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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.March 25, 2005Bulletin #195
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
Changes in the federal budget have been proposed. Information is available at http://www.cbpp.org/2-9-05bud.htm, http://www.brown.edu/lrri/advocate.html, http://capwiz.com/tesol/home/ or contact janetisserlis@yahoo.com
ESOL share - Wednesday, April 13th, at 3:00 pm at the Genesis Center. Practitioners returning from the TESOL conference will share information and ideas; please join us. The Change Agent call for articles about Building Peace at Home, in the Community and in our World Adult Learners and Educators: Conflict is a part of life whether we
like it or not. How we deal with it makes a difference between peace and
war, safety and violence, growth and stagnation. In this issue we are looking
for writings, lessons, activities and reflections addressing the theme
of building peace at home, in the community and in the world. We want to
hear from people who have experienced conflict or even war in their lives
and the lessons they have learned through those experiences. We especially
invite writings and reflections from people who have learned to deal with
conflict constructively at a personal or community level. Questions
to Think about: How have you dealt with conflict constructively in your
life? What lessons have you learned? How do you manage conflict in the
classroom? If you have participated in training on conflict resolution,
how has it affected your approach as a teacher? How do you relate to the
saying, 'Peace begins at home'?
Summer plans? While many programs are still in the planning phases for work for the coming fiscal year, if you know (now, or over the next month or two) that you will be offering classes during the summer months, please contact LR/RI. Requests for referrals tends to increase during the summer months when many programs are not in session. Access to this information will be very useful - please let me know, too, if you'd like summer program schedules announced through the bulletin. Student leadership ? national, regional, local. New York City's GRASSROOTS LITERACY COALITION is planning
a leadership institute that might offer a useful model for adult learners
and practitioners in the Northeast and elsewhere. While planning
is still going on, here are some of the features of a proposed one-day
Leadership Institute for Adult Learners and Adult Educators: Come to the
Grassroots Literacy Coalition's second annual leadership institute.
Sharpen the skills you need to be an effective leader and advocate for
adult education in our city. Join with adult students, adult educators,
Additionally, more information about learner leadership appears in this message from VALUE: Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education . (RI delegates to this conference will be sending their feedback on the institute soon.): On March 9 and 10, adult learners from 25 states plus the District of Columbia and Guam met with Senators and Congresspersons to educate them about the life-changing importance of adult education. These meetings were part of the civics education portion of VALUE's Fourth Biannual National Adult Learner Leadership Institute in Washington, DC. In total, adult learners personally talked with 5 Senators and 6 Representatives[ and] with staff of an additional 15 Senators and 21 Congresspersons. During one meeting, Rep. George Miller (D-CA- 07), ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce told his constituent and VALUE board member Faye Combs that he would sponsor a Dear Colleague letter to the House Appropriations Committee opposing a 66% cut in adult education funding included in the Administration's 2006 budget request. Marty Finsterbusch, VALUE's Executive Director said "This is what we did in just 48 hours. Imagine what adult learners from all 50 states can accomplish in a sustained effort to personally validate the impact of adult basic education on their lives and their families." Finsterbusch added, "This Leadership Institute makes it possible for adult learner leaders and their legislators to learn from each other in the very place were literacy policy is made. It's an unparalleled civics education experience." More than one hundred adult learner leaders .. and two dozen literacy
program staff attended this Institute. Events included receptions on Capitol
Hill for House and Senate members and a banquet at the Library of Congress,
which was hosted by the Library's Center for the Book.
