next corner.

The responsibilities of community literacy work

2011-07-30T20:08:00.013-03:00

It was a wet, rainy Wednesday, but three kids showed up anyway. The boy in my tent looked through the box of picture books. "Cat in the Hat. I can read that," he said nonchalantly, soundly remarkably Seuss-like himself. "I can read Cat in the Hat." Then he set it aside for Barton's Trucks which he read carefully; lots of prediction, matching, self-correcting.

After, he found a paperback copy of Going on a Bear Hunt. It was red stickered, meaning it couldn't be borrowed. He spotted another copy, one that could be borrowed, but it was a board book. He pointed to the paperback and told me, "I would borrow this, but not that [board book]."

He sorted through some more books, and I pulled out Tomie de Paola's The Knight and The Dragon. I read it to him - making up commentary for the wordless pages - and we laughed and shared. He pulled another book out of the pile and said, "I will see if this one has words, okay? If it doesn't, we can make fun of it."

Later, he pulled out an I-Spy sort of book, and we searched out objects together. He read the list of things to find, which was impressive given that he was reading a list of words out of context. An hour in, we had snack, and then he wandered off in the rain - his need to read satisfied.

In the afternoon, the rain stopped, and more kids showed up (14 I think). I read with a preschool aged girl for a bit. She picked up Five Little Monkeys, and said, "I want to read it." She followed the text closely, including the nontraditional beginning, suggesting a home life where reading happens; and happens often enough that she was able to memorize most of the text. It also showed a child wanting to read, valuing reading, and confident in reading - which says something else about her home life.

Just after supper, pulling the bookwagon through the neighbourhood, we met a family who was going to camp this weekend. Two of the three boys borrowed, and then mom called down from the stoop, "Do you have any good chapter books? Bring me a chapter book, for camp." For you or for him, I asked. "For me, to read Sunday," she said. I wasn't sure of her reading level, so I pulled a couple of the Rapid Reads (One Fine Day and Love You to Death) for her.

In the next court, we were stopped by a boy who wanted to borrow. Mom called down from her stoop, get some books for the babies. "Here!" he said, running up to her with a Cap't Underpants book. "No!" she said, "For the babies! Get one with a hard cover. A small one." She came down to sort through the board books, got tangled in a tug-of-war with her son over a couple of them ("I want that one!" "No, I'm getting it for the babies!"), and made off with three. It was another household where family reading happens.

If there's a softness in our work now, it seems to me, it has to do with these stories: kids wanting to read, reading, families where reading happens and books are valued. We're providing access and a service, but maybe not to families who are in crisis - at least, not in the a-literate, book-starved, families-not-learning sort of crisis you read about. It feels like a civilized service; not family literacy first aid. Maybe....

Well, maybe there's a neighbourhood somewhere that needs us more.

But that was Wednesday.

On Friday, I was over cleaning and sorting. (We don't work Fridays, but we'd left things in a state on Thursday, and had a tent on Saturday to prep for.) I was walking up to the Superstore for something when a lady in a wheelchair flagged me down.

"Is anybody at the library today?" she asked.

I started to answer "Yes," thinking she meant the community library we'd put together down at the Resource Centre. But she added, "Is Cheryl around today?"

And I realized that by library she meant the centre where we store the books and wagon. She told me she needed more V.C. Andrews books for the weekend. Would I be around?

Yes, I'll be around. I've got cleaning and mending and repacking to do, and I'll be there for a couple of hours, I said.

Which is how it is she got to return two books and borrow five more.

The lady in the wheelchair - who we've sort of become responsible to. And the babies. And the boys, and the moms. All these people and families we tricked and talked and cajoled into becoming readers. We're responsible to them.

Gives a person pause.

Because you can't interfere in people's personal lives, and then leave them high and dry just because somebody else might need you more.

The Wet Days

2011-07-30T10:12:00.003-03:00

On rainy days, the tents are set up first. If there is a wind blowing, they can be set at an angle, with their “backs” to the rain. Then, the blankets and ground sheet can lie well inside the borders of the tent.

On such days, it is worthwhile bringing fewer books. Since books too will get wet, it is helpful to divide the full collection into morning and afternoon books, thereby ensuring a dry selection of titles for the whole day.

Blankets will get wet on foggy or rainy days, or even mornings with a heavy dew or frost. If more than one storytent session is to be delivered in a day, extra blankets will probably be needed. In any case, blankets will need to be dried at the end of the day. Groundsheets can also become too wet to reuse, and will require drying. On very wet days, canopies can become saturated, and may need to be replaced for a second storytent session.

Storytent How-To

Adult literacy workers

2011-07-24T21:38:00.006-03:00

I have a friend and colleague who, after many years of helping adults with basic reading and writing, is now helping adults prepare for the GED test. So far this year, four of her learners have been successful.

I'm especially pleased about this because here in New Brunswick there is an official and oft-repeated belief that literacy workers ought to be adult educators with university degrees, that adult educators with university degrees are worth more than Joe Smuck literacy workers (though that's really only a couple of bucks an hour), and that literacy workers without degrees are best assigned basic level learners so that our credentialed adult educators can be free for the serious (and federally funded) work of GED prep and training in Workplace Essential Skills.

My friend, you see, is effective, clever and professional; but not credentialed.

Joe Smuck.

Just like me.

We were talking about this the other day, and she noted something I'd already found out: compared to basic adult literacy work, hosting a GED prep class is ridiculously easy. "There are all kinds of great resources and workbooks and things online," she said, "and my learners can all read the instructions." She talked about their relatively high exposure to background knowledge, and their comfort level with the written expression of abstract concepts.

Yeah, I agreed. Mostly you talk some science and history, do a little math, model essay writing, and act as a conspicuous learner.

I mean, it's not easy easy. There are challenges. But when we compare GED-level learners with adults literacy learners in terms like the barriers created by poverty, poor health, justice issues, family turmoil, and uncertain housing, there's really no contest.

Core literacy work, basic adult literacy support, is hard, hard, hard. I know because, having regained a core literacy class after more than a year, I find my facilitating skills have gotten woefully dulled and flabby.

"They've got it backward," said another friend, long experienced in New Brunswick's special mishandling of literacy. "You want your best trained, most experienced and skilled people working with your lowest level adult learners. And they need to be the best paid."

Adult learners with the greatest need require "more than a volunteer," she said, despairing of our habit of turning very low level readers over to financially stressed volunteer groups. "They need somebody's who is trained and experienced and has the heart for it - that's where you want to put your investment."

Unfortunately, it's hard to get HRDCanada to pay for an education program that isn't immediately tied to certification and an employment plan - and the Province of New Brunswick is very sensitive to what Ottawa will or won't finance. Too, the University of New Brunswick has an influence well out of line with their meager grasp of either basic adult education or literacy. And, finally, too many of our best civil servants have gotten trapped in a paradigm (not of their own making) that says adults learning to read are really just big kids who need a second chance to work through the Department of Education's curriculum for grades K through 9 as delivered by a properly trained school teacher.

Failing that, we'll hand them over to Joe Smuck - paid or maybe not - and hope for the best.

Which, sometimes, is exactly what our learners get.

Good job, you. :)

A story about reading

2011-07-18T20:55:00.003-03:00

The truth about stories is that that's all we are.
~ Thomas King

On Saturday, we were guests of The ONE Change. We had been invited to do an event tent at Victoria Square, in Saint John's 'Old North End', where they are running a music in the park series each Saturday throughout the summer. On four of those days, we agreed to run Storytent for a couple of hours immediately prior to the band starting their set. This was our first Saturday.

It was quiet, sunny Saturday. There weren't many people around. We had six kids and two adults - a small turn out, but respectable given the lack of early traffic. Most of them gathered near Cheryl, who was working her way through the 'singing books'.

At one point, she finished up with There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly and read the lift-the-flap board book Where's Spot? to a youngster. He was about four - anyway, not yet reading - but he had lots of solid pre-reading behaviours.

As I say, she finished Where's Spot?, and asked what he would like next. He handed her There Was An Old Lady to read/sing again. Then, as she began to read, he picked up the Spot book.

Children's parallel and multi-text reading is something that interests me - rather more than the book on the Napoleonic Wars I was trying to read - so I watched to see how he would prioritize.

The first thing he did was hold the Spot board book upside down and backward, and attempt to open it along the spine. Failing at this, he turned the book around, opened it properly, and then said, "Is he behind the door? Nope. Is he?"

He was addressing Cheryl, but his voice faltered as he lifted a flap and, unexpectedly, discovered Spot. (He was still holding the book upside down, and so the "first" page was actually the last.)

He spun the book over, and found the first page. There wasn't a flap to open there, so he turned to the next page. Success! A flap to open, without Spot behind it. He tapped Cheryl on the leg - she was saying something about "fancy that" and "swallowed a cat" - and said "Is he? He's not behind the door, is he? Nope."

He had to tap her again to get her full attention, and then he simply pushed the Old Lady book aside and pressed Spot upon her. "Oh? Would you like to read Spot?"

"He's not behind the door, is he?"

And so they read Spot.

