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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.

June 23, 1998

Bulletin #46

Dear Colleagues,

This bulletin carries new notices, an employment opportunity, staff development and mini-grant information, and notice of upcoming meetings, events and summer courses. For details, and/or to post information, please contact me LR/RI or leave a message (863-2839)

Thanks.

Janet Isserlis

____________________________________________________________

NOTICES

SUMMER professional development opportunity: Internet drop-in sessions begin on Friday June 26th from 9 am to noon, and will continue this summer on Fridays through August 7th. During these sessions, practitioners and/or learners are invited to come to the Swearer Center for Public Service at 25 George Street, Providence, to learn more about using computers generally, and word processing and the internet particularly. If Friday mornings are not convenient, other times can be arranged by appointment. Please call LR/RI if you'd like to participate.

Sharing/discussion group for educators with an interest in women's issues in adult education will be on Wednesday, June 24 , 3 PM at the Swearer Center for Public Service, 25 George Street, Providence. Please join us in contemplating and planning for a half-day conference concerning women and learning next fall, and to continue our conversations about women, literacy and learning.

MATH share? Are you interested in participating in a meeting of practitioners working with and/or wanting to learn more about numeracy instruction? Please contact LR/RI if you'd like to facilitate and/ or participate in such a session late in June, and/or during the summer. A math web site well worth checking out (at Eastern LINCS) is http://Hub1.WorldEd.org/TEACHERS/Maththing/ny1home.htm

LD: Sharing/discussion group for educators with an interest in learning disabilities in adult education will be on Thursday, July 16, at 3 PM at the Swearer Center for Public Service, 25 George Street, Providence.

Sharing/discussion group for educators with an interest in ESOL in adult education will be held on Tuesday, August 4, at 10 AM at the Swearer Center for Public Service, Providence. If you'd like to meet informally, or stop in at LR/RI at any time during the summer to discuss ESOL or any other aspect of adult education, please call 863-2839.

TUTOR STILL NEEDED for a 39 year old man, dually diagnosed and living in a residential care facility in North Providence, is in need of a tutor to learn to read and write. Please contact Cheryl Bautista at Northridge Residential Care, 726-2131.

Literacy Volunteers of America-RI professional development activities: while designed primarily for LVA board members, tutors and staff, the following workshop is open to all interested participants. Please contact LVA-RI at 861-0815 to reserve your place: - Outcome evaluation: Claudia Horn will identify and discuss the core components of an outcome evaluation system. This session has been moved from June 15th, 9 - 4:30 to Monday, June 29th.

from Gretchen Bitterlin, Chair, TESOL Task Force on Adult Education Program Standards: An adult ed task force within TESOL has developed program quality indicators and seeks feedback. The standards were presented at the TESOL Conference in Seattle and are now available for review through the TESOL web site: www.tesol.edu. (Click on "What's New" and then on "Association news: Adult Education Standards Project"). There is a feedback form with the indicators asking for your input. If you have trouble downloading the indicators, you can e-mail Gretchen Bitterlin at tgbitterl@sdccd.cc.ca.us to request them. Feedback will be accepted until the end of June despite the listed deadline. When the task force has achieved consensus on the indicators they will begin developing sample measures for and a narrative to accompany the indicators. (Hard copy of this information is also available through LR/RI).

EMAIL PARTNER: A woman enrolled in a Literacy Volunteers of America Program and reading at about the eight or ninth grade level, would like to correspond with another adult learner via email. For more information, please contact Expressions coordinator Diane Genereux, by phone at (401) 863-2338, or via email: Diane_Genereux@Brown.edu

Expressions: TO PUBLISH DURING THE SUMMER: For the first time, Expressions will publish two, and possibly three, issues during the summer. For more information, or to submit, please contact Diane_Genereux@brown.edu, 863-2338.

Summer Institute: A professional development event in adult education and employment August 19-20, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT. Advanced workshops for teachers, ESL series, family education and support, new teacher orientation, school to career exemplary programs, technology integration, and workshops for directors and administrative support staff are featured. Registration deadline is July 24, (late deadline July 31 with a $10 late fee). One day, $50, two days, $90. CEU's can be earned; for full schedule, contact LR/RI, or Elizabeth Kaflik at (860) 524-4046.

