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LR/RI produces a bulletin 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.

Bulletin #4
25 March, 1997

Dear Colleagues,

This bulletin contains calls for participation and announcements about upcoming events. In addition to these announcements, I've been asked to start the process of generating a list of substitute teachers around the state. I will not arrange for finding or placing substitute teachers, nor will I publish the list for this bulletin. The purpose of the list will be to assist agencies in finding substitute teachers as they are needed. If you would like to add your name to the list, please send me the following information. I will compile this information and share it with any agencies who ask for access to it. 

YES, I WANT TO BE ON THE ADULT ED SUBSTITUTE TEACHER LIST. PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH ANY AGENCY LOOKING FOR SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS: 

  • Name, address, telephone numbers - at home, at work (best times/days to call), areas (e.g. ESOL, GED, math, writing, literacy, etc.), and times available and not available to sub.


    • It's also been suggested that a list of providers, the kinds of classes they hold and rates they pay would be useful information for the field. If agencies wish to send this information to me, I will share it with teachers who phone, write or email for that information.

    As I've said before, this bulletin is one way for us to try to stay connected. Please contact me if you have news, questions or announcements to share, if you need further information and/or if you have suggestions about the bulletin itself. As well, if staff at your site would prefer to receive copies of this bulletin at home (via email, fax or regular mail), please encourage those people to contact me so that I can add their names to the mailing list, as many practitioners are working at multiple sites and are not always able to receive mail or share information at their base sites. In the meantime, I very much appreciate your copying and sharing this information with your staffs and interested others. Thanks very much.

    Janet Isserlis 

    ____________________________________________________________ 

    NOTICES

  • HAL ADAMS, EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL OF ORDINARY THOUGHT , will speak at the Partridge Annex at Brown University on April 14, from 6 to 8 PM. He will discuss writing workshops he facilitates with residents of Chicago Housing Authority apartments and with participants in library-based programs and other settings around Chicago. A copy of Hal's article, "A Grassroots Think Tank," which describes his work, is available at LR/RI. Hal's work reflects the connections between adult literacy work, learner-generated writing, and community development. Multiple copies of The Journal of Ordinary Thought are also available for reading at LR/RI. Its statement of purpose follows: 


    • The JOURNAL OF ORDINARY THOUGHT publishes reflections people make on their personal histories and everyday experiences. It is founded on the propositions that every person is a philosopher, expressing one's thoughts fosters creativity and change, and taking control of life requires people to think about the world and communicate the thought to others. JOT strives to be a vehicle for reflection, communication and change.

  • CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - NCSALL PRACTITIONER LEADER. The National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL)/ Practitioner Dissemination and Research Network (PDRN) is working on a project to connect research to practice, and is looking for a person to work with the director of adult education (Bob Mason) and the state literacy resource center director (me) in each state. The Practitioner Leader will be the link between (NCSALL) and practitioners in the state. The job will include: -- Disseminating information about NCSALL and its research projects at state meetings, through newsletters and in other ways -- Gathering input on NCSALL activities from state practitioners (through focus groups or talking informally with practitioners) and communicating such input to NCSALL. -- Working with state staff development people to plan activities to disseminate NCSALL research results and products -- Building a network of practitioner researchers in the state and connecting this network to regional and national networks.


    • Regional and national PDRN work can include attending an annual national meeting, helping to organize and attend regional meetings/workshops, and other work to be determined by the regional networks. The state teams will be linked regionally and supported by staff from NCSALL. The Practitioner Leader will receive a $2000 annual stipend (equivalent to about 70 hours of work over the course of the year). Qualifications for Practitioner Leader include: -- Current work as an adult literacy practitioner -- Interest in leadership within the state adult literacy system -- Ability to travel within and outside the state -- Experience and interest in practitioner research -- Ability to be self-directive and to work on a team.

    For more information, please contact me at 863-2839 or by email. Please submit applications to me at LR/RI by April 21st. The first meeting for this region will be held on Friday, May 2nd at World Education in Boston. It's expected that the Practitioner Leader will make a two-year commitment to the project. Information about NCSALL's research projects is also available on pages 26 and 27 of the current edition of FOCUS ON BASICS, available on line at NCSALL's site, http://hugse1.harvard.edu/~ncsall/,or from LR/RI in hard copy. 

  • CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: INNOVATIVE USES OF TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION The National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL) is seeking nominations of teachers to feature in a project being done with the North Central Regional Technology Education Consortium called Captured Wisdom (CW). Captured Wisdom is series of videotapes and a CD-ROM Library of examples of innovative uses of technology in education. The CW series will be developing a video and CD-ROM product for adult literacy, and would like your help in identifying potential literacy teachers to be videotaped. The project's goal is to find teachers who are doing a great job of integrating technology into their classrooms, and to then create products that will share this information with other literacy teachers. 


    • Do you know any teachers who integrate technology into classroom instruction in meaningful ways? If you have nominations and/or questions, please send contact: Christopher Hopey, Senior Researcher and Project Director, National Center on Adult Literacy, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania 3910 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-3111 phone: 215-898-0668 fax: 215-898-9804, e-mail: hopey@literacy.upenn.edu

    If possible, please include the following information: name of teacher being nominated, literacy organization, learner population, telephone number and location of literacy organization (city and state), email address of the teacher, and a brief summary of what the teacher or group of teachers is doing with technology and learning with adults. Deadline is April 15.

  • REMINDER: The call for participants below was posted in the last bulletin. The technology training workshop is scheduled to take place sometime in April or May, so April 19th is the deadline for applications for that project. Rhode Island can send five people to the tech. training in Hartford; let's not miss this opportunity to participate. 
    • REGION 1 ADULT LITERACY AND TECHNOLOGY SPRING TRAINING WORK-SHOP: Using the Internet for Sharing Adult Literacy Instructional Materials & Lesson Plans. This full-day Internet/Web Publishing workshop is designed for dedicated and experienced adult literacy instructors, curriculum specialists, and/or staff development specialists who have a basic understanding of the Internet and computers and wish to publish instructional materials, lesson plans, student writing or staff development projects on the Hub 1 World Wide Web site. 
    • REGION 1 LITERACY AND TECHNOLOGY HUB MINI-GRANTS Hub 1 mini-grants are designed to supplement the Internet/Web Publishing trainings and assist a select group of participants from the Spring 1997 workshops to fully develop their curriculum projects for publishing on the Hub 1 World Wide Web site. 
    • TECHNOLOGY TRAINING AND MINIGRANTS are available through the Region 1 Literacy and Technology Hub. While the workshops are geared toward practitioners with existing knowledge of the world wide web, more basic training is available on an ongoing basis through LR/RI. For more information about the Region 1 training workshop and/or minigrants, please contact LR/RI. 
  • During the week of March 11th, a number of practitioners from Rhode Island attended the TESOL conference in Orlando. If you'd like to share information from sessions you attended, you could send me a brief description of the session you attended for the next bulletin so that others with an interest in that session could contact you directly for more information. If people would like to meet for a sharing session sometime next month, please let me know. We could schedule a meeting on a weekend, during the day, and/or evening to accommodate as many schedules as possible. If all else fails, please call to let me know about interesting sessions so that others can contact you for information.


    • I attended sessions around staff development, teacher research, community work and language, technology and critical issues in adult education. As well, I picked up a few digests (short papers on particular topics) from the Center for Applied Linguistics, as well as newsletters and catalogues.

  • INQUIRY PROJECTS: A total of 22 applications were submitted for an allotted 17 projects. While we're disappointed to be unable to fund them all, we hope that this increased interest in practitioner-based inquiry might enable us to promote workshops and/or a semester-long class in September, so that we can continue to encourage the development of this model of learning for professionals in the field. Notification letters are in the mail, and participants should receive notice by the end of this week. Jim Barton will be working with me in supporting the project work, and a training session for project participants will be held on April 11th. 
  • CALL FOR ARTICLES for The Change Agent newspaper. The Change Agent, a newspaper whose mission is "to provide ... news, issues, ideas and other teaching resources that inspire and enable adult educators and learners to make civic participation and social justice related concerns part of their teaching and learning," is seeking article on the theme of countering crime and violence for its next edition. The deadline is April 30 (although sooner would be appreciated). This call is being extended to adult learners and educators, "to hear your opinions, ideas and experiences in and outside of the classroom on this theme." Referrals to people and programs working on violence prevention projects are also welcome. Please send writings (on PC disk, if possible) to Silja Kallenbach, NELRC/World Education, 44 Farnsworth St., Boston, MA 02210. phone: (617) 482-9485, fax (617) 482-0617, email: skallenbach@worlded.org


    • The Change Agent is a publication of the New England Literacy Resource Center. Copies of the current edition, focusing on health and literacy education are available at LR/RI.