The emergent reading behaviours the boy displayed here included: holding books the right way around; proceeding systematically from beginning to end; storytelling; using non-textual context cues; and seeking verification from one's audience and/or co-readers. I'm sure there are fancier terms for all that, and a better-schooled professional may have seen more. My point is that this was a wonderful instance of play-based learning and the scaffolding of emergent reading and reading behaviours.

I wanted to tell this story because this instance of learning and engagement was made possible because we took some blankets, a canopy, and a couple of boxes of really ~~good~~ effective books to a park on Saturday. Also, we didn't start out with a curriculum or the intent to teach, improve, mold or parent the children we met.

We just wanted to share books.

We wanted to do what we do in all our work: provide access to books and reading and reading support - whatever kind of support you want right at that moment.

The pace of learning

2011-07-10T13:47:00.011-03:00

It's fun to have fun,
But you have to know how.
- The Cat in the Hat

I got my lay-off notice mid-June with the end of my daytime GED-prep class (the funding contract runs about 36 weeks). But then I picked up a twice-weekly evening class of lower-level adult literacy learners. Their facilitator was unable to work through the summer, and I was offered the chance to bring them into my classroom.

I fretted for a couple of weeks about my room set up. Were there too many workbooks in evidence? Did it look too school like? Was it warm and inviting, or harsh and crowded with textbooks my learners couldn't read. I moved some furniture around, put away one pc, and dug out all my PRACE Pageturners and the Grass Roots Press easy readers. I slotted the GED workbooks in dark, unlikely corners, and headed down to the library for Joan S. Gottlieb's "Wonders of Science" titles. I printed off fresh copies of Amazing Stories and Easy Stories: People from the Best of the Reader site. Then I straightened my pictures, topped up the instant coffee and tea, and brushed myself off.

As it turned out, my troubles lay elsewhere.

I was coming out of a GED class full of learners ready or nearly ready to challenge the tests - many of whom I'd been with for several months. We'd been working well together, building up common reference points, strategies, jargon. We'd also, apparently, been talking really fast.

At least, I was talking really fast. My whole metabolism seemed to be running hot. I wrote quickly, decisively on the white board. Snatched books from the bookcase mid-stride. Skated fluidly from political geography across the reduction of fractions to essay topic sentences. I may even have been holding a man on a boat and a fish on a rake, while balancing books and a cup and a cake....

In any case, my learners sat open mouthed like pedestrians watching a car crash.

Some where around the second hour I finally noticed. "I went through that kind of fast, didn't I?" I asked after speed-writing a bit of long division. "Kindda," said one, and two others nodded their heads.

"Have I been talking too fast all night?" I asked with a sinking feeling.

"Yes."

"Oh. Well, from now on I'll try to talk slower. And please tell me to slow down whenever you want."

And I tried to slow down, really. But even after five classes, I fear I've been less successful than I'd hoped.

Apparently, I'm going to have to engage in pre-class yoga or breathing exercises or something. At least until I start talking, and reading, and writing things down like a normal human being.

Effective, unfunded programs and resources (Part 2)

2011-06-08T10:17:00.004-03:00

It was sunny and warm enough that some kids had the hoses out (and demanded to know why we weren't setting up the storytent).

Still, 33 of them paused to borrow, along with one adult. We lent 104 books in total - board, picture, short chapter and novel.

Half way through, we ran out of board books; in part because we ran into an unexpected pack of eager three years olds. We also ran out of Wimpy Kid books, and most of the better Munsch stories. We picked up one new family - they want us to knock next week - and provided two instances of extra support (parenting, health).

Effective, unfunded programs and resources

2011-06-07T11:35:00.004-03:00

Bringing books to a family.

It's 10:30 in the morning, on a bookwagon day. I'm on break, so I duck out of class and make a quick phone call. I catch her on her cell, on the way out of one of the school libraries where she's been helping.

"Are you getting home again before bookwagon?"

"Yeah. Probably. Why?"

"Can you remember to bring your copy of Ink Death? We need it for adultsname."

"Okay. And we need more Warriors. It doesn't have to be the graphic novel, but boysname came running out of the gym today to ask if we had any more, so I guess he really liked it."

"Okay. I'll check down at Coles [Books] at lunch to see if they have any."

"Alright, I'll bring Ink Death, and you'll bring a Warriors book."

"'Kay. See you tonight."

And that's kind of how it is. Every single day. Every single day we're talking and planning - and spending our own money and time - in order to meet a request from a child, an adult, a family, a neighbourhood organization. Sometimes we can, and sometimes we can't. But the ask is always there.

The German theologian Johann Baptist Metz once wrote the complaint that his peers favoured believing in justice over being just, favoured believing in love over loving, favoured believing in public service over serving. Then there was that other German thinker who complained, "philosophers have only interpreted the world... the point is to change it."

Which is why literacy workers often frustrate over the surfeit of money to be spent on the promotion of the idea of literacy and learning (conferences, webcasts, leaflets, campaigns), and the lack of money to help us provide concrete literacy and learning support.

I don't need more bookmarks and pencils to encourage people to become readers - readers I got.

I need a book budget. I need two new tires for the wagon.

I need cash.

Help with writing GED essays

2011-06-06T09:58:00.000-03:00

I've thrown some example essays - GED style 250 word essays - up among my google docs for anyone to use. (See my Tools for pre-GED folder.)

These essays are mostly longer and wordier than what our learners need to write for the test. And they aren't pretty essays. I suspect they would be marked lower due to their mechanical nature. That shouldn't be the case. The dullness is what makes them crystal clear. But, you know how these English Lit. majors are....

When I give them to a learner, I often use coloured markers to show the bone structure of the essays - the repeat and summation of key ideas, and the part played by examples or supporting details, and so on.

What I especially like about marking them up like this is that they help show learners why they need to figure out their two or three middle or body paragraphs first. Once the body is roughed out - even in outline form - it becomes possible to write the opening and closing. On the other hand, learners who start their essay without a clear outline typically end up in trouble: repeating the same ideas in multiple paragraphs; straying off topic or changing their minds part way through; stating opinions for which they can find few or no examples or support.

One of my favourite thing is to get learners to write three different things about one topic - a good movie, a favourite time of year, a pet peeve, the ubiquity of computers - on three different 4" x 6" cards. Then, I get them to write (on another piece of paper) one sentence summing up each card. Finally, I ask for a sentence summing up the three sentences they just wrote. That last becomes their opening or topic sentence, followed by the three summary sentence, to form an introduction. Next comes the three card-paragraphs, arranged from weakest to strongest. And then I have them re-word (slightly) and repeat the intro as a conclusion.

This is my favourite way to introduce essay writing, and you'd think it would work.

You would think it would work.

*sigh*

Well, anyway. I'm convinced the theory is sound.

So, here they are:

essay Collect

essay Hero

essay Mars

essay Nuclear

essay Winter

They were uploaded from Word, and should download the same. Feel free to edit them or chop them up or use them however you might to give someone a helping hand. A word to the wise - they don't display as two columns in my web-browser (Firefox 4), but after downloading they appear as I intended them. I'll try viewing them in other browsers later. For now, I guess, don't try working in your web browser. Instead, save them to your desktop.

(That whole "cloud computing" business is still just hype.)

Oh, and if you're not coming to these through my qualities ~ communities ~ literacies blog, then I can't make any guarantees about what you're about to download. These are free essays on the web: somebody is going to scrape them and try to peddle them to you along with who knows what malware. Browser beware!

Discovering Shakespeare

2011-06-03T18:53:00.008-03:00

He was reading something from the GED workbook when the term "segregation" came up. When he looked in one of the dictionaries, he said, it offered "a racial community" - which is like defining "robbery" as "the free movement of goods." So I gave him a couple of the Grass Roots Press biographies - I think the Fanny Lou Hammer book, or maybe Rosa Parks, and the Nelson Mandela one - to help him build a contextual definition.

"I don't understand," he said after. "To me, people are people. We're all just people. We just, like, we all live the same. We all get sick or whatever."

Whereupon I, good looking dog that I am, said "Wait! Wait!" and scrambled into Google. For once, the internet performed as advertised, the printer was not out of paper, and I handed him a sheet of paper with this:

I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge?
The Merchant of Venice Act 3, Scene 1

"Exactly!" he said. "That's it. It's all right there. What is this, anyway?"

So I told him, and we moved on.

I had only the slightest twinge of discomfort over the link between the play and antisemitism. From Wikipedia:

Regardless of what Shakespeare's own intentions may have been, the play has been made use of by antisemites throughout the play's history. One must note that the end of the title in the 1619 edition "With the Extreme Cruelty of Shylock the Jew..." must aptly describe how Shylock was viewed by the English public. The Nazis used the usurious Shylock for their propaganda. Shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938, "The Merchant of Venice" was broadcast for propagandistic ends over the German airwaves. Productions of the play followed in Lübeck (1938), Berlin (1940), and elsewhere within the Nazi Territory.[16]

The depiction of Jews in English literature throughout the centuries bears the close imprint of Shylock. With slight variations much of English literature up until the 20th century depicts the Jew as "a monied, cruel, lecherous, avaricious outsider tolerated only because of his golden hoard."[17]

I wouldn't have encouraged him to read more of the play without laying some groundwork. But, for better or worse, this was the first and only time I've ever been able to create a living connection between a learner and Shakespeare.

