A year ago today I began writing this blog, with the goal of sharing some of the things I’ve learned about teaching adult literacy and numeracy. On this anniversary, I’m re-playing my first post–still relevant, I think.

Slowly, over the years, because I was willing to learn, my students gave me a fresh take on the three R’s. I learned that to teach well, I needed to think about respect, resistance and reality.

Respect

Respect for them, and for every decision they took, every choice they made. Respect for myself.

Resistance

They come back to school, that place of previous failures and humiliation, because they want what they think I offer—the key to a better life. I offer them different ways of learning: group work; choice; meaningful work; I invite them to join the teaching team and make decisions about how and what they will learn. But they resist my best efforts to do things differently, because it is not what they expect, and it scares them. They refuse to risk going back again into that position of failure and humiliation. I need to acknowledge their resistance publicly, to honour it, and to work with it. I need to recognize my own resistance, too, because it gets in the way.

Reality

My work is most successful when I listen to what is really going on. Speak the unspoken thoughts and feelings. Do reading and writing that is real, in the real world. Find an audience for the voice; find information in response to questions; say yes to every chance to move the literacy work into the community, and bring the community into the class.

A Big Pot of Money

At the Reading and Writing Centre we had a pot of money entirely controlled by the Monday morning meeting. All enrolled students and the two teachers made the decisions at that weekly meeting, and everyone present, including the teachers, had one vote. A student chaired the meeting.

The pot was established when the centre opened and an administrator deposited $200 into it, her annual budget for “hospitality.” Over the years, funds came in from a variety of sources, including grants for field trips, sales from books we published, money the students made through various jobs they took on, such as reviewing materials for Grass Roots Press, selling books we published, speaking at conferences, and producing made-to-order cards, posters and flyers, as well as donations from various well-wishers and a few bake sales and yard sales.

The Monday meeting decided to spend the money for things like field trips, coffee supplies and food. (Usually some student or pair of students made lunch for everybody once a week.)

If you have coffee, you have clean-up.

As everyone who has ever worked in a group will understand, washing the dishes and cleaning up was an ongoing problem; a few students did most of the work. Although many different systems were devised to make sure that everyone took some share of the work, all the systems failed.

The repeated failure of the clean-up systems was a problem for me. I didn’t do clean-up, but I listened to the complaints of those who did too much, and I had to attempt to figure out a way to make things fairer, and to deal with the emotions that arose in the situation.

My own experience in many different staff rooms made me pessimistic that a solution would ever be found. In every place I had ever worked where there was a communal coffee pot, some people had done most of the work while others did none.

So I solicited a donation of $500 from a supporter of the Centre, which made the fund quite flush, and I went to the next Monday meeting with a suggestion that we use the donation to pay a couple of students to do the kitchen clean-up every day to the end of term.

They voted down my proposal.

Mostly students argued that they would rather spend the money on field trips and other things everyone could enjoy; some said that we should clean up after ourselves as a matter of principle. The clincher came when Ghurdeep argued that if we paid people until the money was gone, we would find ourselves once again dealing with the same problem of some people not doing their share, so we might as well solve that problem now and save the money.

The “no” vote was nearly unanimous.

I was shocked, even though I had given lessons in “How to say no to your teacher.” What did I expect?

Student Ownership and Student Leadership

Teachers at the Centre had wanted to give students as much ownership of the place as we could. We had set up the fund that the students controlled (and contributed to) as a symbol of that ownership. We had said that the Monday Meeting was responsible for decisions about how that money was spent.

Many teachers and programs pay lip service to giving students control over their learning, or to sharing power with students. We had gone considerably further than most programs towards making that a reality. We really believed in the principle of student control, of student leadership. And we knew by the feedback we got from students, and from our increased enrollment and better student retention, that we were on the right track.

Temptation

But I couldn’t resist the temptation to manipulate the procedure to solve my problem. I didn’t want to deal with the on-going dilemma of some students doing less than their share of clean-up, so I went looking for a solution on my own.

I don’t think I even realized how underhanded it was to solicit a donation exactly when I needed money in the pot for my scheme.

Furthermore, I wasn’t honest with the Monday meeting. I presented my proposal as a solution to their problem of the work falling unfairly on a few students. I did not talk about my problem, which was listening to griping about the students who didn’t do their share, having repreated conversations about resentment and burn-out with students who did too much, and trying to maintain a harmonious group in spite of those cross currents of emotion. I didn’t say that, as a feminist, I hated the fact that most of the people doing more than their share were women.

I wonder what would have happened if I had been honest about those things in the meeting.

Why am I telling this story?

Because it makes me reflect on the insidiousness of power–how hard it is to give up when it is conferred on you in a particular situation. The relationship of teacher and student is by definition one where the power rests with the teacher, but the dynamic plays itself out in peculiar ways in adult literacy or adult basic education classroom.

Adult students come to literacy class with memories of teachers who didn’t reach them, humiliating scenarios of failure and disappointment, shame and ridicule. They come either with an exaggerated estimation of and respect for the teacher’s power, or, on the other extreme, such a fierce determination not to be in the one-down position again that they seem to be always spoiling for a fight.

