| Contact
LR/RI
|
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.Aprtil 15, 2005Bulletin #196
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, June 8, at 3:00 pm at the Genesis Center, 620 Potters Avenue, Providence, at 2 p.m. There is no May share, in order to free up time for practitioners to attend the state conference on the 12th. 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,
Want to know more about the Grassroots Literacy Coalition? Go to www.glcnyc.org. 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.): from VALUE (Voice for Adult
Literacy
United for Education) The Summer of Why Campaign
Why the Summer of Why campaign? Adult
learners
can and must help shape adult education’s uncertain future. Adult
learner successes validate their program’s importance. Adult learners'
belief in adult basic education and literacy make them compelling
spokespersons.
The
How will the Summer of Why work? During
April and
May we would like adult learners to get together with each other,
their families, friends, and teachers to discuss why adult education
is
important to them. We know that is something that is hard to talk
about,
so we would like
How can a local program help? You can encourage your students to talk about this topic. You will find that your students want to, but are sometimes afraid to talk. Develop a safe environment for them to talk with each other. Encourage them to write to us. We know that writing is not fun for an adult learner. Maybe you could do it as part of a lesson. Gather the letters from your program and send them to us. This is not just for adult learners; the Summer of Why is also their families, friends, and volunteer tutors/teachers. How can a state organization help? You can encourage programs in your state to participate in the Summer of Why. Help to gather up the letters from throughout your state, and help to coordinate getting press for the adult learners in your state. You could also hold events at the state level to keep the press aware of this issue. How can a national organization help? You can encourage
your
members to discuss this issue and to reach out to the press all
summer
long. You can join us for the press conference in Washington in
early
June and help get adult learners to this event. Contact the VALUE
National
Coming soon, too - RI VALUE members and participants share
their
news.
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. Reading across Rhode Island events: SATURDAY, MAY 7, 9:30-12 NOON, Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet May Breakfast with featured guest, Khaled Hosseini $20 with additional donations gratefully accepted for the Help the Afghan Children fundraising project. Registrations for the 2005 Reading Across Rhode Island May
Breakfast
are being accepted and the RI Center for the Book extends an
invitation
to join us at the culminating activity for this year's project at
Rhodes
on-the-Pawtuxet in Cranston on May 7th (doors opening at 9 am and
breakfast
served at 9:30 am.) The author of The Kite Runner, Khaled
Hosseini,
will be the guest speaker that morning but other entertainment and
excitement
is planned to make it an entirely enjoyable morning. You may
reserve
in tables of eight.
other related events: Monday, April 18th - Friday April 22nd The Teen
ReActors
of Fantasy Works, Inc. The Teen ReActors will present Five for
Flyin’:
stories and songs based on the themes of The Kite Runner under the
direction
of Fantasy Works’ Education Coordinator, Andrea DeCataldo.
Thursday, May 5th 12 noon "Naan at
Noon" with
Khaled Hosseini - Khaled Hosseini will be at the Newport Public Library
as part of Reading Across Rhode Island on May 5 for a noontime program.
Naan at Noon will offer nibblings of naan bread, fruit and nuts, and
chai
(tea). Mr.
Thursday, May 5th 6 pm Khaled Hosseini at RWU - the author will speak at Roger Williams University as the guest of Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. Ms. Nirschel is acting as the Honorary Co-Chair in partnership with Lt. Governor Charles J. Fogarty for this year’s project and has instituted an All-Campus Read at Roger Williams University, Bristol. Free 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 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 from Matthew Scelza ESL Collection Project Director: I'm pleased to announce that four winning projects from the ESL Special Collection Mini-Grants competition are now posted. http://www.eslcollection.org t 1. Family Day Trip Webquest for Intermediate Learners
(with Adaptations
for Beginners) Karisa Tashjian and Sherry Fiaux, RI Family Literacy
Initiative,
Providence, RI
2. Storytelling Skills for Intermediate/Advanced Learners Cheryl Fuentes, REEP, Arlington, VA Fuentes developed lesson plans to assist parents in her intermediate/advanced ESL class in the Family English Program to participate more actively as literacy advocates at home by helping the parents develop storytelling skills in English. 3. A Lesson on Culture for Intermediate/Advanced Learners Jean Bodman, Institute for Intensive English Union County College, NJ -Bodman adapted several cross-cultural exercises from the site to create an intermediate-advanced lesson plan on culture. 4. Colors and Clothes for Beginners Melinda Anne
Roberts, Santa
Ana College, Santa Ana, CA - Roberts created a lesson plan to help
beginning-level
students use the Internet and learn and/or practice colors, items of
clothing,
and the
THE REVIEW (Vocational and Technical Education; High Schools; Adult Education and Literacy; and Community Colleges) March 31, 2005 Susan K. Sclafani, Ph.D., Assistant Secretary Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) U.S. Department of Education The Review is an update from the Office of the Assistant Secretary at the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education. The full text of the OVAE Review http://www.ed.gov/news/newsletters/ovaereview/orev033005.html - Angela Desrochers-Editor Adult Education and Literacy State Partners Test Process to Improve Adult Education Outcomes States are responding to the Administration’s focus on
improving the
quality of adult education programs as they contemplate new plans for
delivery
of adult education services. Six states participating in an
OVAE-funded
partnership met here in March to test planning processes
Community Colleges OVAE to Sponsor Virtual Summit on the Community College
April 12--The Committee on Performance Levels for Adult Literacy of the National Research Council released their interim report this morning. This report details the work and findings on performance levels for adult literacy. The Committee on Performance Levels that was established in response to the US Department of Education's request, was charged to: 1. Review and evaluate the procedures for determining the performance levels for the 1992 NALS and 2. Recommend a set of performance levels for the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) that are appropriate and allow comparisons between the two assessments. To view the full report, please go to http://nationalacademies.org/topnews/ from: Jaleh Behroozi Soroui. Education Statistics Services Institute, American Institutes for Research , 1990 K Street, NW Suite 500 Washington, DC 20006 Phone: 202/403-6958 email: jsoroui@air.org From our colleagues at Focus on Basics: Please help us understand what impact reading Focus on Basics has on adult basic educators. Go to this link http://www.ncsall.net/index.php?id=692
and complete the brief survey you'll find there. It will take
about
10 to 20 minutes. This is your chance to tell us how you use the
publication,
what you like about it, and how to improve it. We'll use the
information
not only to
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 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 IThe 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 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/. 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 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. Building Bridges-Best Practices in Adult ESL Education - MATSOL's Adult , Workplace and Higher Education Special Interest Groups; conference will take place on May 4 from 4:30 to 9:30 pm at Suffolk University, Boston. http://www.matsol.org 13th Annual Conference on Serving Youth & Adults with Learning Disabilities May 26, at the Hartford Marriott, Farmington PreConference Site Visits May 25 http://www.crec.org/atdn/disabilities/ldconf.shtml 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 CALL FOR PRESENTERS The Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education requests workshop proposals for SCALE's Read. Write. Act. Conference October 27-29, 2005 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Please join us for the only national conference created
specifically
for campus-based literacy programs, college student tutors, program
coordinators,
adult learners and community partners. We welcome you to submit a
proposal
that addresses one of our conference themes:
SCALE's annual Read. Write. Act. Conference is a unique
national networking
opportunity and learning event. It offers the chance for campus
programs,
tutors, coordinators, new readers, administrators and community
partners
to share information, develop new skills, reflect
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 |