Including the time I stood on a chair and delivered the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Henry the 5th.

Best of the Westcoast Reader

2011-06-02T21:54:00.008-03:00

Hey, did you guys know about that Best of the Reader site? Mind explaining why I was last to know?

According Joan Acosta's 2010 post, stories and exercises from The Westcoast Reader (1982 to 2009) have been compiled, in some cases updated, and made freely available as 12 ebooks (pdf files). The material is published under a Creative Commons License, meaning it is freely available for noncommercial use, sharing, copying and distribution. Their home site acknowledges the financial support of Capilano University, so I'm happy to give them a hat tip as well.

So far, I've only used the Amazing Stories booklet (pdf here), but it was a pleasure to work with. It was useful with someone at an instructional Reading Level of 3. It contained genuinely interesting stories. And, it offered us varied and accessible exercises.

In our case, there was a bit of background knowledge missing. What it means for winter to come to the Rockies, for example. (Snow would never trap horses in NB.) But that just added to the learning.

We're going to read Easy Stories: People next (pdf here). Meantime, I'm adding this to my sidebar list of free lower-level adult reading resources - look under Adult Reading To Print.

Um... if there's something else I'm missing you Will let me know, right?

Learners' vocabularies

2011-05-30T13:06:00.010-03:00

The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.
T.H. White, The Once and Future King

I came across five episodes of the BBC radio show My Word this week. I was surprised and delighted, and downloaded them right away.

Listening, and paging through my dictionary (as one must), I began thinking about my learners and their difficulty with unfamiliar expressions and terms. I'm not talking here of ordinary words used in a specialist way - "The party chose to table the act until they were called back in the fall" - but words they simply do not know.

We talk about words a little in class. I sometimes ask them if I sound precocious or, worse, sesquipedalian, simply because I choose to be verbose - loquacious rather than laconic, as it were. A few of the newer learners always laugh uneasily. The rest just roll their eyes.

But there is a serious issue here. To read well, to pick up on tone and implication, to recognize what words connotate as well as what they detonate, one needs command a mature vocabulary.

What to do about words?

Once or twice a season, someone asks if I think it would be a good idea for them to read the dictionary. I always demur - I can scarce imagine the reaction from my peers if it got out that I was telling my learners to read the dictionary.

But the uncomfortable truth is that I often read the dictionary - in fact, several dictionaries - when I was young. My favourite, pictured above, was Volume Three of The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary printed in 1965. This dictionary presents two photos in it's front-piece: one of a scrap of Greek writing, the other the craved Roman letters on Trajan's Column, both from the 2nd century A.D. Inside, the reader can find the specialized vocabulary of modern science, the arts, law (including Scots law), mythology, and more. I'm not sure what happened to our family's copy of this book, but a few years back I was delighted to find all three volumes in a yard sale. Of course I bought it immediately, and gave it a place of honour between my 2001 Canadian Oxford and my Young's Analytical Concordance.

But, no. I can't see me recommending that people read the dictionary.

So what to do about words?

I listened to a Librivox reading of Algernon Blackwood's The Wendigo a few weeks back. It is not one of my favourites: I far prefer The Willows. But listening, I was taken by the richness of the language he used. I thought, briefly, of passing out CDs of the reading - maybe along with audio readings of Arthur Conan Doyle's Terror of Blue John Gap and H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror.

But, no. Handing out audio recordings of wordy short stories written a hundred or more years ago is probably a silly idea. You can't impose vocabulary upon people. Language learning has to be organic and self-directed. Anyway, there is a chicken-and-egg sort of thing going on here: I suspect I get to know words when I enjoy their luxuriant use in a story or essay or poem; but also that I enjoy the poem, the essay, and story because it makes good use of words I already know.

Assimilation and accommodation - was that Piaget? We learn more what we already know, fitting the new to the old like a jigsaw puzzle.

I have a learner who occasionally shares or asks about a snippet of rap - that's real learning. Sadly, the rappers he listens to have a pretty limited vocabulary of their own.

What to do about words?

The only idea I've come up with is to have a sort of "word of the day" going on. Obviously, it would limit us to about twenty words a month - maybe two hundred for the year - so it would be more an encouragement to think about words than an actual educational tool. But, in lieu of a better idea, that's my plan for the fall.

And maybe, well, I'll just, you know... pile the dictionaries in easy reach on the tables.

Just in case someone wants to take a peek.

Learning and would-be just-in-time workers

2011-05-28T18:04:00.007-03:00

[One] of the key components of JIT is to reduce waste and add value. There are several activities that a company must monitor as targets for reducing waste. Among these are, excessive waste times, inflated inventories, unneeded people or material movement, unnecessary processing steps, numerous variabilities throughout a firm's activities and any other non-value adding activity.
- David Broyles et al. (2005)
Just-In-Time Inventory Management Strategy & Lean Manufacturing

The model Canadian worker - the one we spent the better part of the 1990s normalizing - is a highly skilled, highly mobile worker. He or she possesses solid literacy and numeracy skills, is competent with a personal computer, and is able to solve complex or multi-step problems. That is to say, they are both easy and inexpensive to train and retrain.

By the way, they also have little in the way of geographic and social roots, are raising children who change schools and neighbourhoods every three to four years, and depend on national or transnational sources of cultural and information (CBC, CTV, the Internet) rather than local sources. They are as much at home in Winnipeg as they are in Bridgewater. But they, and their families, are also as much strangers in Winnipeg as they are in Bridgewater. And, unless they work in the local service industry, their children will almost certainly grow up to find jobs Someplace Else.

But all that's a by-product to the just-in-time workforce. It's extra. Outside the focus and concern of the new, lean marketplace.

Also outside are the people who don't fit into this model. These are men and women who are not mobile or who cannot respond quickly and successfully to new learning demands. These are Canadians who can work happily, productively, all of their lives in jobs of greater or lesser complexity - but who cannot pick up, on demand, and go live someplace else to do a different kind of job.

For some, the apparent challenges may be financial or medical. For others, the apparent challenges may be cognitive or emotional. In either case, these are not ideal workers - not ideal members of Canada's working class - and they would seem to present a social problem.

I'm calling these "apparent challenges" because poor health or cognitive challenges or a big family aren't really the cause of the difficulty. I say it seems to be a social problem because it is our social agencies and social-work-styled non-profits who are charged with helping these citizens.

But the real challenge is purely economic. It is our cultural and political decision to base our economy, in large part, on a geographically flexible workforce which can be quickly and effectively relocated and retrained in order to reduce costs and maximize profits.

We decided - we, Canadians (in our last half-dozen federal elections if nowhere else) - that we would allow the development of an economic structure that excluded many of our neighbours.

This is why we have the apparent paradox of high numbers of under- or unemployed workers, and businesses saying they can't find people to hire. Businesses mean they can't find the "right kind" of workers. Meanwhile, our unemployed search in vain for work they can do that makes financial and familial sense.

It's also why, in this field, we have seen increased political and financial support for Workplace Essential Skills (the skills that make us perpetually trainable) and Life-long Learning, at the expense of, say, family and community literacies. It's why, each year, I meet more individuals coming to get their education, get their GED, get their WES in the determined or desperate hope of finding work.

What work? Where? Who knows!

What they do know - what ABC Canada among others is fully committed to teaching us - is that their troubles begin and end with education. These people come, and I meet them, and I spend the weeks or months needed to help them gain a realistic assessment of their abilities and their likelihood of success in an engineering program, or in medical school, or.... That is to say, they fail to pass the GED - or even approach GED level work - and accept their failure. Then they go away, almost certainly worse off than before they came.

It's not pleasant. And it's not made easier by learning disability specialists who urge us to use special devices or techniques - as though the same adaptive learning environment will be present in the workplace, or even in the job interview. It's not made easier by the prescriptions that allow them to come - drugs that cheer them up, but cloud their minds and slow their responses. Can I make a place for them in my program? Of course! I care about them, and so I make the best place I can. But the accommodations I make won't help them when they go to sit the GED tests, or go through a job interview, or get hired and then have to deal with a lay-off and relocation.

There are, in Saint John, a few employers who still hire people with a variety of skills and aptitudes for long-term jobs. But these good citizens are too far and few between, and the economy is not kind to them. Meantime, more people search in vain for a place to fit. Saint John is New Brunswick's largest industrial center, and it offers more social programming and support on a per captia basis than anyplace else in the province. That means the city is a magnet for people and families who struggle to fit in. I know because someone keeps sending them to me.

For many, "fitting in" comes to mean accepting a life on social assistance, with all the disempowerment and cynicism that implies. Here, too, we tend to blame the victims for making reasonable economic choices for themselves and their children. But, again, it's really the economic system that's to blame.

Worse, the system itself is a failure, and it is becoming increasingly costly to prop up. Whether in the $500,000 the NB government is spending on yet another promotion of the ideal of life-long learning, or in the $500,000 the government just gave to J.D. Irving to keep one of his mills open, this dream of the movable, retrainable, just-in-time worker is costing us public money.

And there's little you or I can do in an adult learning classroom to change it.

Canadian Social Studies

2011-05-25T10:04:00.008-03:00

What I tell them, which may or may not be true, is that it's easier to learn more about something you already know a little.