I know that if I am in a power struggle with a student, I will always win, because I have the weight of the institution behind me. But I don’t want any student to lose in a power struggle with me. If he loses, I cannot teach him.

My whole purpose in being there is to teach, so I avoid power struggles. I try to share power. But it sneaks up on me and whaps me on the head.

That’s why I was shocked when the Monday meeting turned down my grand scheme of paying students to do clean-up. After I got over my surprise, I admit a small part of me was glad they had said ”No!” to me so clearly. But mostly I was shocked.

And at every Monday meeting after that, while I listened to someone going on again about how all students should do their share of clean-up, I was reminded that I had come up with a brilliant solution to the problem, and I did not have the power to bring it into being.

Related articles

• Who’s in Charge Here?
• How to Say No to Your Teacher

Arriving Saltspring Island

I was just one of the crowd of people on the trip—old and young, fat and thin, First Nations and white people, male and female. We were off by bus and ferry to Saltspring Island for the day. My job was to blend in, to let myself be represented by students. They were in charge, and I was along for the ride. I didn’t know it would be so hard.  

We had spent hours in class planning the trip, all of the class working together and having a say. There were many decisions to be made.

Would our grant cover a bus and ferry and gas for the day? Yes, because my co-teacher, Christina Patterson, would be driving the bus, so we wouldn’t have to hire a driver.  

Which Island craftspeople and artisans would we visit? We read many brochures and searched tourist information sites and finally agreed on a glass maker, a basket maker, a potter and a woodworker.

We read the map and figured out a logical route to their studios, including an important item, lunch in the village. Mickey, a friend of mine and Saltspring resident, had generously offered to meet us at noon and buy us all lunch.

We picked a day, e-mailed the artisans and requested studio tours. We read the ferry schedule and decided when we’d have to leave the school in order to get there; we wrote up the field trip agreeement and made sure everyone signed. We figured out which parents would need money for extra child care that day, because we would be back late.

We picked four students, one for each studio we planned to visit, to be our guides. Each one would lead the way into a studio, greet the artisan, introduce us, say thanks at the end of the tour, and give the artisan the card we had prepared. The four did a little rehearsing in the classroom to get ready for their roles.

The field trip fitted in well with the work Christina and I were doing to give students as much authority for making decisions as we could. I was glad to give up the decision making while we were in class, where everyone knew anyway that I was the teacher, and where I was facilitating the discussions that led to the decisions.

But in the field, on the ground on Saltspring Island, I was tested to the core.

Four times we went into a studio led by our student guide. Four times I got to practice giving up control. Four times I found out how difficult it was.  

Somehow, I wanted those artisans to know who the teacher was. When a student guide was less skillful than I hoped, when the introductions were halting or the thanks less than effusive, I wanted to make it right, to apologize, to explain that I had done my best to prepare that student for the role of guide, and I couldn’t say what had caused him to go off the rails.

I wanted to give a signal, a roll of the eyes, or a gesture that might seem to be aimed at helping the student but was really meant for the workshop artisan, a secret signal that said, “I’m the one in charge here.”

And when the student guide did a great job, speaking well, explaining clearly, asking interesting questions, summing up the experience as she said thanks, then too I wanted to signal my pride and my relief.

Sharing power. So much harder than it appears on the surface.

So much easier to pretend to share power while grasping the core ever tighter to myself.   

photo credit: irfy via photopin cc

I don’t trust words that end in “-ed” when they are used to describe emotions.

Take “loved” for example, as in “I feel loved.” Well, no, “loved” is not a feeling. That sentence really means that you have noticed that someone loves you. What you feel is another thing. You may feel happy, joyful, ecstatic; you may feel love in return for the person who loves you.

On the other hand, if the person who loves you is a spouse that you want to divorce, you may feel guilty, sad, impatient, angry…. If the person who says “I love you,” is stalking you, you may be afraid, angry, anxious, curious….

Those words ending in “-ed” are passive. They indicate that someone has been acted upon, but in themselves the words carry no emotion. The person who is acted upon can have a full range of emotions about the situation. However, some of these “-ed” words have acquired so much baggage that we think of them as feelings.

A condition, not a feeling

“Frustrated” is one such word that comes up often in connection with teaching and learning. In itself, it simply means ”blocked or prevented from reaching a goal or destination.”

“The thunderstorm frustrated our plans for a picnic.”

The person who is allergic to wasps may feel glad to have the picnic cancelled; the person who just baked two pies, assembled a prize-winning potato salad, and who was hoping for lots of acclaim as a cook and baker, will likely have different emotions.

“The baby gate at the top of the stairs frustrated the puppy’s desire to come down to the party.”

You can bet that the puppy’s feelings are different from the person who put the gate up in the first place!

Frustrated, but cheerful

Take a GED or a pre-GED student attempting a newly assigned set of math word problems. He solves the first one and checks with his neighbour, only to find that she has come up with a different answer and is confident that she is right.

He has been frustrated in his attempt to arrive at the right answer, but cheerfully attacks the problem again. He thinks he finds the error in his thinking, and arrives at a new answer. Pleased with his efforts, he flags his teacher.

“No, not right” she says, “Take another look at the example at the top of the page.”

