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LR/RI produces a bulletin roughly every two weeks in order to inform area practitioners of news, events, and calls for participation and also as a forum for posing questions, issues and discussion topics. The current bulletin is posted below. To read previous bulletins, go to Bulletin Archives.January 26, 2005Bulletin #193
Dear Colleagues, Calls for participation, employment, funding, and conference and workshop opportunities, online and other resources. To post information, and/or to receive the bulletin via email, please contact LR/RI or leave a message at (401-863-2839).
Janet Isserlis
NOTICES
You're invited to join an online chat with Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D. on Thursday, January 27, at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Named "One of America's Top Doctors," Dr. Shaywitz is professor of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine and author of the bestseller Overcoming Dyslexia. She'll answer questions about dyslexia and other reading difficulties and is especially interested in responding to parents' concerns. It's really easy to participate - all you need is an Internet connection. This chat is offered in cooperation with The Access Center, LD OnLine, and The Partnership for Reading. - Meta Potts, Moderator 4-EFF List ESOL share - February 16, at 2:30 pm at the Genesis Center. Focus: from conversation to writing. Please join us. Saturday, February 5 14th Annual Action Conference of the Rhode Island Campaign to Eliminate Childhood Poverty 8:30 am to 1:30 pn, RI Convention Center http://www.georgewileycenter.org/ From VALUE:Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education A reminder that VALUE will hold its learner leadership institute,
March 8-10 in Washington, DC. As we continue to talk about the critical
need for advocacy, this is an excellent opportunity for adult learners
to put knowledge into action, and what better venue than Washington,
Announcing the five winners of the 2004 NIFL ESL Special Collection mini-grants competition: Each winner's ESL program will receive $250, and the completed projects will be posted on the ESL Special Collection for use by all practitioners by January 31, 2005. The five winners are: Hillary Gardner, Center for Immigrant Education and Training, LaGuardia Community College, Queens NY, Karisa Tashjian and Sherry Fiaux, RI Family Literacy Initiative, Providence, RI, Cheryl Fuentes, REEP, Arlington, VA Jean Bodman, Institute for Intensive English, Union County College, NJ and Melinda Anne Roberts, Santa Ana College, Santa Ana, CA Descriptions of the winning projects can be found at: http://eslcollection.org/minigrants/index.html Adult, Workplace and Higher Education MATSOL Conference The Adult, Workplace and Higher Education Special Interest Groups' joint conference focused on adult English language learners is being rescheduled, probably for this spring. For updates: http://www.matsol.org/ The Coordinating Council of the Rhode Island Bilingual ESL Special
Interest Group in MATSOL announces a professional event offered on
February 5, at the Student Union, Rhode Island College. With
generous support from Pearson Education, and Rhode Island College
Sessions Overview:
New England Immigrant Summit III Saturday, February 12th Boston, MA Join Immigrant Leaders and Advocates for this Regional Strategy Summit For information contact Gabriel Camacho at (617) 661-6130 ext. 115 or email gcamacho@afsc.org Migrant Education Program available in Rhode Island. To be eligible one must be a migrant worker with children up to 22 years old, or be in need of a GED certificate. Eligible participants are those who have worked in fishing or fish processing, agriculture, fruit picking,, farming ; this work should comprise most, but not all of an applicant’s income. To learn more about this program, please contact 721-2136. For general information about Migrant Education: http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlsea/title1/mig2.html. January events at the Providence Public Library: http://www.provlib.org/branchout/current.html learning opportunities English for Action is offering a new English class called Proyecto Salud Medioambiental (Environmental Health Project), a program for intermediate and advanced learners. Classes will be held Monday through Wednesday, from 6:30 pm to 8:15 pm. The program focuses on: ·Practicing English speaking and writing skills·Developing work skills: basic researching, computer literacy, designing educational materials, workshop planning, and public speaking ·Learning about environmental health problems that affect all Rhode Islanders, and immigrants in particular ·Understanding how to access public services in order to protect the health of one's family and community Orientation and registration will take place on January 31, at 6:30 pm, at the English for Action office on 122 Manton Avenue #604 (the Atlantic Mills Building), in Providence. The program costs $30. For more information, call 401-421-3181 and ask for Proyecto Salud Medioambiental. English for Action is a nonprofit organization offering educational programming for Spanish speakers in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence. We offer five programs, including English classes for learners of all levels, a leadership and language class for women, a family literacy program, and childcare. Our classes are held in William D'Abate Elementary School and in our office in Atlantic Mills in Olneyville. Mentor Non-traditional Adults Returning to College Project RIRAL's Transition to College project is currently seeking volunteer mentors and/or tutors to support our non-traditional adult students in their endeavor to prepare themselves for the rigors of college. If you are interested in becoming a Mentor and/or Tutor, please contact Marie@transitiontocollege.org or call 722-9800. TTC is currently accepting students for the spring 2005 session.