Do you want to learn about the Canadian provinces?

Read about those you've lived in, those you know something about. Then, get to know the things they have in common - the Canadian things. Use them to learn about Canada. And use what you know about Canada to learn about the provinces and territories you've never seen.

Do you want to know about the early exploration of Canada?

Start with what you know - even if it's something further afield, like the story of Columbus or the demise of Captain Cook. Find something familiar - a statue in your park, a display in your museum, an episode from your kid's cartoons. (The first real settlement the French had, I tell them, pointing south, was over across the bay, just a few miles from where the Digby ferry docks. A few years later, the first real English settlement was set up down in Virginia, where the Pocahontas story happened.) Start with what you know, and learn more about it. Build on strength.

That's what I tell them.

It's a pathetic response to my continued lack of high quality, low level social studies materials appropriate to adult learners.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is the Canada Up Close series from Scholastic aren't bad books, especially when they connect with learners' own experiences. Today, one of my learners wrote of the books:

They are easy to read. They are short stories, which is good. The picture of Citadel Hill surprised me because I didn't know it looked like that from the air. I went to Citadel Hill a couple of weeks ago.

Ἁρμαγεδών

2011-05-21T14:22:00.003-03:00

- from Canadian rockers Prism, winners of the Juno Award for Group of the Year in 1981. In honour of הַר מְגִדּוֹ‎, the breath-taking strength of mythology, and all that follows.

2011 Census

2011-05-19T11:07:00.006-03:00

I didn't get counted this year, which I was sorry for. As the week worn on, and no census form appeared, I did the right thing and called them up. I talked with a very nice lady on the phone - she didn't sound like a Lockheed Martin merchant of death - who promised to send me a paper form.

She took my name and address. It occurred to me that if she also took my birth date (which would give my age), put me down as a Canadian-born anglophone, and confirmed that I wasn't a farmer, we'd be done. For that matter, all she really needed was my address, since the other details were the same as the last 9 times they asked. But, well... you know. Privacy and all that.

Anyway, the paper form never showed. Seems indicative somehow of our generally shrinking sense of a possible civic community.

I did get to see the census. I had a learner whom I helped with the online form. It was quite straightforward, despite some odd phrasing, and only took about 20 minutes - and that because the internet connection dropped, and we had to start over.

I also saw the 2011 Teacher's Kit from Stats Can. I noticed that it had lots of information and a couple of fill-in-the-blank type questions. Oddly, it lacked one really helpful thing - an accurate mock census form for learners to practice on.

Go figure.

___________________

Update: Three weeks later, a very nice gentleman stopped by and collected my information.

It isn't a math problem

2011-05-11T09:34:00.007-03:00

She'd established that she just didn't get math. Especially multiplication. She didn't get multiplication.

Do you mean you don't get what going on, or you can't remember what times what makes what?

I don't get any of it.

Has anyone ever... Do you know that it's really just adding the same number over and over?

No. What do you mean?

Do you want to learn to multiply today?

Okay.

So I showed her that 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 20. Then I wrote out, "Four added to itself five times makes twenty." She seemed to think that was reasonable, so I pointed out the word "times" and said that was where we get the "times" in "four times five" or (writing all this out) "4 x 5."

She was silent for a minute, and I thought I'd lost her. But then she said, "If you added it up three times, that would be four times three."

Yep. Now, watch this: 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 20. If you add five to itself four times you get the same thing as you did when you added four to itself five times. It doesn't matter which goes first. You get 20 as an answer whether you go 4 x 5 or 5 x 4.

"Sweet!"

Do you want to try some of these?

"Okay."

So she did. Adding eight to itself six times, adding nine to itself three times, adding four to itself seven times.

After a while, I showed her some shortcuts, like how to group two's and five's so she could add tens. Eventually she got bored and asked, "Is there something harder I can do?" Yeah, of course. Long division - which we amused ourselves with until the end of the day.

Lots of things can go wrong between here and the GED. Lots of things are going to go wrong. But none of them will have much to do with math.

Why literacy workers shouldn't blog

2011-05-10T10:53:00.007-03:00

Danny was starting to feel good about his weekly output when
a small object appeared in the distance.

Out on the west coast, Glenn Groulx has been waging a thankless campaign to encourage blogging among his co-workers (see his Zone of Silence post, for example). I admire his spirit, but I can't get on board. My advice to them and you is, don't blog.

Don't blog because your boss won't like it. Your funders won't like it. The government department that supports you won't like it. The church that offers you space won't like it. The college dean won't like it. The school board won't like it. One of your co-workers - the loud one - won't like it. The business anti-poverty organization won't like it. The conference organizers won't like it. The coalition won't like it. Glenn Beck won't like it. Somebody somewhere, probably who enjoys, in equal measure, telling people what to do and enacting drama, will not like it and they will cause you headaches and grief (and maybe serious economic problems).

"I swear to never ever talk about anything I learn in the course of my work," read the slip I signed once upon a time. Which means I'm soon going to jail or hell or jobs.com, I suppose. Even mentioning the slip is a violation of the promise. It's like those super-injuctions that outlaw reporting even on their own existence. It's like working for the mob. Don't say nuthin to nobody bout nuthin. Do your job. Keep yer mouth shut.

Don't blog about work, because it's not appropriate to blog about. Doesn't matter what "it" is. Anything work-related that is interesting enough to talk about is already bound up with somebody's sense of privacy or security or public relations.

In a time and place where gossip is a growth industry (reality TV being just one of it's more recent forms), some of us seem to lack the self control needed to be discrete in our sharing. Consequently, our managers and bosses create lowest common denominator rules to protect us from our thoughtless selves. (In New Brunswick, iron-strong rules gagging government employees and contract workers get strengthened every time another politician is caught disclosing confidential information to hurt their opponents. The politicians themselves seem immune, but let that go for now.)

So, no. Don't blog. Or tweet. Or post about it on Facebook. Not about work. Not about your day or your challenges or your learnings. (Actually, best if you never admit to having learned anything ever - raises too many questions.) And for sure, don't blog about anything or anyone your workplace or relatives might find embarressing or distasteful.

Oh, and Research in Practice? That's completely out of the question. (Small wonder the conversation between fieldworkers dried up.)

If I had any sense, I'd just learn to knit my troubles away.

Recent voices leaving the blogosphere

The truth is, I no longer enjoy blogging and I think that this has been evident for a few months now to my readers. I hate the backbiting that goes along with it. I hate the character assassination that is permanently present. I no longer enjoy the pressure of feeling I have to churn out four or five pieces every day.... And if I am honest, I now feel that my blogging is having a negative effect on various aspects of my business and broadcasting life. For instance, yesterday I felt, for various reasons, I had to slightly caveat what I really wanted to say... My blog is indeed a personal plaything... but the reality is that this is not how many in the outside world see it. And I now need to recognise that.

*

On one hand, I get this great sense of accomplishment from the one or two thousand people who read from my blog every month. This is well over double what it was a year ago, and I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to write for an audience. I also think that writing has helped keep my mind keen and fresh. One the other hand, blogging can be a big distraction, especially the constant urge to continually check to see if there is a new comment. It is a further distraction if you include “reading other’s blogs” with the whole blogging verb. It takes time too. I think I average about 20 posts a month. If each post takes half an hour to write, then I’m spending 10 hours a month writing. An extra 10 hours a month spent on some of my classes sure would have helped.

*

So I’m Done. Literally. With blogging, in any case.
I’ve had enough. I’m sick of it all. I’m bored of it all. It’s shit.
I’m sick of not being able to say what I want to say, for fear of upsetting the apple cart.

The influence of social class in basic adult education

2011-05-08T22:27:00.012-03:00

Peer learning can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge and skill through active helping and supporting among status equals or matched companions. It involves people from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers helping each other to learn and learning themselves by so doing.
Topping, Trends in Peer Learning
(Educational Psychology Vol. 25, No. 6, December 2005)

I do not claim these random case studies are typical or examples of good practice, simply that they tell us a number of things.
Alan Rogers, Functional Adult Literacy
Kalangala and Buvuma Islands, Uganda (2008)

"Well," I said. "If it was me, I'd pick answer three."

"Good," she said, satisfied. "That's what I picked, too. I just wanted to make sure I was right."

Suddenly, that feeling came upon me, as it does sometimes, and I started to laugh. Indignant, suspicious, she demanded to know why I was laughing at her. So I tried to explain.

I tried to explain that I was laughing at me, at the incongruity of all this. Why ask me these things? How did I become the arbiter of right answers? I'm just a tree planter who took two years to pass Grade Eleven math and then flunked out of university. I worked at fish farms and did the night flooding at outdoor rinks until I found a way to work inside during the winter. I'm someone once on welfare who got a job as a janitor, and then talked his way into working with low-income parents, and then adults learning to read, and now adults wanting to pass a GED test. But it's all hoaky. I'm just some guy. I clean toilets and ship fish and plant trees.

"I know," she said, "I think about that - about where you came from. It makes me think differently now about me."

Even more learning about video

2011-04-13T10:22:00.001-03:00

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues. Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up. This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45. These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange. I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

i was making a video on my computer for the site but then it crashed
one of 2000 similar anonymous comments

You know, video is hard.