Again, he has been frustrated in his attempt to solve the problem, but he likes the advice from his teacher, takes another look at the example, and tries again.

He is still frustrated when his neighbour, whose work has now been marked right by the teacher, whispers that his new answer (the third) is still wrong.

A super hero, frustrated

This news does not deflate him, however. He sees that heroic measures are called for and digs in with a will. He changes all the big numbers in the problem to small, manageable ones. It is a strategy his teacher has taught him, and when he uses it, sometimes his intuition kicks in and shows him how to proceed.

He stares at the modified problem for a few minutes, squinty-eyed, and waits hopefully. Nothing happens. No flash of inspiration. He has been frustrated once again, but, since the class has come to an end, he packs up his math to do for homework, and goes out, still hopeful .

Frustrated, but resourceful

When he digs his books out again that evening, the atmosphere is different. There is no cheerful buzz of other students around him working on math. There is no teacher in the room, ready to help if asked. He feels less confident, less hopeful, now that he’s home, but he squares his shoulders and starts in again, hoping to get the homework out of the way in time to watch the game on TV.

After looking at the problem for a few minutes, and going over the example, he looks up the answer in the back of the book. Turning to the problem again, he tries to work backwards from the answer to find how the problem was solved, but he cannot figure it out.

Still frustrated, growing desperate

At this point, he decides he needs help, so he asks his wife to take a look at the problem. It’s a little dicey, asking his wife–sometimes she’s very helpful, at other times impatient, but no matter what her response, he never likes to be dependent on her. Still, she’s his best bet right now.

She takes a look at the problem, takes a look at the example and announces that she does that kind of problem a different way; she can’t do it the way his book says to do it.

He feels desperate to get his homework done before the game starts, so he asks her to show him how she does it. She takes his pencil out of his hand, pulls his notebook towards herself, and settles in. He sits, bored and a little anxious, waiting.

It takes her a few minutes and several attempts to recall how she used to do that kind of problem, but eventually she checks her answer in the back of the book and says, with a note of triumph, “There! I got it.”

Still frustrated in his own attempts at the problem, he sees a possible glimmer of light. “Good,” he says. “Can you show me how you did it? I’ve got ten more to do.”

Frustrated, feeling stupid and angry

She tries to explain, but cannot find the words, and grows impatient when he does not understand quickly. He reacts to her impatience by feeling stupid, then angry, and finally slams the book shut. “I give up,” he says. “I’ll never get this.”

Invisible frustration

Most people would recognize that last interchange as frustration, but in reality, this student has been frustrated since he first set out to do the page of problems, in the sense that there was a barrier to reaching his goal, and he was struggling to overcome it.

The steps I’ve recounted here might have taken 20 or 30 minutes in class and half an hour at home, but most people would not have seen frustration until the very end. Over that hour, we would have seen him cheerfully applying clues from his teacher, thinking as he talked math with his neighbour, being creative as he re-jigged the problem to court his intuition, resilient in the face of repeated failure, practical in asking for help.

We would call him persistent, not frustrated.

We would call him engaged.

Yet often that student, thinking about himself and math, (or English, or any other subject you’d like to take as an example), will say, “I can’t do math. I get so frustrated I just want to give up.”

And the teacher may say, “He needs to learn to deal with frustration. He needs to keep trying, even when he is frustrated.”

Both teacher and student are using “frustrated” to name that negative feeling that came at the end of that long hour of frustration, engagement and persistence.

When we focus on the last minute of this hour, the slamming of the books, the giving up in defeat, we miss seeing the work that was done.

Even more damaging, when the student remembers only the defeat, the feeling stupid, the anger at himself and at math, he has an incorrect idea of himself as a student. He sees himself as a quitter rather than as someone who persists. He sees himself as a failure instead of someone with a variety of skills, strategies and methods of attack.

As teachers, we can decide to look at all the emotions that students display when something is blocking their paths to their goals. Furthermore, the feedback we give can help students to see their growing repertoire of skills, and their positive engagement in the process.

I don’t mean a teacher should say, ”You really tried hard to get this.”

I mean really specific feedback that focuses on what the teacher saw the student doing, things he may not be aware of himself:

“I saw you attempt to solve the problem three different ways. I heard you talking with your neighbour about the math, and you studied the example in the book. I know you tried that “using smaller numbers” strategy, and I liked how you made the decision to ask for help when you ran out of ideas. In the face of frustration, you worked hard for an hour. That’s a sign of a good student. You didn’t give up. Even when you ran out of ideas, you didn’t run away. You asked for help.”

Especially our students in adult literacy, GED prep, adult basic education, upgrading, call it what you will, who have experienced years of failure, need help to see themselves as acting like successful students, even when they are not learning quickly.

Frustration is the garden where persistence grows.

Graphic: Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions; photo: Wikipedia

I don’t mind if students see me as kind and patient because they don’t usually see into the inner workings and complexities of the art of teaching, but I expect administration to be a little more savvy, and to appreciate some of the nuances.

Besides, kindness and patience are character traits and the implication is that I am a good teacher because I am a good person, not because of the work I put in, the knowledge I have acquired, and the skills I have honed over the years.