Detailed directions and information about the program at: htttp://www.transitiontocollege.org.
Please contact Marie if you are interested in enrolling in the spring
session. Hurry, enrollment is limited.
Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) is offering a "Women at Work" workshop free of charge to labor and community organizations, and we're looking for groups to participate. Women at Work is a project of DARE's Jobs with Dignity Campaign, whose goal is to build women's leadership in the labor movement. In order to build connections between women workers and advance the issues that are important to women workers, this project conducts workshops which focus on efforts to preserve health care and to win community access to good, living wage jobs. If you'd like the DARE workshop team to come to a meeting, class, or other event and lead the 30-minute workshop, please contact Eric Larson at Eric_D_Larson@brown.edu. ASTHMA WORKSHOP AND ESOL LESSON This workshop fuses key, simple vocabulary and grammar into a lesson-like format tailored for ESOL learners. The workshop is one to one and a half hours long, and includes information about the main characteristics of asthma, its symptoms and triggers. Through a participatory and interactive environment, learners not only become aware of basic information relating to asthma, but they also learn English. This workshop can also include data on how asthma affects Latinos, and local community resources where they offer bilingual help. The workshop is free of cost and its language is applicable to all levels. This is a workshop that could easily be integrated into a health unit or delivered as an isolated informative session and lesson. If you and your learners would like to schedule a workshop, please feel free to contact me via e-mail or by phone. Thank you. - Erick Garcia, ESOL Facilitator, American Lung Association, 401.935.8736 erickdgarcia@hotmail.com funding opportunities - large and less large Social Venture Partners of Rhode Island (SVPRI) welcomes The Grantsmanship Center’s New Business Ventures for Nonprofits Workshop to RI, and invites you to participate in this intensive 3-day workshop on February 28-March 2 at The Rhode Island Foundation. The Grantsmanship Center is the world’s oldest and largest training organization for nonprofit and public agencies. New Business Ventures for Nonprofits is a hands-on workshop that explains how to plan, finance and develop a nonprofit enterprise. Topics include: How to turn your organization’s strengths into business opportunities; Financing options to start a venture; How to develop realistic income expectations; Tax implications and safeguarding your nonprofit status, and feasibility testing and business planning. If your organization is looking for ways to become less dependent on grants and contributions, earned income is an alternative worth exploring. This workshop is designed to give you a much better understanding of what it takes to plan, finance and build a viable enterprise, and how to do it without undercutting your agency’s core mission. It will help you sort through the issues involved in planning a new business, demystify the process, and let you decide if enterprise development is in fact appropriate for your organization. SVPRI is hosting this workshop because of its interest in helping local nonprofit organizations develop earned income revenue streams. We are a group of businesspeople, affiliated with the RI Foundation, who are involved in “venture philanthropy”, working to use its time, expertise, and financial resources to help strengthen the capacity of local nonprofits. Tuition for this great 3-day training program is usually $575, but SVPRI is helping to underwrite the cost, and the training will cost Rhode Island organizations only $275 per person. To ensure that all participants receive personal attention, enrollment is limited to 30. For more information, please contact Deborah Schimberg, Executive Director, SVPRI at 274-4564, call The Grantsmanship Center directly at (800) 421-9512x51, or go to www.tgci.com. - Deborah Schimberg and The Grant Network will hold an intensive 3-Day workshop
March 7-9. at Johnson and Wales University. The Network has helped individuals,
organizations, and local governments raise millions of dollars through
grant proposal writing and offers unparalleled grant proposal writing
The UPS Foundation funds volunteer management, hunger and literacy efforts. http://www.community.ups.com/community/philanthropy/focus/main.html. The federal government's new one stop grant site: http://www.grants.gov/
The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) announces another round of education reform grants in areas of social science research. PRACC is particularly interested in issues such as high classroom turnover/mobility and its disproportionate impact on low-income, minority, and farm worker students. However, other issues will be considered as well. To apply, send PRRAC a proposal outlining the planned research and methodology, the advocacy work it is designed to support, a budget, timeline, and qualifications of the researchers. Maximum grant: $10,000. No application deadline. http://www.prrac.org/grants.htm Funding Solutions for Small Nonprofit Organizations A collection of resources to help small nonprofit organizations fundraise including ways to motivate your board, sample fundraising letters, phonathon advice, and tips to improve your direct mail solicitation. http://www.nonprofit-innovations.com/ employment opportunities Substitute list: if you would like your name added to the list, please see contact LR/RI. The list needs to be updated so that it can function more usefully for teachers and programs hoping to work with them. (http://www.brown.edu/lrri/sub.html) Rhode Island Community Jobs (RICOMJOB) is a public e-mail announcement list that seeks to raise the profile of meaningful work in Rhode Island by helping non-profit and public interest employers publicize openings effectively. Anyone seeking a job that makes a difference in Rhode Island can join the list. Any non-profit, government or private sector employer advertising a paid position related to the public interest or community concerns can post a free job listing. Positions must be paid but may be part-time, full-time or temporary. To join the list as a job seeker or to post a job as an employer go to: http://www.ricommunityjobs.org Rhode Island Community Jobs is supported by the Swearer Center for Public
Service at Brown University and the Rhode Island Campus Compact.