Participants sought for heath and literacy survey: The Practitioner Dissemination and Research Network is looking for practitioners who are interested in completing a short, 39 question survey for a NCSALLstudy on the use of health related issues in literacy learning environments. Any practitioners who have used health-based lessons in their ABE or ESOL classes or who are interested in doing so can obtain a copy of the survey and description of the research project by contacting David Hayes at PDRN RI@aol.com or by phone at 331-9261.

Health resource available: (from John Comings, NLA list June 1/98) from The National Health Law Program: "Ensuring Linguistic Access in Health Care Setting: Legal Rights and Responsibilities" is now available. The Executive Summary can be found at www.healthlaw.org or call 800-656-4533, ask for publication 1362.

LEGISLATIVE ALERTS:

Members of the RI adult education community are working to support legislation around workforce literacy and funding for adult education.Texts of proposed legislation can be found at the Secretary of State's website: http://www.state.ri.us/ A list of proposed legislation, organized by subject, can be found at http://www.state.ri.us/WWWSUBJT.HTM To follow the progress of a particular bill, click on Bill Tracker. This will tell you what's been done, what hearings are scheduled, etc. For assistance with/access to the web, please contact LR/RI, or check in at any public library with internet access .

Evaluating Web Resources is a lecture scheduled for Tuesday July 14th from 3-5 in the URI libraryÕs Galanti Lounge, with reception. Sign up by calling (401) 874-2947.

Immediate Summer Employment Opportunity - Part time ESOL/youth program instructor Requirements: Experience with youth instruction and/or activities programs; experience with project based learning; ability to provide basic computer literacy instruction (word processing), bilingual Spanish preferred. Program duration: June 29 - August 21 (8 weeks), 15 hours per week (additional 10 hours possible for 5 weeks: adult ESOL instruction. Contact Sally Gabb at The Genesis Center, 620 Potters Avenue, Providence, 781-6110.

Welfare to work grants: On May 27th the White House announced the first round awards for welfare to work grants . Over $186 million in grants were announced. There is still time to become part of the second round of grants. A second solicitation for WtW competitive grants was published in the Federal Register on April 15. It is also available on LINCS at: http://wtw.doleta.gov/documents/wtwsga2.htm Applications are due at DOL's ETA's Office of Grants and Contracts Management on July 14, 1998. Private Industry Councils (PICS) need to be the lead agency on all grants. So literacy efforts can be made part of the grant through collaboration with the PICS. If you need access to the web, or hard copy of the solicitation, please contact LR/RI.

SUMMER classes at Genesis Center: GED and ESL classes for adult second language learners who are working or temporarily unemployed, evenings, July 6 - September 4. Please stop in at Genesis Center, 620 Potters Avenue for an application or call 781-6110 for more information.

International House of Rhode Island, 8 Stimson Avenue, Providence will be offering summer classes in ESOL.

Advanced Conversation classes meet Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 A.M. to 11 A.M. and Monday and Wednesday from 4 to 5:30 P.M.;

Beginning Conversation classes meet Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 11 A.M.

Advanced Beginning Conversation classes meet from 10:45 A.M. to 12:15 P.M. and

Intermediate Conversation classes meet from 11 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. on Tuesday and Thursday.

An Advanced Beginning Grammar class meets Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 10:30 A.M. and the

Advanced Grammar class meets Thursdays from 11 A.M. until Noon. Learning English through Video for intermediate and advanced level students meets Mondays from 10 A.M. to Noon. Individual tutoring sessions are also available -- times are flexible but sessions are 1 and 1/2 hour per week for 4 weeks and are $40 for six hours. Fees are normally $30 per month for classes that meet twice a week; $15 to $20 per month for classes that meet once a week. Phone: 401-421-7181, FAX 401-751-9733

If you're aware of any summer programs for adult or intergenerational learners or practitioners that have not yet been announced in the bulletin, please contact LR/RI

Providence Public Library's Language Exchange will be starting in July. Call Heather Zorn at 455-8066 for more information about this one-to-one summer tutorial program.