They are virtues associated most closely with women, and the stereotype raises its ugly head again–lower level students, adult basic literacy students, can (should) be taught by women because of their warm and nurturing natures; students at a higher level need to be taught by people with real skills and knowledge of subject matter.

And further, since all that is needed to teach adult basic literacy students is kindness and patience, those teachers don’t need to be paid well, or at all. In my part of the world, it is mostly volunteers who teach basic literacy students; adults taking classes that are equivalent to high school get paid instructors.

The Evaluator saw “Kindness.”

Now it’s true I nearly always treat students gently, but it’s not because I’m kind. It’s because I work for social justice. It’s because I believe in equality. I know that I have power and privilege in relation to students, power and privilege that come to me by accident.

I am white. Three little words that carry so much freight.

My family moved into the middle class because my father, who was a veteran, got a free university education after the war was over. Think of that. People got bombed and killed in another part of the world, and one result was that my father could stop being a labourer and become a pharmacist.

Because my family was moving up, I was taught to behave in ways that middle class people approved of. I was bright. I didn’t cause any trouble. I got good marks, and my parents could afford to send me to university.

As a result, I ended up in front of this class full of people who did not have my advantages and my privilege. People who expect that I will make the rules in this room. People who want what they think I can offer, a chance for a better life for them and their children.

I know how much power I have. I try not to abuse it. You can’t call that kindness: Call it awareness, call it politics, a thirst for fairness, a desire for equality, a sense of social justice. Call it many names, but not kindness. Nothing so condescending as kindness.

On a more practical side, I treat students gently because it’s part of creating a safe space. If they don’t feel safe, they don’t come back. If they don’t feel safe, they don’t fully engage in the learning process. If they don’t engage, they make slow progress, or no progress. In that case, I feel like a failure.

So really, you might say that what seems like kindness is simply my desire for job satisfaction.

The Evaluator saw “Patience.”

When I first tell people about my work, a common response is “Oh, you must have so much patience.” But no, I am not a patient teacher.

In order for there to be patience, there must first be impatience. The patient person must be sitting on her desire to be going faster or changing direction. She may have many motives for disguising her impatience, for imposing patience on top of impatience, but at the root of patience must be impatience. If she is content with the speed and the direction things are going in, there is no impatience; hence, there is no need for patience.

My evaluator observed me teaching in a situation where she thought she would be impatient. She knows that an adult literacy class involves teaching a limited number of fairly basic skills to people who have not learned them in spite of years of schooling. She imagines that she would find it hard to be patient in that situation.

Since she doesn’t see me being impatient, she concludes that I must be patient.

What does she miss? If I’m not being patient, what is going on?

I’m curious.

How many times will the student use the math manipulatives to solve problems before he internalizes the idea that the bottom number of a fraction indicates the number of pieces a whole is divided into; the bigger the number, the smaller the pieces.

I’m evaluating learning.

I’m doing constant formative assessment as I work with students individually or in a group. What do they know? Where in the process are they stuck? What misconceptions are blocking their understanding of this new work? WIll their grasp of this material be a sufficient basis for the new work I know is coming up next week?

I’m evaluating teaching.

Which of the strategies I have for teaching periods and capitals is working best for these students today?

I’m thinking about the long term and the short term.

How does this lesson on periods and capitals fit into my plan for helping students improve their writing? What connections can I make to show students how things fit together in the bigger picture?

I’m paying attention to emotions.

This classroom is a sea of emotions. I look for behaviours that indicate what people are feeling: Whose frustration is making it impossible to concentrate on the work? Who is finding joy and satisfaction in doing something they couldn’t do yesterday? Whose response to stress is causing them to disassociate?

I try to find some way to express or deal with the emotions that are impeding learning, and bring forward those that are conducive to learning. I watch my own emotions, too, because they affect my teaching, and my students’ learning.

I’m solving problems.

Every minute, as they come up. Many things new and different every day.

I’m refusing to be bored.

My first rule in the classroom, for me and for my students. If I’m bored, something is not working. Find out what it is, and fix it. Refuse to be bored.

I’m engaged.

In short, I’m not patient; I’m teaching.

My students respond to me, not because they like me, but because I’m teaching! And because they’re learning.

Patience (photo: Anita Peppers)

They may fear text, or be confused by it. They may loathe the printed word, and/or ignore it. They may have a hundred different coping skills to get around the fact that they do not read well, but they respect text.

Text as Monolith

Many see it as one solid, monolithic block. Every piece of text is equal: equally valid, equally useful, equally difficult and equally beyond them. Their respect gets in the way of learning to read; it gets in the way of thinking critically about text.

Good Readers Have a Healthy Disrespect

You and I don’t have that kind of respect for text. How often we talk about books in a very disrespectful way:

• “I bought it for my e-reader, and it’s been sitting there for weeks, but I always seem to choose something else.”
• “I’m really interested in the subject, but the writing style was so convoluted I felt like a pig hunting for truffles.”
• “I was reading along and I realized I couldn’t keep the characters straight in my mind, and I didn’t really care about them anyway. So I tossed it.”
• “I know I should read the Russian masters, and I’ve been meaning to read them for years, but they are so heavy that I can’t get through them.”
• “I read the headlines of the tabloids when I’m in line at the supermarket, but I’d never buy that junk.”
• “I’m looking for some light summer reading–I can’t deal with deathless prose in July.”