I mean, the editing and all that is hard. Sure. But so is finding the tools.

There is a hoard of recommended freeware and open source tools available, but only some of it is actually free, and only some of the free stuff actually records audio and video, and almost none of it records well - at least, on my Vista and Win7 laptops.

Then, it takes forever to get an editing program and/or conversion tool running well enough to do any thing.

And the hours tick by. And your computer overheats. And just when you think you might be ready to publish an unblemished 120 sec. clip...

... everything freezes while some freeware program installs an automatic update and toolbar, resets your homepage, and instructs your computer to reboot.

*poof!*

Bill Gates con't:

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try [typing] the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

Of course, it could always be worse. Bill and I might be blown to smithereens.

Neighbourhood libraries and access to books

2011-03-28T15:22:00.008-03:00

I believe - and I hope this doesn't sound too far fetched - that public libraries are a cornerstone of civilization, because they provide people without access to books the opportunity to read freely, to read whatever they want.
Richard B. Wright, Provincial Libraries Week,
Saint John NB, 2003.

We had our QLNB AGM a little while back, which meant we had to prepare full-year reports. One of the things I noticed, when I wrote up the adult learning support portion of an activity report, was that we did far more "library" than "direct literacy" work in 2010.

Mostly, we lent out books.

Through the bookwagon program, or my other contacts with adult learners, we lent out workbooks and leveled readers and novellas on about 150 occasions. On another 100 occasions, we lent out mass market fiction and non-fiction to house-bound adults. We lent a half dozen reading and math workbooks to two volunteer tutors. We helped create and stock three neighbourhood libraries, in a project that began in 2009. We've supported a local school library. And, over the past several months, we've been engaged in the creation of several more small libraries to be operated in seniors' housing.

So it was with a sense of normalcy that I spent Saturday afternoon swapping out books and a bookshelf in the Crescent Valley Community Tenant's Association building.

Forever ago, an MLA rustled up a bookshelf which was, um... adequate. But it had these sliding glass doors that never slid very well, and always looked dirty. The shelves didn't fit quite right, and one kept falling off its supports. And the books were dusty left-overs from, well, someone's dusty left-overs.

Anyway, in a spirit of generosity - or a moment of impatient annoyance - I spoke up at a meeting last Tuesday and volunteered to replace it with a more sensible, functional bookshelf stocked with popular reading materials.*

As it turned out, the CVCTA was able to provided a shelf: they only needed some helpful soul to put it together and fill it with good books.

So I did.

Yay, me!