If you have questions about this service, please contact us at ricomjob@brown.edu
online / resources available Online journal: the premiere issue of Vertex, the Online Journal for Adult and Workforce Education. The current issue can be found at http://vawin.jmu.edu/vertex. Vertex is a work in progress, and because of that, I welcome your feedback on our journal. Please use the Feedback form found on the website to share your thoughts on the journal as a whole or to respond to an individual article. When appropriate, we will share your thoughts with other readers in "Feedback Forum," which will appear in upcoming issues. - Pamela G. Brown, Editor, James Madison University MSC 9003/Blue Ridge Hall, Harrisonburg, VA 22840 1-888-637-8494 540-568-2933 (fax) http://www.jmu.edu/esol WE LEARN/Women Expanding: Literacy Education Action Resource Network will mail 3 free sample copies of the Women & Literacy Issue of The Change Agent (#19) to ABE/literacy programs. This issue - co-produced by WE LEARN & The New England Literacy Resource Center - addresses these questions: What are causes and consequences of women's low literacy levels? How are women learners bringing strengths to the challenges they face? Adult learners and teachers share their perspectives and wisdom. Student voices are prominent in this issue as their writings highlight what they're going through and how they define the issues for themselves. To receive sample copies, please send: Program Name, Education Director/Contact Person, Mailing Address, Phone Number, Email address,and brief description of how your program serves women learners to the address below or phone 401-383-4374. WE LEARN's mission is to promote women's literacy as a tool for personal growth and social change through networking, education, action, and resource development. The Haymarket People's Fund supported WE LEARN’s participation in this project.- Mev Miller, Ed.D., Coordinator, 182 Riverside Ave., Cranston, RI 02910, welearn@litwomen.org online: http://www.litwomen.org/welearn.html Practitioner Toolkit: Working with Adult English Language Learners - provides support and resources to adult education and family literacy instructors who are new to serving adults and families learning English and provides a variety of materials to help practitioners meet the language and literacy development needs of the ELL students they serve. These include responses to Frequently Asked Questions, a first-day orientation guide, lesson plans, research-to-practice papers on English language and literacy learning, and an annotated list of English and Spanish language assessments in use. On the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition Web site, the Index page at http://www.cal.org/caela/elltoolkit allows you to select and download the entire document or to select and download topics of interest as needed. The toolkit is made possible by a grant from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, US Department of Education, through DTI Associates, and is a collaborative effort between the National Center for Family Literacy and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) http://www.cal.org. If you have comments or questions about the Practitioner Toolkit, please contact Lynda Terrill at lterrill@cal.org. The Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy has released the final working paper in its series on adult education/literacy and community colleges, Forging New Partnerships: Adult and Developmental Education in Community Colleges, by Hunter Boylan. The paper studies the relationship between developmental and adult education in community college settings, the nature of collaboration between the two programs in colleges that provide both, and characteristics that foster collaboration. Among other findings, the report indicates that most of the 1,195 community colleges spread across the US provide developmental education, and,a significant number provide both developmental and adult education programs. Developmental education programs generally offer higher-level skills upgrading than adult education, but not always. Moreover, in institutions that provide both programs, there is a gray area where services overlap and students can easily enroll in one or the other. One conclusion is that adult education service can be substantially improved through new partnerships between them. CAAL's community college study is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Verizon, Lumina Foundation for Education, the Nellie-Mae Foundation, Household International, and individual donors. The paper is available at http://www.caalusa.org. Google Scholar enables searches for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as articles available across the web. Google Scholar orders search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications. http://scholar.google.com/ Literacies, a Candian journal, is available by subscription and archived online. Special sections of the website recently posted include: three oral history projects at http://www.literacyjournal.ca/oh.htm and have added a practitioner knowledge page at http://www.literacyjournal.ca/cw.htm. Getting