When we don’t want to deal with a piece of text, we usually find something wrong with the text (too hard, too dull, too depressing, too light, too long, too…) or with the occasion (not enough time, not enough light, too late, too many worries…).

When our students don’t want to deal with a text, they find fault with themselves. They are too lazy or too stupid. They respect text too much to find fault with it. They do not differentiate between one kind of text and another. Bad writing, good writing, simple language or convoluted, it’s all one to them. Text. To be respected.

The Power of “No!”

One of my favourite lessons to teach is that it’s okay to reject a piece of text for any reason, serious or frivolous. Reminding them of our class rule “refuse to be bored,” I give everyone a copy of the same collection of short pieces–often a collection of writing by students at the same level as they are. We start on the first page. I ask someone to read the title and the first sentence. Then I say, “What do you think? Shall we read the rest of this or not?”

Usually they don’t think I’m seriously inviting them to NOT READ, so they say they’d like to go ahead. We read that piece, and I ask someone to read the title and first sentence of the next piece, and again I ask if they want to read the rest, or not.

Eventually someone says “No,” and we skip a story. Then another. And another. Soon more and more stories are rejected, and the room is giddy with the unaccustomed satisfaction of saying no to reading any given piece.

That is the beginning of power over text. After all, you can’t say “Yes!” wholeheartedly unless you know you can also say “No.”

That is the beginning of breaking down the monolith, of differentiating between one text and another. From noticing that one text is more or less interesting than another, they can go on to notice that one is more or less difficult than another, more or less reliable, more or less factual, more or less opinionated, more or less manipulative.

That is the beginning of critical thinking about text.

Related posts

• Read a Book a Week

Photo from
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/

Kat posted this question on my blog the other day, and went on to say, “I’m teaching my first teenage reading student now, and forcing ‘See Spot Run’ down his throat is not sitting well with me.”

My first, general answer would be “anything that the student is interested and you can stomach.” I would draw the line at porn and hate, but other teachers will have other boundaries.

Notice I said “anything you can stomach,” meaning that there is lots of reading material suitable for adult students that is not uplifting or useful, that has language and subject matter not usually considered appropriate for school use. If you can stomach it, and the student likes it, you are ready to proceed.

No Resources Available

I’m happy to note that Kat doesn’t want to use “See Spot run,” but often there are no other resources available, especially for people at a really beginning level of reading. When I taught at a storefront literacy program, students would sign up for the free classes, but they had no money to buy books or supplies, and finding a sponsor to pay for them was slow or impossible. In the meantime, we wanted to seize the moment! So we learned to improvise and that turned out to be the best thing for holding students’ interest.

What does the student want to read?

That is the question to start with. “Do you have something in your life right now that you are trying to read?” If the answer is yes, you have your text. If it is above the reading level of the learner, see “difficult texts” below.

And if the answer is no, have a conversation about interests, daily life, what mobile devices does s/he use, and so on. This conversation will help you find the texts to use to teach/learn/practice reading.

Here are some examples.

Found Texts

1. Text all around us

Go for a walk with the student and a camera of some kind. The student takes pictures of text in the environment (the name of the building you are in, street signs, fast food places, menus, hours business are open, etc.) Work with the student to make a photo-essay of the pictures, in e-format. Working with the pictures, writing captions, deciding on the order to put them in, and so on will give lots of practice reading the signs.

Make sure there is an easy link to the collection the student makes, so s/he can return to it again and again. Pride in the accomplishment will bring the student back, and the words will be read every time.

Help the student find an audience for this piece by sending the link to people he knows, other students, other community members. Use your imagination. Encourage people to reply or comment.

2. Text online

Ask the student what mobile devices he has; offer whatever you have available in the way of computers and other devices. Explore. Stretch the student’s skills.

I find that many adult literacy students only scratch the surface of the devices, programs and apps they use. For example, someone may play a game, but not know how to customize it by changing game difficulty, scoring methods, music, avatars, etc. “Options,” “Save,” and “Delete” should be sight words for everybody.

Start with whatever he knows, and push a bit farther. Give lots of time for practice.

Texts Produced by Students

Use the language experience method to produce stories or essays about something the student is interested in, and then use them for reading practice.

Show the student Pinterest or Paper.li, or some other program for curating content, and invite him to make specific boards or newsletters about a particular topic–cars or babies or animals or cops or… You can use some of the material collected to build vocabulary, teach phonics, or build comprehension strategies.

Difficult Texts

I always groaned silently when a student brought in the Big Book from Alcholics Anonymous, because the reading is so hard. Other difficult texts are manuals that the student needs to read for work or another course or sometimes a hobby.

My strategy here is to step back, and approach the difficult text gradually. I might take a chapter of the difficult book and start by asking the student what he knows about the topic of that chapter, and have him brainstorm and then dictate to me an essay based on knowledge that he already has. This gives him a chance to see vocabulary in print that he is already familiar with; I would use that text to teach vocabulary, phonics skills and reading strategies.