Now I just have to clear enough space in our book storage room to cram in the old shelf; and perhaps find a clever place to hide those unslidable glass doors.

~~~~~~~~~
* "Good" based on bookwagon usage and feedback from my in-class learners. The list includes books like the Harry Potter, Twilight, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Bone series. Plus books by authors Tony Hillerman, Terry Brooks, Michael Connelly, Michael Crichton, Ann Rule and Robin Cook. Unfortunately, I don't have enough Quick Read - Rapid Read - Good Read books, or even lower level resources, to leave behind.

Ginny Hooper, Facilitator

2011-03-24T10:46:00.010-03:00

I also have experienced new things—places that I would never have done or gone to before. We were given tickets to see a musical at the Imperial Theatre, I had never been inside there before or been to any plays. I sat outside the theatre in my truck thinking I don’t fit in there—I can’t go in there—I don’t belong.

Then I saw a learner from my class and he joined me in the truck and we talked about how I felt. Then I saw my teacher go in and I saw her looking for us in the lobby so I felt I had to go in because I didn’t want to disappoint her. It was another door in my life that I’m glad I opened! Our classroom is a safe spot you don’t have to hide that you may not know the answer but with a team effort you can all find the answer together.

An Adult Literacy Learner

Ginny Hooper has been creating safe places for learners for more than a decade. Within the space she creates, learners have improved their reading and writing skills, mastered basic arithmetic and applied mathematics, found better jobs, dealt with health challenges, helped their children with homework, learned to use a computer, explored widely on the web, participated in online courses, written award-winning stories, and successfully written Driver's and GED Tests.

Through much of that time, I've had the pleasure of working next door to Ginny. That's mattered to me, because we often share resources and ideas and, yes, listen to each other's bitter complaints about the state of things.

Ginny's a smart and successful facilitator, and a rock n roller to boot.

Here's the thing: her classes aren't anything like my classes.

First off, we don't go to the theater. Or hockey games, or discos. (I don't know if she's been to discos, actually - but it wouldn't surprise me.) My class goes to the library. And sometimes, for a thrill, we go to the other library. Oh, wait. We've been to the museum, too. Yeah. Part-E.

Ginny's class is also crazy for computers. More than one of her learners accessed the internet for the first time with her help. My classes are kind of, meh. (Except for them Farmvillers who got so addicted I ended up blocking Facebook.)

Ginny says her computer sessions gave learners "the independence to be able to look up for themselves answers to questions they had, such as holidays; why they are celebrated and where?"

The advantage of having computer software that allows stories to be read to learners or have their own stories read to them, is tremendous. Learners are improving their reading comprehension and are now better able to self-edit as they can hear what they have written and decide for themselves if that is what they meant or if it sounds right.

Ginny has showed me this software, and set it up on my classroom PCs. Still. We prefer learning much as our forefathers did: sharing reading in a circle; looking things up in a dictionary; writing word lists on a blackboard; cut & pasting magazine pictures as writing prompts.

If you asked Ginny about the challenges her learners face - and I have - she would list things like: reluctance to attend class; reluctance to ask questions; reluctance to write; reluctance to participate in group discussions; feeling alone and overwhelmed. For her, group work and group adventures are about fostering group acceptance and co-support. She also understands her outings - actual or virtual - as a way to overcome barriers like cultural differences or a lack of the background knowledge (points of reference) assumed by many pieces of writing. She views these as learning opportunities where little successes can accumulate, and where her learners gain self- confidence and trust.

Ginny's all about access and empowerment. She recognizes the lack of quality resources for learners reading at a lower level. One way she gets around this is by helping her learners write about their experiences. This creates authentic texts with interesting, appropriate, low vocabulary material relevant to each learner's personal and work experiences. Occasionally, Ginny turns things upside down in her class by writing something herself, and then asking a learner to edit and approve it.

Off and on through the year, Ginny - or she and one or two confident readers - reads a popular novel aloud, and then hands out individualized assignments carefully matched to each learner's instructional level. This has the practical effect of making mass market literature available to learners working at a lower reading level. Meantime, her classroom is stiff with topical subjects, math manipulatives, board games, plays and screenplays, and scripts for uptown, library and museum scavenger hunts.

Which is great - it's just not me.

And that's what I wanted to say.

Ginny and I share a general philosophy about the value of individualized, learner-centered functional literacy support in a Choice Theory environment. We share the practical experience of supporting adult learners with a full spectrum of reading skills and challenges. We've both developed lending libraries, and worked with whole families at special events or in programs like Storytent, Bookwagon and Parent-Child Mother Goose.

But Ginny and I don't do things the same way.

What we do depends on who our learners are, yes, but also on who we are.

We are equally successful, and equally unsuccessful, and equally frustrated at our own limits, and equally determined to get better at this work. But we are not the same.

Anyone seeking to set out a best practices for adult education classes, with a focus on lower level literacy support, could spend a profitable afternoon or evening with us. But only with one of us.

Look at the two of us, and you're left with this: effective adult literacy support depends on positive relationships, a safe, nurturing environment, an individualized curriculum, and the opportunity for learners to experience and build upon small successes and shared, positive adventures.

Everything else is detail.

Big troubles vs. little peeves - perspective

2011-03-16T20:10:00.008-03:00

My lame excuse for not blogging much lately is that I've been doing some off-line work. But also I've been watching, mostly via twitter, the outlawing of unions in the States, the collapse of the rebellion in Libya, and the multi-part devastation in Japan.

Then, I found this (from a former NB Minister of Education) in the twitter stream - a splendid example of someone who thinks students' "getting higher literacy scores" a) equates with kids "getting more literate" and, b) is done primarily by adults who work in an office.

Imagine claiming as a personal accomplishment that someone you never even met now reads better!

On the other hand, Mr. Lamrock can be justly proud of reducing poverty in New Brunswick during his time as Minister of Family & Community Services (a.k.a. Dept. of Social Development). How? By raising the take-home of people on social assistance.

Unlike literacy, money is indeed something you can give people while working in an office in Fredericton - even in record amounts if you want.

Still, all in all, I'm glad to live in New Brunswick.

The government hasn't outlawed unions and the army isn't shooting at us. We have no earthquakes or tsunamis to speak of. And our nuclear reactor is remarkably safe, if only because the damn thing's been stone cold out of order for three years with no end in sight.

New Brunswick... be in this place.

Using Microsoft Live Apps - fail

2011-03-05T10:36:00.010-04:00

Office 365 for education, Microsoft’s next generation cloud productivity service for schools and universities, will launch later this year. The shift to the cloud is enabling anytime, anywhere learning and leveling the playing field for students worldwide.
Office 365 Brings the Cloud to Education,
Press Release, Jan 11 2010

Your data isn't really safe in the cloud anyway, though the threat is more likely to be cock-up than conspiracy.
John Grant, Comment #3,
Cloud Computing. Failed last time. What will make it work this time?

It was about poverty and access. At least, that's how I saw it. Someone wanted to create a resume on a reasonably sophisticated word processing program, but didn't have - and couldn't afford - a Microsoft Office Suite.

No problem, I thought. Here comes the internet to the rescue.

Specifically, that part of the internet called Windows Live.

My learner was a longtime Hotmail user, and had highspeed internet at home (or, at least, an only slightly throttled Rogers-speed internet). Because she was on Hotmail, she also had access to Windows' Office Web Apps and the cloud-storage tool Skydrive. So, we sat down at my classroom pc (running WinXP) and went online. She poked away creating and editing her resume on a straight-forward word processing system that reminded me ever so much of Word 97.

(Do you remember Office 97, the office suite companion for Windows 95? I do. I especially remember how we had to hit save every few minutes so that when it locked up - and it always locked up - we could reboot without losing too much work.)

Anyway, the web app 'Word Live' or whatever isn't a bad tool. It's about as fancy as the Wordpad version shipped on Windows 7, and, in any case, nicer looking and more flexible than the Google Docs online editor. Also, it's not crazy complicated, which is useful for beginners. Most positively, it can open those .docx documents people are unwittingly sending about.

So, like I said, she works away at this online, with only the occasional hiccup caused by a lag between the display and the online editing. Then, she saves it safely in her skydrive.

Now, knowing a little about such things, I poke about with Abiword, a free open-source word processor. But I remember formatting issues cropping up when I used to try to move back and forth between Abiword and other tools. And, anyway, Live Apps has saved her resume as a .docx file, which Abiword can't read.

I check out Open Office 3, and read that it will open .docx. Encouraged, I use a second class to show her how to locate (safely), download and install this free office suite. She does it a couple of times in class, readying herself to do the same at home, and then we download her resume to the desktop, and try opening it. No luck. We get an Open Office error message. Did we do something wrong? A bad download? Nope. A little web searching shows that lots of people are getting the same message - Open Office 3 does not reliably open .docx files.

By the way, if this post, with its file extensions and program version numbers seems jumbled and confusing, that's because this is how things are with computers. This isn't your dad's TV. Version numbers and file extensions matter - things either do or don't work because of them. But a lot of my learners aren't savvy enough with the world of computers to sort out all this - even if they wanted to, and had the time to spare. Compatibility issues are barrier issues. That's the closed side of the open web. Would that a few more distance-learning, Web 2.0 evangelists spoke honestly about these barriers.

But we haven't even come to the disaster yet - that was day three.

She came into class and told me she couldn't access her account online. That seemed unlikely, so I asked her to show me. Sure enough, her Hotmail/Skydrive account was blocked. Why? Who knows. Microsoft suggested, in the friendliest way, that perhaps someone had used her account to send out a large volume of spam. That seemed equally unlikely. Had she let teenagers into her house? Was there a virus on her machine that hi-jacked her account? I don't know. She was just perplexed. "But how do I get my resume off there?"

You don't. Windows has blocked your account. It's done now.

Mind you, I spent some serious time - both right away and then 48 hours later - trying to re-validate and reset passwords and such. But no luck. Just as in the days of Windows 95 and Office 97, anyone who didn't save to their hard drive had to start all over.

It wasn't a complete catastrophe, because we had saved to the hard drive in class. And then, a couple of days later, a neighbour loaded a pirated copy of MS Office on to her home computer. She set up a new Hotmail account, and I helped her set up a Gmail account as well, and showed her how to link them together. She emailed her retyped resume from one account to the other and then back again, doubling the likelihood of receiving it intact. Then, at lunch, I walked her down to the nearest electronics store and showed her how to pick out a flash-drive.

And I didn't once mention Google docs.

It was about poverty and access. Someone wanted to create a resume on a reasonably sophisticated word processing program, but didn't have - and couldn't afford - a Microsoft Office Suite. So they went the pirate route. Well, who wouldn't. I mean, they did the right thing, and trusted the cloud, and look how that turned out.

For a full 48 hours, I thought Office Web Apps was going to open up a whole new world of skill-building and communication for my learners.

I won't make that mistake again any time soon.

March, 2011

2011-03-04T08:45:00.006-04:00

Hello, Dave. What is up?

My siblings have joined my father on twitter - which they use, apparently, to exchange information on average snowfall and how high the banks are in respective driveways. Meantime, my mom has taken to chiding nieces and nephews for off-colour language on Facebook, which she appears to see as a sort of virtual homecoming machine.

And I'm all, like, wtf!? Do I even know you people?

Remember when the web was all Space-Odyssey and geeky and cool and strange in that Jim Morrison way?