MAILING LIST: In order to update the mailing list, to ensure that the bulletin is going to people who want to read it, please let me know by July 6 if you wish to continue receiving the bulletin in hard copy, and/or if you would prefer to receive it via fax or email. If you don't call by July 6th, your name will be removed from the mailing list for hard copies. Email and fax lists will remain unchanged unless those receiving the bulletin by email or fax ask to be removed from the list.

MINI-GRANTS AVAILABLE:

DESCRIPTION OF GRANTS

Four grants of $400 each are available for practitioners wishing to explore a particular idea, reflect upon a problem, develop a teaching strategy, work on curricula, research a particular aspect of learning and/or teaching, deal with program design, implementation, assessment - you decide. The parameters of the grant are deliberately broad to accommodate your particular interests. The project should be something that impassions you, and that enables you to develop some tangible thing - a curriculum, a report, lesson plans - which can be shared with others in the field.

GOAL OF GRANTS

The overall goal is to think about and somehow change one's practice, and to enable practitioners to invest their time and energy in carrying out useful and creative staff development and program development projects. The ultimate beneficiary of the grant is the learners in your program. This is not necessarily an inquiry grant but rather an opportunity to take some time to think about pursuing a thread and developing something that will help your own teaching and can be shared by others. You might: - produce a series of lesson plans with a clear rationale that you can share with others through workshops, meetings and/or email; - refine an assessment process; - reflect upon what's worked within your program/classroom in terms of retention, attendance, learner motivation, progress and document your reflections so that others may draw on your learning.

The project should be small in scope - that is, it should look closely at a particular task - but go into some depth around that subject/task/idea.

ELIGIBILITY

To be eligible, you need to have been teaching for at least a year, be reasonably sure of employment in adult education in the fall and commit to participating in a mini-conference late in the fall during which time project outcomes and processes will be shared with the field. A written report will be submitted, to be posted on Literacy Resource/RI's web site, and to be disseminated as part of a collection of occasional papers both in hard copy and on-line.

GUIDELINES

--Up to $100 of the grant can be used for postage, supplies, consumables (film, tapes), photocopying and the like.

--Most of the money is intended as an honorarium for the practitioner's time in developing the project.

--Grant recipients should complete their work by late fall and present at a mini-conference sometime before the end of the calendar year.

TO APPLY: Fill out the form below (or write a two-three page narrative responding to the questions), and mail your application to LR/RI, PO Box 1974, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 or email to janet_isserlis@brown.edu

For this project, I would like to ......

- BECAUSE.....

- THIS IS HOW I WANT TO DO IT......

- THIS IS WHAT I HOPE TO LEARN OR GAIN FROM THE PROJECT.....

- HERE'S A PROPOSED ROUGH BUDGET

- THIS IS HOW I THINK IT WOULD BE BEST TO COMMUNICATE MY PROJECT'S OUTCOMES TO THE FIELD

For more information, and/or to check on whether an idea is appropriate for a mini-grant, please contact LR/RI. (863-2839, fax: 863-3094, or email) Deadline July 1, 1998.

planning ahead: International Institute of RI announces fall classes

English Language Center

To learn to speak, understand, read and write English as a Second Language (ESL) September ~ June 9:00-12:00, Mon ~ Fri. 7:00-9:00, Mon ~ Thur. $65/month for morning class, $35/month for evening class For non-native English-speaking adults. Call in August for information about September registration at 461-5940.

Job Training & Placement

For people who want to work, October ~ May 9:00-1:00 for English Some afternoons for vocational training, Free if you meet the eligibility requirements. Nominal book fee. Eligibility: Residents of Providence or Cranston; 22 years or over; low income; work permission, intermediate English. Sign up now; you will receive a letter in late July. Call for more information at 784-4602.

English for Work

To improve your English for work, September ~ June, 9:30-11:15am, Mon ~ Thur, 6:30 - 8:30pm, Mon - Thur $35 per month. For non-native English-speaking adults who need to improve English for work.If interested, call Julie Fischer at 784-4607.

Citizenship/ESL

To prepare for the citizenship examination, September ~ June 9:00-11:00am, Mon, Wed, Fri. 6:00-8:00pm, Tue, Wed, Thur. 9:00-12:00, Saturdays, Free for weekday classes $25 for Saturday class. Eligibility: Four years residence in US; some English fluency. Sign up now. We will call you when space is available. Call for more information at 784-4611.