Then I would look for another form of the same content–perhaps an easy-to-read version from somewhere else, or maybe a video that I would ask him to view, review and summarize, probably with me writing the summary as he dictated it. (I would be ready to do the writing, because I want to get as complex a piece of text as the student is willing to give. If I ask him to write it himself, it will likely be shorter, less detailed, and less well organized.) Then we use that piece for reading practice.

Sometimes I write a plain language version of the difficult text to practice with before we get to the main event. In essence I am teaching the content of the difficult text before I ask the student to read it, so that the ideas and the vocabulary become part of his lexicon before he deals with the text.

Pattern Spelling

I always use my version of pattern spelling with these beginning students, because it is an active, interesting, easy twenty or thirty minutes. It looks like spelling, so people like it; each session has the same structure, which provides a nice contrast to the other, more free-form work we are doing; it helps with reading because students learn to recognize the constantly recurring prefixes and suffixes that are part of English; each session results in a printed list of 50 to 100 words, all of which the student can read in isolation. Finally, best of all, students practice writing and spelling polysyllabic words–nice to go from “fresh” to “refreshingly” for a student who is a very basic reader.

Taking Care of the Teacher

And is this not a lot of work for the teacher? Yes, of course. But since you are not taking home marking to do (You don’t give grades), and pattern spelling takes no prep, you can spend an interesting time sharpening your own skills in various programs and apps your student wants to learn, and doing some searching for material. And finding material for a student who is engaged is so much more fun.

Giving students a blog provides an instant audience, and a shift in identity for the blogger. A blogger looks at life with a writer’s eye and awareness of the audience; a blog gives its author a chance to examine, name and reflect on events, and may offer vindication and healing if the blogger is courageous enough to tell the truth.  

Once again, I’ll use my recent experience with Mistaken Identity to exemplify what an audience can do for a student writer.

We hadn’t planned to do anything more than collect Sheila’s stories for a few friends, but the response to the initial print run made us think about finding a wider audience. So I undertook to explore the process of making it an e-book, publishing it at Smashwords.

When the e-book came out, I made her a blog, primarily to get the word out about the e-book, but it too grew into more than we expected. She called it “Stories from Life.”

A Blog Brings a Community

Sheila had only the most basic of computer skills when we started the project, and there was nothing intuitive in her use of the blog in the beginning. However, she quickly came to manage most parts of it on her own. On the side, nothing to do with me, she started reading and responding to other bloggers writing about similar themes. She found a little on-line community of people who liked what she wrote, and who wrote things she was interested in reading. She made comments on their blogs; they responded to her posts.

Sheila loved having a blog. We posted a couple of stories from the book, to give people a sample of what they would find if they bought it, stories of a woman frequently mistaken for a man, with outcomes variously ridiculous, funny, dangerous, and humiliating. 

Of course, the fact of writing Mistaken Identity did not mean that people stopped mistaking her for a man in her daily life; soon she had a couple of more experiences that she wrote about directly on her blog. Her readership had become a safe place for her to reflect in print on her life as she lived it.

Blogging Changes Experience

As she took on the identity of a blogger, she began to look at her experiences differently. Instead of dreading an encounter with someone who thinks she is a man, she began to see it as grist for the mill; she began to look forward at the beginning of her day to writing about it at the end.

For example, she muses about going shopping for presents for a sister and a sister-in-law and wonders about the clerks she will meet in the body and bath department:  

Thanks to my new blog, I am in anticipation of the adventure. Will they even spot me as a woman? And if not, will they be kindly, or fawning, or flirtatious? or however they feel they should minister to this man so endearingly out of his depth.

And do I play them and THEN tell them their mistake, which could only exacerbate their “gender shock” and all the forms that might take, or do I tell them at the first sign of the wrong pronoun? …

But I will have to report “after” and that might make me no end of brave, plus, nothing like an audience to embolden one.  (November 21, 2012).

A Whole New Power

After writing a post about going through airport security (Patted Down, March 5, 2013), she says, 

But writing the stories in Mistaken Identity and having them published and having this blog to add chapters whenever have given me a whole new power over the potential insults and a whole new joie de vivre in the flaunt of it. I almost look forward to potential theater for good “copy”; I hone my witty comebacks. So much better than a state of semi-dread that I might need a washroom, not a pretty picture for a woman of my middle, post-menopausal age.

It has been great to get this off my chest and I really do feel quite differently about the whole thing. So my thanks to you all for listening. I love having a blog, really.

Thanks, Sheila

Thanks to my friend Sheila Gilhooly for letting me talk about her experience in writing for an audience. I have seen very similar changes in ABE/Literacy students (Caroline, Naomi) whose writing finds an audience of friends and strangers.

Related articles (Thanks to Alpha Plus for these leads)

• Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes (nicolalohmann.wordpress.com)
•  Prevent it Adult students at PTP (Toronto) as part of their  type II diabetes prevention campaign.
• Seven Reasons Your Students Should Be Blogging

In this activity, to honour and thank those who support them in coming back to school, students will consolidate and formalize part of their support system, and supporters will not only strengthen their commitment to supporting their student, but they will forge a connection with the literacy/ABE/GED program itself.