In the days ahead, we cools folks is going to talk about being suckered by Windows Live (hit 'save' like it's 1999), putting bad history films and old news to good use (and getting addicted to JustinTV), and the enduring (if slight) popularity of text adventures.

Meantime, for a bit of nostalgia, here's a trip through the world of Windows versions 1.0 to Win7.

(Ooohhh... I miss my Win 3.1!)

A Family Evening with Clifford

2011-02-24T21:18:00.005-04:00

Literacy volunteer Heather McKend with Clifford the Big Red Dog

My first party for 2011. Yay! (Family Literacy Day got snowed out.)

It was a throw-back to the old days, when we hustled around to other people's events and made-up a gazillion of our own, trying to get local media attention and build up community goodwill. The goodwill part still applies, but thankfully we care less about the media. On the one hand, we've accepted that the local, traditional media aren't very much interested in the story we tell - they've got their own narrative about things like why people are poor, why they don't read well, what can be done to help them, and who deserves the credit for almost anything good that happens. *shrug* On the other hand, well, there's this internet thing... you know what I mean?

Anyway, back to the party. It was part of a Scholastic Book Fair held at Hazen White / St. Francis Elementary School, and called a "Family Evening." There were board games and floor games aplenty, reading and shopping and storytelling. A big spaghetti supper. And yours truly, reprising his role as Clifford the Big Red Dog. We were happy to be help out on the night, connecting with our families, building a stronger relationship with the school, and seizing the chance to grab some really great deals for the bookwagon.

As for being Clifford. Well, whatever else the life of a literacy worker is, it's never dignified. So we figure we might as well have some fun.

Bright bookwagons in February

2011-02-23T11:05:00.001-04:00

And then spring returned.

Not that it was warm - minus 17 is still a bit unpleasant. But the sun was out. No more doing bookwagon in the dark.

It wasn't a big night. We had three adults borrow nine books (mostly quick-read types), plus eight or nine kids. One stop was for a shut-in who took a whole fistful of books. Twice we dropped off a package of leveled books for kids where families asked for specific literacy support. And then we were done.

I unpacked the wagon, while Cheryl hustled off to give a power-point presentation to a Home & School group about last fall's family literacy workshop series Family Ties (in partnership with Ontario's Project READ). I crammed the quick reads into my bag so I'd have them for today's class, and then I went home to finish off a pot pie and a biography of Richard III.

Writing to remember, accepting learning styles

2011-02-19T11:51:00.008-04:00

Do your learners mark up your books? Mine do.

Please don't mark in the books, I say. No problem, they say. And then, later, they say, I'm just marking lightly, with a pencil that I can erase later. And then, later still, they say, someone marked the answers in this book - I hate that. Please don't mark in the books, I'll say. No, they'll say, somebody else did - I'm saying somebody else did - somebody already marked in it - with a pen. (And then there will be the long look which can only signify their readiness for me to violate the laws of physics and return the book to its previous state.)

I confess to sometimes becoming quite short about this.

But on better days - when I'm eating right, getting enough sleep, spending time with people who love me - I understand what is happening.

Some learners are like me. We need to make learning visual. We need to draw arrows and figures and employ colours. We need to write out our comments and present our insights graphically and, sometimes, strike out the irrelevant or incorrect. My personal books are full of marginalia. I don't own a single book on astrophysics that doesn't contain at least a half dozen hand-drawn solar systems. My book about Facebook is scattered with code snippets and half-planned webpage diagrams. I have a book on Europe in the 1800's whose bottom margin contains a running commentary on what was happening in eastern North America at the time, and a book about WW1 which, lacking sufficient maps, forced me to draw tiny Europes in the upper, outside corners.

In class, when people ask me what a word means, spelling out r-e-n-n-e-t or whatever, I have to grab a bit of paper to write it down. I have to look at it to know they're talking about something used in cheese making. If they ask me a social studies question, I immediately, unthinkingly, move to the white board. However could I explain trade tariffs without drawing little ships approaching a Canadian port?

Other learners are like my friend. She and they need to make learning tactile (or kinesthetic - not being one of these odd folk, I'm blind to the distinction). For them, learning is movement. The dip of Hudson's Bay on the map, or of the 'u' in "honour", is remembered in the muscles. Reading, as much as writing, seems to involve fine motor coordination. Talking (and hand-waving) improves thinking. When a big thought strikes, they're likely to sit up straight; maybe even stand. My friend seems helpless to remember a number she hasn't written down. But then, having written it, she gaily leaves the writing behind with the nonsensical (to me) claim that, having written it, she's bound to remember. And so she is, though I can't see how.

Between us, my friend and I represent a good many people who do badly in a lecture setting where writing and doodling are inconvenient or forbidden. We're apt to make poor use of those reference books we are not allowed to mark up. A power-point presentation is likely pass us by completely. Yes, we may enjoy it, much as we would a good film. But we won't appropriate it. Accommodation and assimilation, those twin pillars of learning, require us to, well, mark it down - even if only lightly - with a pencil - that we can erase later.

If I could, I'd supply each learner with their own books to mark in and mark up. It would be expensive - and vexing in the case of those learners who would start but not finish multiple books - but not crazy expensive. If larger books were divided up into booklets, the cost might not be much more than the cost of a daily newspaper.

But, I can't.

The happy news is that my books are falling apart.

When that happens (and sometimes I hasten the process), I slip individual pages into clear plastic sleeves, and reassemble the books in duo-tangs or ring binders. Beyond extending the life of my resources, this provides a remedy of sorts for those tactile and visual learners. When someone does make a mark or notation, it's made on a plastic sleeve that I can replace at the cost of about 10 cents.

I still ask them not to write in the books; knowing full well this is an unnatural and ineffective request. I also provide scribblers, loose-leaf and graph paper in abundance so they have someplace to draw and note and scribble and exclaim. It's not a perfect solution, but it's something.

Oh, and I also try to eat right, get enough sleep, and spend time with people who love me, just to minimize the amount of time I spend complaining about learners doing exactly what they need to do to learn.

Telling stories and spending time

2011-02-13T10:32:00.008-04:00

ONCE upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch.
Kipling, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin

On a winter night in 1692, a company of soldiers quartered with the MacDonalds of Glencoe rose early and slaughtered their hosts. About 38 men, women and children were killed. Their homes were torched and many survivors died as they fled into the snow.
The Glencoe Massacre, In Our Time

1.

On one of our snow days, my paperwork done or undone but also not doing, I listened to the In Our Time podcast on the massacre at Glencoe in Scotland. I knew a little going in - something of the joining of the kingdoms under James, the loss of the kingdoms by James II to William of Orange, and what that meant for Catholics on the isle.

But I was new to Glencoe, and so I listened to the 45 minute program twice through, and then used Google to find maps and images of the valley. And well, that was it. I'll probably listen again some day soon. I don't know the story well enough yet to tell it - at least, not in any setting where people are allowed to ask me questions.

2.

Our 9-foot time-line sits empty and unused on the wall. But one of my learners started making a smaller one at her seat. I say "smaller" because she was using two lengths of 14" paper. But, in fact, it was a 'bigger' time-line in the sense that she was hoping to capture 5000 years. Mostly, she wanted a way to identify and order the high points as seen by conventional Western histories: the great wall of China; Egypt's pyramids; the Viking raids on Europe and North America; the time of knights and castles; the Roman empire; Greek maths and science; Galileo and modern astronomy; Columbus and the New World....

Obviously, the scale she used wouldn't invite precision. With 80cm of paper, she was forced to cram each 1000 year block into 16cm. Still, it worked as a kind of visual aid, allowing her to see the chronological order of the major events and cultures.

The most striking thing we learned was that, using her scale map of time, the height of the age of dinosaurs was located 25.6 km to the east of us.

History is a big place.

3.

How do I... ? He stopped there, but I knew was he was asking. So did everyone else at the table. He... they... were asking how to cram years of learning history into a handful of months, into 6 to 8 weeks.

I was telling them the story of Alexander, you see. Enjoying the penultimate bit where he reaches the River Jhelum, a tributary of the River Indus, and fights a battle in a thunder storm against troops mounted on war elephants. I drew whiteboard maps and pictures while I talked, and used the world map on the wall to show the extent of his domination.

The day before, I'd told them stories of Julius Caesar, stumbling at bit during his campaigns in Gaul, but picking up ground with the Cleopatra affair and the dark end in Rome. (Thank goodness for movies!) And the day before that - and this isn't quite as odd as you might think - I'd told Kipling's story of how the rhinoceros got his skin. (Someone was confusing the Black Sea with the Red Sea and another was asking where Parsees came from and a third, reading about Gandhi, had been asking about Britain's rule over India - all of which made Kipling seem like the natural place to start. Yes, his stories are racist, imperialist and untrue, but they are also imaginative in the strict sense - and imagery is what they most need to grasp historical geography.)

If I had a single-subject class, and I wasn't helping people with math - what greater joy than helping people with math! - I would certainly be helping them with history and political economy.

Still, the question stood. Apart from my narrations - performed twice daily like a carnival sideshow - how were they to learn history. There was no point in saying how I had learned. I had learned by reading everything, beginning with Henty's Among Malay Pirates, which I read when I was nine and didn't know where Malaysia was, and The Great War, a thick book from the twenties filled with black and white photographs and no awareness that a second world war was about to break out. I read and I read and I read. Of course, I also watched movies and cartoons and documentaries. Later - by my teens - I took advantage of radio programs giving the background to certain events. The point is, I spent years learning.

My learners don't have years.

Another point worth making is that I can't recall learning history in school. This seems odd, and I swear I'm not being churlish here. Sure, I don't much like schools, but I'll freely admit that I encountered literature there, learned to paint and take better photos, and how to wire up a doorbell. But I can't remember learning much history there. I remember the filmstrips and old movies, and I can picture some of the textbooks in my head. But the only history I can recall learning is art history - the names and places and styles of art through the ages which I studied in high school.

It could be that I was just a lousy, day-dreaming, know-it-all student. But what if it turns out that, for some strange reason, a classroom is the worst place to learn history?

What then?

Twitter in Egypt and at home

2011-02-12T11:59:00.018-04:00

I started writing about Egypt because I was moved by an email we received on January 27th, with only a subject line, “Re: URGENT: Egypt blocks text messaging as well” and no body. It was from a Canada-based Egyptian, Mohamed El-Zohairy who was trying to get the word out about what would eventually be a complete Internet blackout in Egypt on that day.
Alexia Tsotsis, Mubarak Shut Down The Internet,
And The Internet Paid Him In Kind

The two screen-captures above show twitter posts: one by me and one by my dad. We aren't really twitter people. At least, I'm not, and my dad has only been on a computer since Christmas. Still. I wanted to say something here. Actually, I wanted to say many things, about Egypt and learning and literacy and... stuff. But let me start with this:

Twenty-five years ago, there was a revolution in the Philippines.

The beginning of the end for the dictator and U.S. ally, Ferdinand Marcos, came three years earlier with the murder of exiled leader Ninoy Aquino. Over the next few years, civil disobedience, quiet plotting within the military, international criticism (in those days, the world media didn't smply repeat whatever the U.S. government said) and growing economic problems put pressure on the Marcos dictatorship. The Catholic Archbishop of Manila openly rejected the government line on the assassination.

National elections, held in February of 1986, suffered from the usual violence and tampering, and, as usual, Marcos was declared winner. But no one believed it. The national Catholic Bishops' Conference issued a statement condemning the fraud. In fact, by this point, even the U.S. government began losing faith in Marcos. The U.S. Senate repeated the bishops' condemnation, and President Reagan, reluctantly, called the reports of election tampering "disturbing".