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. Providence Public Library;s Rochambeau branch, 708 Hope Street, will host several programs inspired by the 2005 Reading Across Rhode Island book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Registration is necessary because space is limited: please call 455-8110. Book Discussion - The Kite Runner Thursday April 7, 7:00 - 8:30
pm This book has been described as an epic tale of fathers and sons, of
friendship and betrayal that takes readers from Afghanistan in the final
days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present. A limited
Kites and Kids! Saturday April 30, 3:00 - 4:30 pm Build an easy, breezy kite with us. These kites will really fly! Please sign up in the Children's Room at Rochambeau or call 455-8110. Limited to 15 participants. and events at the Providence Public Library: http://www.provlib.org/branchout/current.html
learning opportunities 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 Dollar General Literacy Foundation http://www.dollargeneral.com/community/dgliteracy.aspx The foundation seeks to increase the functional literacy of adults by providing grants to nonprofit organizations dedicated to the advancement of literacy. The foundation chose to focus on adult literacy because company co-founder J.L. Turner had only a third grade education but overcame tremendous odds and built the company now known as Dollar General Corporation. Next submission deadline is April 8. In 2004, the foundation awarded more that $1.5 million to 136nonprofit organizations across the company's 30-state market area. Eligibilty: Nonprofit 501-C3 organizations within Dollar General's market area that are committed to increasing the functional literacy of adults or families and provide direct literacy services are eligible. (note: information on line is not clear about RI's status ? contact the company directly). Contact: Dollar General Literacy Foundation, P.O. Box 1064, Goodlettsville, TN 37072-1064 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 The Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) announces the first in its new series of briefs, How Should Adult ESL Reading Instruction Differ from ABE Reading Instruction? This brief summarizes the research base on adult English speakers learning to read and the suggestions for instructions from these studies. Then, using findings from a synthesis of research on adult English language learners learning to read, it describes how these learners differ from native English speakers, and how these differences should affect instruction. http://www.cal.org/caela/briefs/readingdif.html UPCOMING online conference Hardwired for Hope: Effective ABE/Literacy InstructorsOnline conference moderated by The Hardwired for Hope Research Team: Evelyn Battell, Leora Gesser, Judy Rose, Jan Sawyer, and Diana Twiss.. Spaces are available for US-based participants on a limited basis. Pre-conference: March 29 - April 10, Conference: April 11 - May 13. There are many instructors who have worked in the ABE/Literacy field
in British Columbia since the 1970's, who have grown and learned and who
have shared their experience in many ways over the years. The collective
urge to document this generation of teaching practice coincided with the
pending retirement of some of those experienced instructors. We set out
to document the thoughts, feelings, strategies and techniques of some effective
literacy/ABE instructors, to honour the work and thinking of many instructors
who have contributed so much over the years to ABE/Literacy work in BC,
and to provide a way of preserving their knowledge for the field even as
those individuals retire from it. In this on-line conference, we will talk
about our findings, the process of engaging in research, our recommendations
and hopefully hear from a large section of the literacy world about their
views of "Effective" ABE/Literacy practice.
learning resources from EDInfo, a periodic email list, well worth pursuing http://www.ed.gov/free While many of these resources are geared to K-12 audiences, many are easily adaptable , interesting toand useful for adults. To subscribe to EDInfo, address an email message to: listserv@listserv.ed.gov Then write SUBSCRIBE EDINFO YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME in the message Past messages: http://listserv.ed.gov/archives/edinfo.html Fisheries & Aquatic Resources provides information about
managed fish populations throughout the U.S., as well as watershed-based
data and state-by-statefishing resources. Learn about freshwater
& marine fishes, aquatic invertebrates, water quality & habitats,
& dams &
Tree of Life offers photos, descriptions, & other information
documenting the diversity of the world's organisms. Learn about animals,
arthropoda, eukaryotes, flowering plants, fungi, & terrestrialvertebrates.
Explore genetic relationships among organisms.