Make the Support Team Visible

Ask students who is in their corner as they come back to school. Who has faith in them? Who is ready with an encouraging word? Who is helping them stay in school by looking after their kids, or helping with chores, or giving them a ride? Who has offered to help with homework? What other things do their supporters do for them?

Helping students develop a support system is something many programs do, as part of helping students stay in school. Why not take a step further and provide a way to strengthen that support system by acknowledging its importance? And at the same time ask learners to do some reading and writing and numeracy tasks that are real in the real world?

 Plan a Celebration

Imagine an afternoon or evening when your class celebrates the people who support them in coming back to school. Students greet their guests as they arrive; one or two students will MC the event. One by one, the students will come to the front, introduce their supporter and read the piece they have written about the supporter, the support offered and its value. Much applause. The instructor or an administrator gets to make a short speech about the importance of outside support and to appreciate the efforts of the supporters gathered for the occasion. All this is followed by refreshments and talk, and something for supporters and students to take home to remind them of the occasion.

Something to Take Away

Every supporter will receive a copy of the writing with a photo of the student and supporter together, mounted so it’s easy to display on a kitchen wall, on top of the TV, or on an office desk.

Every student gets a copy, also mounted, to display at home, to remind them of the support they have. If you have room in your program to display all of them, make a copy for a wall in a classroom or hallway.

 Getting Started

Ask each student to pick someone who supports them in coming back to school. Might be a family member, a friend, or a professional, e.g., a pastor, counsellor, coach, or social worker.

Name the day and start planning to invite all those supporters to come to the class. Initial planning will involve setting a date and time, making invitations, deciding on refreshments.

Writing

Ask students to write about the person they have picked. What is the connection between them? (My sister, my coach, etc.) What does that person do to support the learner? (Name everything.) Is there an anecdote to show the support? How does the learner feel about having that person in their corner?

In class, have each student read aloud the draft of their story. You say what you like about each story. Point out what is good. Ask other students to say what they like best about each piece. (There is no room for criticism in such a public space.) They will learn from hearing each other read.

Over the next few days students can revise and proofread their writing, and get it into its final form, although they can make changes up until the day of the celebration.

 Photos

Everyone needs a photo of the student and supporter together. Probably the easiest way to do this is to take a picture as the supporters arrive for the celebration, when everyone is a little dressed up; otherwise, photos could be brought in, or the supporters could come in on an earlier day for a photo session.

Mount the Writing and Photo Together

There are many ways to mount the writing and photo so it can be displayed by the supporter, depending on your budget and skills. Check out a scrapbooking catalogue or a photo department for ideas. Here are some possibilities:

• Both can be mounted on heavy cardstock, with a second sheet of cardstock cut and bent to form a “leg” glued to the back, or a hanger glued to the back.
• Find a collection of used frames from a thrift shop.
• Use some album pages that have clear fold-back sheets. Put the writing and photo under the clear sheet, tape the edges and glue a hanger to the back.
• Use legal size cardstock in landscape mode, fold in half with photo on one side and story on the other.
• Collect some very strong fridge magnets and make a gift of a magnet with each mounted picture and story.

It is best NOT to glue the photo on, because it will warp. Instead, cut four slits in the backing for the corners of the photo to slip into.

Plan the Day

There are jobs for many students to put event on. Here are some suggestions for dividing up the work:

Make invitations: One, two or three students can make invitations; have copies made for everyone to use.

Invite guests: Students can invite their own guests, but the class should decide on other people to invite, e.g., program administration, funders, other friends of the program. Students can go in pairs or as individuals to invite these people.

Plan the refreshments: This means a committee to plan, to set up, to clean up. Lots of math involved, and time management.

Find a photographer: A person with some skill is needed. Set up a special place with good light and a simple background for pairs to sit or stand in.

Get photos printed: whether you print on site or someone goes to the printers, it’s an important job.

MC the event: One or two students can do the job. If you think they need help giving the opening remarks, you may decide to have the MC introduce you or someone else from the program to welcome guests.

Microphone adjuster: If you have a microphone, it is a good idea to have a student stationed near it to adjust the height for each speaker.

Rehearse the Day

Many rehearsals are needed. Students need to practice reading what they have written many times until it is as smooth as it can be, and until they can read it without choking up.

The MC needs to practice introducing everyone, including figuring out how to pronounce all the names.

Students need to know the order of presentations so they can be ready when it is their turn. What can be done so that there is not a long wait between speakers? Will the student and the supporter come up together? Will they all sit at the front in order to minimize the wait time? or come from the back, and be already standing and ready when they are “on deck”?

If you are using a microphone, many people will have to get used to that.

Do an imaginary walk through of everything, from greeting at the door, taking pictures, seating, reading, refreshments, conclusion and clean-up. What problems can people anticipate? What can be done to solve them?

On the Day

The biggest logistical problem with this activity is the photos. If photos are to be taken of the supporter and student as they come in, then how fast you can get them printed is the question. If they can’t be printed until the next day, then students will finish the mounting/display work when the photos come back, and take them privately to their supporters.

If you can print the photos on site, or if there is a quick photo finishing service nearby, someone can take on the job of getting the printing done while the ceremony is on, and they can be mounted during refreshments and taken home the same day. This assembly should be pretty easy if the only thing left to do is to slip the photo into its pre-arranged place.