When Marcos was proclaimed the winner, all 50 opposition members of the parliament walked out. Marcos' main opponent, and the likely winner of the election, was Aquino's daughter, Corazon Aquino. She called for strikes and mass protests. A group of armed forces officers attempted to overthrow Marcos, but fumbled badly and Marcos ordered the leaders arrested. The officers sought help from the national police, under command of Lt. Gen Fidel Ramos, and the national Catholic church headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Manila. These three groups issued statements through the radio station Radio Veritas, mobilizing nearly a million protesters. At this point, mainstream media in the U.S. also began broadcasting the story with regular updates. I remember listening to it on the all news radio station WCBS 880 out of New York.

In the early spring of 1986, I was in at our family's cottage - now my mom and dad's home - working my way through German Lutheran Wolfhart Pannenberg's writings on history as revelation; reading him in tandem with German author Jürgen Moltmann's 1964 Theology of Hope, and two works by Latin American liberation theologian Juan Luis Segundo. Those were books with terrible long sentences and ridiculous subtleties that - these days - appear more like sheer silliness. Still, it was hard to resist the mix of stern German doxological truth and a teología de la liberación from below what with bishops talking revolution on my radio.

Troops still loyal to the government knocked down the main transmitter of Radio Veritas, limiting its range of broadcast. But by then, citizens were in the streets. On February 23, military tanks and armored vans were sent in against the protesters. They were halted by Catholic nuns holding rosaries and kneeling in front of them. Ground troops were also sent in, and then blocked by men and women who linked their arms to hold them back. That night, the transmitter of Radio Veritas failed altogether, but the rebels began broadcasting from a secret location named Radyo Bandido.

At dawn on Monday, February 24, marines shot tear gas at the demonstrators, and helicopters were ordered to attack them. Instead, the pilots joined with the opposition movement and, that afternoon, attacked the only significant airbase still loyal to Marcos. By now, the majority of the armed forces supported the protesters. By nightfall, they had captured television station Channel 4.

On the morning of Tuesday, February 25, the rebels - with army and church support - swore in Corazon Aquino as President of the Philippines. An hour later, Marcos was also sworn in by his supporters. But the television broadcast of this event was cut off, and protesters massed outside his presidential palace. That evening, the Marcos family was evacuated by four US Navy helicopters to Clark Air Base, a U.S. military base north of Manila. From there, they escaped to Hawaii. Meantime, demonstrators were finally able to seize the presidential palace for President Aquino.

The fireworks above are from Egypt, not the Philippines, but the story has been much the same. Military and religious leaders sided with their countrymen against a dictator (Hosni Mubarak) who held power through election fraud and torture. Western governments backed the dictator, but the protests continued. Government and rebel forces fought for control of mass media broadcasts. The rebels won, and the protest spilled across the airwaves (though now as wireless signals read by laptops and cell phones). The citizens marched on the palace, and the dictator fled.

But the story has also been different - not least in how irrelevant the older Western worldview has become.

First, there are the religious-cultural differences. The churches in the West don't champion real revolution much these days. Of all his books, I found Juan Luis Segundo's Theology and the Church: a response to Cardinal Ratzinger and a Warning to the Whole Church (1985) the most compelling. But, as it turned out, the cruel and dishonest Cardinal Ratzinger became present day Pope Benedict XVI, and Segundo's voice has been lost. Liberation theology did not liberate Latin America or Europe.

So too, Pannenberg seems to have lost all sight of history as revelation. There was already a softness in his work in the 1980s. For example, in the journal Christian Century, in March of 1981, Pannenberg wrote, without apparent irony, "the more insecure the future of a liberal, secular society appears to be, the more confident I feel about the future of religion." We who have seen the replacement of secular liberalism with an unrestrained fundamentalist Islam - the beheadings and stonings and planes crashing into office towers - might wonder why anyone would chose a revival of religion over liberalism.

Nor are we much comforted by his qualification: "the only serious challenge to Christianity will not be secular society, which is badly in need of religious support in our days, but rival religions." If the Tea Party gang and other right-wing Christian organizations are an improvement over al-Qaeda , it is only because secular Western law still forbids the worst religious excesses.

Evidence that Pannenberg remained unable to learn from history came in March 2003 when he wrote, "Cultural reclamation included affirming Germany’s specifically Christian heritage, which was helped by the fact that the churches had been less morally compromised than other institutions during the Third Reich." He goes on to write of the the "ominous implications of demographic decline combined with massive Muslim immigration." Ominous. That's just the way European churchmen of the 1920s might have written about Jews.

I don't know where the West's Christian voices were with respect to Egypt. They may have made statements. If so, I didn't hear them, and I doubt many cared - certainly not many Egyptians. Egypt is a mostly Muslim country. That's partly why the West worried aloud that the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood would take over, bringing in a fundamentalist Islam (but only partly). While it's true that police and protesters stopped to pray at appointed hours, there has been no sign of a theocracy, of rule by religious leaders. Instead, there have been signs of Islamic leaders promoting democratic and nonviolent policies and values. See, for example, their defense of Coptic Christians in early January of this year:

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.
Egypt's Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as "human shields"

How much more hopeful that sounds than Pannenberg's "ominous implications." This is, as I say, a shift in the relevancy - for democracy and human rights - of our older Western view of the world and its workings. Sadly, in my classroom, it is Pannenberg-like thinking that dominates; a measure of the continuing influence of the prejudice and falsity on Western TV.

The other major difference between the two affairs - and forgive me if I'm stating the obvious - has to do with modes of communication and motivation.

Consider the way the internet and related technologies replaced the radio and television stations seized by Marcos' opponents. Nobody cared what the Egyptian dictator Mubarak displayed on the state television - we were all watching Al Jazeera on Youtube and following along with twitter. A crisis point was reached, I think, when Mubarak tried to shut down the internet in Egypt, and the people found work-arounds with the support of sympathetic groups and companies outside Egypt. At that point, the only question left was which way the army would go.

There are smarter people than I writing about social media and politics (try this or this), though I gave it a try during the G20 affair (see Adult Literacy and #g20). And, anyway, this is supposed to be a blog about community literacy. So let me just wrap this up, temporarily, by coming back to my dad, sitting in the same room I sat in a quarter century ago, watching a revolution unfold halfway around the world via a changed medium.

Media matters to literacy workers. You want to learn to read better? Great! But read what?

In my table of "functional learning goals for adults" I list things everyday things like being able to "find numbers in phone book" or "read a newspaper" or "read a magazine" - all very sensible, but maybe a little out of date?

At least, maybe it's past time I added a new choice.

Something like, "read or write twitter messages from the front lines of a democratic revolution."

Confident reading

2011-02-07T19:33:00.008-04:00

Independence of mind and an insistence on pleasure are both at the heart of what reading can and should be. No matter how firmly established or canonically secure an author may be... we must approach them as Emerson advises: “He is to approve himself a master of delight to me. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing.”
Doconnor, What is it for me? - A Reader’s Diary

I picked up a book, titled The End of Science by John Horgan, from a used bookstore a while back. Yesterday, I opened it for the first time, and was sorely disappointed. Thinking the book would be about how our technical limitations have created limits in our ability to know or learn more about the universe, I found myself reading a passage where Horgan was interviewing Karl Popper. Horgan asked Popper about his reputation for reacting badly to criticism - an odd question, sort of like, "Is it true you're really defensive?" - and, he wrote, "Popper's eyes blazed."

Really? They caught on fire? Gosh. That must have been horrible.

Anyway, I suppose I'll look at the book again before I turf it, but I'm not too hopeful that it is in any way a sensible, measured discussion of modern science.

But that's not what I wanted to post about.

One day, I was standing at the magazine rack in a drug store, waiting for a friend to do something or other, when I noticed Stephen Brunt's Searching for Bobby Orr. I opened it to a description of Bobby in full flight across his own blue line. Brunt took me with Orr down the ice and into the goal-mouth in a way that sent shivers down my back. How long it had been since I'd read a hockey book that thrilled me with the remembered thrill of the game itself! Of course, I bought the book. And although it turned out that that was one of only about three really thrilling passages in the book, I wasn't disappointed with the purchase. When, after a time, I lost or lent or misplaced the book, I bought a second copy.

But that's not what I wanted to post about either.

What I wanted to post about was the habit, gained who knows where, of opening books to random places, reading a bit, and making judgments about the book as a whole.

Not the accuracy of the judgment, you understand. I'm no expert at textual analysis or anything. It's the habit of confidence I want to draw attention to.

In contrast, I often see newer or less successful readers starting books at the beginning and reading everything, word by word. I mean everything. Acknowledgments. Foreword. Preface. Table of contents. Table of maps and figures. Introduction. I've watched people read for twenty minutes and not yet reach Chapter One. Who'd want to do that? Who - other than the author and her editor - cares what's in the first four or six or eight or ten pages?

What makes it worse for me - I'm talking about my own frustration as a bystander apparently unable to mind my own business - is that these readers sometimes do this out of a sense of obligation. As though thoroughness of reading were a measure of personal goodness. (Now, where would people get an idea like that?) Conversely, I suppose, they would view what I do as cheating. How could I convince them that if, standing in the drug store, I had read Brunt's introduction, I would never have been persuaded to read the book.

I've tried pointing out that movie previews rarely feature the introduction, but instead highlight the middle parts of the movie. But all I'm doing is reinforcing their belief that entertainment is fundamentally difference than information, than scholarship, than learning.

Still, it's always hard to know, when looking at other people's behaviour, whether we're seeing what they will do or what they can do. Maybe, if these readers don't seem to take possession of books, if they don't appear to be masters over the things they read, it's because there is a "zone of proximal development" aspect to this. Maybe people approach books badly (ineffectively) because the books themselves are too difficult or alien.

Taking possession of a book is a metaphor, obviously, for some mixture of confidence, competence and determination. Nurturing reading competence is our trade. It's what we do. But, how can we help our learners also find confidence - the confidence not only to read a book, to to start reading when and where they want, and to cast it aside when it's less than they want? How do we help our learners gain that sort of command of their reading?

And, after, how do we avoid taking it away again in the name of education?

Dark bookwagons in February

2011-02-03T19:05:00.005-04:00

Do you really imagine that books can harm me? Is naivete really your armor?
Something Wicked This Way Comes

The cold and the dark of it. Bookwagons in February.

We got 57 books back, and lent out 34 titles to seven kids and three adults.

Most of the kids chose familiar Munsch stories and easy reads. One boy expressed a general sentiment when, grabbing a copy of Brown Bear Brown Bear, he yelled “I like this book! I can read it! I can read it all by myself!” Independent reading is important to these kids.

Among the three adults was a mom who borrowed for the first time in the 5 or 6 years we've been bringing books to her kids. She said, sensibly, she wanted to "take up the habit of reading" to build her spoken vocabulary.

Another took all four of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein books - the fourth having just come out in paperback. And the third took The Ruins, a 2006 horror novel by Scott Smith. I warned her to read it by daylight - it's a scary, dismal tale - but she laughed me off.

Okay. Go ahead. Read at your own risk.

I'm just the librarian.