Emma Goldman - companion website for a film about this Russian
immigrant who championed women's equality, workers' rights, & free
universal education. Goldman (1869-1940) defined the limits of dissent
& free speech in Progressive Era America. Although her anarchist
Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms features lesson plans built
around historically important mapson 18 topics: Columbus's world (1482),
an Indian map of the Southeast (1721), Captain Cook & Hawaii (1778),
"Nouvelle Orleans" & nearby French settlements (1723), the road from
Lakota Winter Counts offers the world's largest database of Lakota "winter counts" -- pictures drawn on cloth or buffalo hide to remember each year's key events (1701 to 1905). Ten Lakota bands' winter counts are shown side by side on a timeline. Compare how the bands depicted a particular year. Search for an image. Watch interviews with Lakota. Learn about the culture of this Sioux tribe of the northern plains that followed buffalo herds for food. A teachers guide is included. http://wintercounts.si.edu/ Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property - companion website of a film that examines the story of Turner & his revolt & how that story has been re-told repeatedly since 1831. Turner, a slave & preacher in Virginia, led a slave rebellion that resulted in the murder of more than 50 slave owners & their family members. Learn about the impact of the rebellion & about the film & individuals who made it. http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/natturner/ September 11, 2001, Documentary Project captures eyewitness accounts,
reactions, & opinions of people in the months after the terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, & United Airlines Flight 93.
This online presentation includes nearly 200 audio &
Introducing the Adult Literacy Education Wiki: "Wiki-wiki," a Hawaiian word meanimg very, very quickly, refers to a web site where you can immediately and easily add to or change text. The best-known application is the Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia, created and modified daily by thousands of people across the world. We think a wiki can be a useful online environment for adult literacy practitioners, adult learner leaders, and researchers to have ongoing discussions in areas of mutual interest. The idea of having a wiki arose from planning the Meeting of the Minds research and practice conference in December. The Adult Literacy Education (ALE) Wiki is not a replacement for electronic lists. It is a complement to, and we hope an enhancement of them. Because a wiki is an easily edited document environment, current or past electronic list discussions can be selectively copied to the wiki, continued at any time, and referenced (and linked) in future e- list discussions. For each wiki discussion topic a summary, glossary, and list of research and other references can be created. We hope the ALE Wiki will become a handy electronic reference shelf of definitions and resources for discussions which take place on adult literacy e-lists, and where one could easily find research citations, full-text studies, threaded discussions which have taken place on lists, and other materials organized around specific research topic areas and questions. It could also be an environment where researchers describe their completed and ongoing work, see how practitioners are reacting to or using their research, and see what questions and issues practitioners and adult learner leaders think are important to study. A wiki, by design, is a participatory environment. We invite you to work on the ALE wiki with us. We are trying to organize this so that lots of people from the field are involved in adding/changing and editing text, but also so that in each of the areas there is a leader, a topic manager, to help keep things organized. The Adult Literacy Education Wiki, is online at http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Main_Page To set up an account, and add to the Wiki, go to: http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Special:Userlogin Please e-mail David (djrosen1@comcast.net ) if you have technical questions. We hope you that you will join other researchers and practitioners who have begun to experiment with it.- David J. Rosen Jackie Taylor Marie Cora Marian Thacher Erik Jacobson 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. 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. Writenet.ca is 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 TESOL: March 30- April 2, San Antonio http://www.tesol.org/ Adult Numeracy Network 11th Annual Meeting April 9, Anaheim, CA http://www.literacynet.org/ann/news.html Lawyers For Literacy Workshops sponsored by Literacy Volunteers of Rhode Island, Literacy Volunteers of Kent County and the RI Bar Association will be held at the following times and locations. Module development by Alison J. Santerre in collaboration with Daniel P. McKiernan Esq. and Nancy Giorgi-Letendre Esq. Workshop I: By the People, For the People: How our Government Works
Workshop II: Lawyers and the Law: What to do if you Need Legal Assistance
This workshop series is provided for adult education program administrators,
instructors, adult learners and any interested person for a fee of $25.00.
Please pre-register for Workshop I by April 10, 2005 and Workshop II by
May 10, 2005 by contacting Alison J. Santerre at Literacy
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. Registration, including lunch: $25. Program, workshops and other details on the website 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 |