Otherwise, sit back and enjoy the show. I notice how things are going; if someone is not doing their appointed job, I do a little troubleshooting. In the evaluation the next day, I want everyone to get some positive reinforcement for what they did.

Evaluation

You will want to congratulate people as they leave, but since many students and guests will leave together, the evaluation will likely have to be left until the next day. (A good reason NOT to have it on a Friday. You wouldn’t want the evaluation to be left until Monday.)

Evaluation is a very important part of the event. As a whole group, get some first impressions. What did their supporters say? What did they hear from people who were there?

Then go through each part, each job, from the invitations to the clean-up. Who was responsible? How did it go? What really worked? Lots of applause here. Encourage appreciation. Model appreciation.

Here someone will want to blame another student who didn’t come through; it’s best not to go there. I try to be pretty matter of fact about someone dropping the ball—it always happens that someone forgets or has an emergency come up or gets something wrong. The crucial question is how the team copes. The conversation goes like this:  

Student: I had to make more coffee and refill the sugar bowl, because Miranda forgot to do it. She never does her share. Just last week…

Me (interrupting): So you saw that the sugar and coffee needed to be refilled, and you stepped in and did it. Thanks for that. Whenever there’s a team effort, something always goes a little wrong. Thinking on your feet and doing what needs to be done often saves the day.

Student: Well, I just noticed that the sugar bowl was empty…”

Often the person who wants to blame someone is the person who stepped in. I focus on the stepping in, not the blaming, and that usually shifts things. The person who wants to blame usually wants attention on their own work, and I give it to them.

Evaluate the planning process. What situations did they anticipate? What things went as expected? What caught them by surprise? How did they cope when the surprise problems came up?

Focus on the team effort. The group put on a major event for a crowd. How did they work together? What skills were needed for this team effort?

Finally, what did they learn for the next time they put on an event for friends and supporters? What worked so well they want to remember to do it the same way next time? What would they do differently to improve their performance?

Benefits of This Activity

What comes of devoting 10 or 15 hours of class time over a three-week period to honouring the supporters?

• Students write, polish, proofread and publish a short piece of writing, and get positive feedback on it.
• Students practice skills such as planning, predicting, time management, evaluation, problem solving, public speaking, as well as writing, reading, and using a computer, camera and other devices.
• Students make a firmer connection with someone who will be a support to them to stay in school.
• The supporters hear that the program values the support they give their students.
• The writing will be displayed for the weeks and months to come, and many people will see and comment on it, usually positively.
• Putting on the event builds teamwork in the class, and helps people get to know and trust each other.
• Students get a chance to make a connection with program administration and support staff.
• Support staff get a better idea of who the students are, and what their needs are.
• Administration pays attention to the instructor who brings so much positive attention to the program.

The launch is a big day in the life of any book. It is the day when the art made out of life goes out into the world to see what its reception will be.

Mistaken Identity started as a small project to print Sheila’s stories for a small group of friends. barbara had 60 copies printed. (The list had grown from the original 20 we had planned for.) She threw a big party to launch the book to those friends, and nearly everybody came. Some had been Sheila’s friend for as long as I had; others had come more recently into her life, friends, co-workers, neighbours.

The power of the printed word worked its magic on the crowd. Every one of them had heard some of the stories in the book; anyone who knew Sheila at all knew that she is often mistaken for a man, and she had told her friends about her experiences as they happened and as she tried to come to grips with them. But collecting them into a book gave them a weight, a heft that they had not had before. As people at the launch had an opportunity to thumb through the book, a chance to read a story or two, saw the accounts of situations more ugly or more terrifying than they had heard from Sheila herself, the totality of her experience made itself known.

They responded with shock and anger at what had happened to Sheila. They responded with pride at the allies she told about, who had stood up for her in dicey situations. They responded with admiration and love for the spirit Sheila showed in her writing, her determination to hold on to her identity. They secretly wondered if they had been good enough at being a friend and ally over Sheila’s lifetime.

Later in the evening, everyone crowded into one room and Sheila read two of the stories aloud, and all of those emotions poured out of the crowd as they responded with thunderous applause.

For Sheila it was an evening of healing and vindication.

I have launched many publications, both in print and online, of student writing, and the emotions are always the same. Healing. Vindication. Pride. Satisfaction at telling a story that might help other people in the same situation.  

Families, friends, classmates, and the press (if I can get them)–everyone rallies around to celebrate the accomplishment of a difficult and meaningful task—making art out of life. Finding an audience for student writing is always worth doing for the improvement it makes in students’ writing and motivation to write. It is more than worth the effort it takes for the healing and growth in confidence it brings to the students who are published.

A launch for a classmate brings many literacy and numeracy tasks for other students to take on: making invitations, posters, and programs; budgeting and shopping for refreshments; making speeches; planning and evaluation of the event; in short, problem solving and reflection.

Finally, the fringe benefits to the program are enormous: better retention rates, positive profile of the program in the community, easier recruitment of new students…the list goes on. When you’re the instructor who makes it happen, administration pays attention!   

Related articles

• Making Art from Lives (katenonesuch.com)