the word out: We're pleased to invite your organization to apply now for a Google Grant, which provides a minimum of three months of free Google AdWords (https://adwords.google.com) advertising for nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status. The Google Grants program is designed to help nonprofit organizations like yours further their goals and objectives through targeted, online advertising on Google.com. Past Google Grant recipients have used their grants to publicize services and awareness, recruit staff and volunteers, promote special events, sell merchandise related to their organization or cause, and much more. There is no deadline to apply, but if you are selected for a Google Grant award, we will ask you to create your account by a specific date. So you should apply when your organization is able to take full advantage of the AdWords program. To learn more about the Google Grants program and apply, please visit our program page, http://www.google.com/grants/. http://writenet.ca/ - a website devoted to writing. The goal of Writenet.ca is to promote the use and value of writing in literacy and social/special programming. Based on years of experience working with new and/or reluctant adult writers, we believe that writing is a fun and effective way to increase literacy skills, feel part of the community and make healthy changes in our lives. A dedicated group of Writing Out Loud Literacy Instructors from across Canada has worked together to develop and build Writenet.ca as a place to find a wealth of information and support to help bring writing to your learning settings in new and engaging ways. What makes Writenet.ca different than other websites about writing? Well, in short, it's the growing community of like-minded people who recognize that writing is more than just spelling and grammar. You'll quickly feel apart of this community when you join in the dynamic and educational discussions on the Writenet.ca Bulletin Boards. Writenet.ca as is stands now, is a starting point. This space is designed to change and grow according to the needs and interests of the membership. We look forward to sharing information and learning together as we go along. Please visit the site to read about us, register for discussions and join us in this exciting learning adventure. Deborah Morgan, Writenet.ca Project 4802 50 Avenue Camrose, Alberta T4V 0R9 (780) 672-6289 Living in Poverty slideshow does the math: what does it take to live at the poverty level. http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour2.htm RI Foundation online scholarship directory - searchable by city/town, intended field of study, current high school, and more. http://scholarship.rifoundation.org/
YouthBuild USA Learning Network has links to Web sites and full-text documents, and includes a section on "Authentic Materials/Engaged Learning/Constructivism/Contextual Learning/Project-based Learning." http://www.youthbuild.org/learningnetwork/professionaldev.html Providence Community Resource Network (PCRN) http://www.provplan.org/pcrn Spanish language version of PCRN is up and running. You can access the site from the PCRN home page, http://www.provplan.org/pcrn, or go to http://www.provplan.org/pcrnespa. The Web pages, online instructions, and the content of the database have all been translated. Civics 101 - website of the RI Secretary of State, at http://www.rules.state.ri.us/civics_101/; a high school curriculum that may be adaptable for adult learners and/or useful for initiating critical reflection about citizenship and communities. conferences and workshops - conferences and workshops are listed chronologically and are updated with each bulletin
Rhode Island - Training/events around employment issues for people with disabilities http://www.ric.edu/uap/training.html The Rhode Island Center for the Book invites you to an evening of networking, RI BookLinks Live, on Thursday, February 10,from 6 to 9 pm,at Barnes & Noble on Route 2 in Warwick. Gather with the Rhode Island book community for conversation and discover the RI Center for the Book. You are encouraged to bring any informational material about yourself and your organization, such as business cards, brochures, flyers, program literature, etc., to share with others. RI BookLinks is a growing collection of links about reading, writing, making and sharing books in Rhode Island, found at http://www.ribook.org. You can use it to discover the many wonderful book resources in the state. For more information you can contact Louise Moulton (lmoulton@provlib.org) or Roxanne Carter, AmeriCorps*VISTA (rcarter@provlib.org) or by calling 401.455.8134 Save the Date: Saturday, March 5 ? RI Center for the Book presents “The Brilliance of Cloth Book Covers: 19th Century Decorated Bindings,” a slide lecture by Sue Allen of the Rare Book School, University of Virginia, at 1 pm in the Reading Room of the Providence Athenaeum at 251 Benefit Street, and is free and open to the public. For more information about this and other events, please visit www.ribook.org. Sharing Skills - Building Connections ? conference for Massachusetts Workforce Development Professionals, March 9, 2005, Worcester http://cwc.cedac.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=163 Learning Disabilities of America International Conference, Reno, NV, Mar 2 - 5 (412) 341-1515 http://www.ldaamerica.org/conference/index.asp 2nd Annual (Net)Working Conference on Women & Literacy..Strengthening the Web March 11-12, Providence - Confirmed Presenters: Mary Belenky Ujwala Samant Jenny Horsman Invited Speakers/ Panelists: Sapphire Jane Sapp, Klaudia Rivera, Vanessa Sheared. EARLY Registration Deadline: January 15, (15% discount) Registration deadline: February 28, WE LEARN Membership Rate:Two-day $80.00 | One-day $45.00 Non-Membership Rate : Two-day $100.00 | One-Day $55.00 ABE Student Rate: Two-Day $15.00 | One-Day $10.00 For more details contact: Mev Miller, Ed.D., Director, 401-383-4374, welearn@litwomen.org or go to: http://www.litwomen.org/welearn.html TESOL: March 30- April 2, San Antonio http://www.tesol.org/ Adult Numeracy Network 11th Annual Meeting April 9, Anaheim, CA Call For Proposals: Share your best instructional practices or research. The Adult Numeracy Network is soliciting proposals for hour-long presenta-tions. Please submit a brief abstract describing your presentation and a short bio of the presenter(s) by February 1, to Pam Meader,151 Summit St, Portland, ME 04103 Mdr151@aol.com Literacy Changes Lives - The 14th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy, sponsored by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), to be held in Louisville, Kentucky; April 25-27, 2005. http://www.famlit.org. COABE: http://www.coabe05.org/ May 4-7, Anaheim, California. May 12: Rhode Island Adult Education Conference. Call for presenters is on line at http://www.brown.edu/lrri/conference05.html other events and conferences http://www.nifl.gov/cgi-bin/Calendar/calendar_world.cgi TESOL worldwide calendar of events http://www.tesol.org/isaffil/calendar/index.html
from previous bulletins: REMINDERS, RESOURCES:
SABES Resource Lists Available. From Carey Reid [full message here]: As you might know, Massachusetts now has a rigorous, stand-alone ABE teacher's license. SABES, the System for Adult Basic Education Support, is a state-wide staff development system funded by MassDOE. Ö[S]months ago I asked if NLA subscribers were interested in helping SABES build resource lists, by standard, in support of teachers seeking the new license here in Massachusetts. Many of you helped out, thank you, and we've also worked with small groups of people locally to build these 29 lists, now with over 150 resources--books, articles, websites, and videos. The lists are now available on SABES's license support website at http://www.sabes.org/license. You can get quickly to the lists by clicking on the "new resources added" link under What's New, or at any time by using the resources link on the bottom of every webpage. When you arrive at the chart listing the 29 standards, click on any standard to go to the resource list we've compiled for it. The lists are annotated; with the annotations, teachers who wish to improve their knowledge and skills in respect to a particular standard can be more assured they're getting the resource they want or need. If the resource can be viewed or downloaded on the Net, we've provided a link. Additionally, we want to improve these lists, so please email me
if you'd like to suggest additions or changes. BTW, the full list
of resources is also collected in a ProCite bibliography file, so if you
use that software and would like to have your own "instant" database, let
me know and I'll email you the file. As stated earlier, SABES is funded
by the Massachusetts Department of Education. To avoid confusion,
the website is not an official DOE site but rather one of SABES's means
of supporting license-seeking teachers in our state. Links to Massachusetts
DOE webpages, however, are provided on the site.
breathe - everyday yoga at your desk. http://www.mydailyyoga.com/yoga/everyday_yoga.html what do you think? LR/RI has had an online survey on its site forever. Previously, those who may have come across the survey were asked to copy and paste it into an email message, or to print it and complete it. Thanks to the brilliant technical support and inservice learning provided by Brown University, the survey can now be completed on line. I'd be grateful if you could please take the time to complete it. While occasional word comes back about the work LR/RI has done, this survey attempts to be somewhat more systematic in considering the work that's done and the work that needs to be accomplished. Please complete the survey at http://www.brown.edu/lrri - scroll down and click on the link to the survey. If you lack web access and wish to complete the survey, please contact LR/RI to receive one via snail mail or fax. Please contact LR/RI if you have information, questions or announcements to share with adult educators in Rhode Island. Bulletins go out at least twice a month; more frequently when there's more to share. To submit information for the next bulletin, please contact LR/RI by phone (401-863-2839), mail (PO Box 1974, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912) or email. back to LR/RI home |