Family Literacy/ESL

To learn to read for adults and pre-school children, September ~ June § 9:00-11:00am, Free. Eligibility: Less than five years of formal education or native language has non-Roman script or no native language literacy. Sign up now. We will call you when space is available. Call for more infomation at 784-4614.

Computer Training

To learn Windows95, Word, Excel, Saturday sessions year-round, 9:00am-11:50pm, 12:00pm-2:50pm, 3:00pm-5:00pm, 8-week sessions: Tuition: $110 (registration, lab and textbook fees are included) Shorter sessions: Tuition to be announced, some English fluency is needed.

Call: 784-4610 morning class infomation; 784-4612 afternoon class information

REMINDERS:

Stats resource available: The State of Literacy in America: Estimates at the local, state and national levels, is now available, free of charge from the National Institute for Literacy. While the use and abuse of statistics can be daunting, the volume is of interest - it projects literacy abilities and problems on local levels using the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) as a basis for these estimates. For a copy of the publication, call 1-800-228-8813.

Resource available: Teaching and Learning with Internet-based Resources, by Susan Cowles, is available in hard copy or on line at http://www.nifl.gov/susanc/inthome.htm From the on-line introduction: "Literacy students, instructors, program administrators, and other life-long learners are all in the group moving along the information superhighway. Some people have been running for a while; others are just starting down the road. Beginning to use the Internet can sometimes seem as grueling as participating in a marathon. This short course is designed to make the journey as informative and enjoyable as possible." To order a hard copy of the document, please call 1-800-228-8813. Susan Cowles is a Literacy Leader Fellow for 1996-97; this document is her fellowship report to the National Institute for Literacy.

from previous bulletins:

LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION ON-LINE (from Fran Keenan at the Center for Applied Linguistics): http://www.StateServ.hpts.org provides current and exclusive state legislative information on welfare reform & immigrants. The 1996 welfare law rewrote the rules for immigrants, originally cutting $24 billion in cash, medical, and food stamp benefits. Although $12 billion in SSI benefits were restored in 1997, states are still challenged by the cost shifts from federal to state and local safety net programs, and are determining whether and how to serve particularly vulnerable immigrant populations. State legislation is summarized by cash assistance, medical assistance, nutritional assistance, and naturalization. Also available on-line are the Project's popular new series of issue briefs "Welfare Reform & Immigrants." Currently posted are briefs on: State Trends, Nutritional Assistance, and TANF. The website was launched by the Health Policy Tracking Service at NCSL. StateServ also provides information on state policies and legislation in the areas of adolescent health, HIV/AIDS, and youth access to alcohol. The website is supported with grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Ford Foundation. For more information on StateServ, call The Health Policy Tracking Service at 202-624-3567 or e-mail them at: info@hpts.org.

For more information on Welfare Reform & Immigrants, contact Ann Morse, Immigrant Policy Project, (ann.morse@ncsl.org) or Jeremy Meadows (jeremy.meadows@ncsl.org). We welcome your comments. (The IMMIGRANT-NEWS-L distribution list is a service of NCSLnet, the Electronic Information Network for State Legislatures. National Conference of State Legislatures. For information on NCSLnet services send a blank e-mail message to: NCSLnet-Info@ncsl.org).

AIDS RESOURCES ONLINE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention1s national AIDS clearinghouse is located at http://www.cdcnac.org. It's Up to Us: An AIDS Education Curriculum for ESL Students and Other English Language Learners, by Henry Lesnick, is available on line at http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/homepages/lesnick/AIDS. AVERT, AIDS Education and Research Trust, a British site, is at http://www.avert.org/ World AIDS Day is observed on December 1st, but the need to work on appropriate educational strategies around HIV and AIDS prevention education persists year round.

PROJECT BASED LEARNING AND ACCESS TO THE INTERNET

How is the internet being used in adult education? What are some helpful uses, and how do we sort through the huge amount of material available on line? Susan Gaer is interested in helping programs link to one another, and has been doing so through an email project homepage on-line, at http://www.otan.dni.us/webfarm/emailproject/email.htm. If you have or know of similar learner work on line, please contact Susan at SusanG2@aol.com. As well, David Rosen (who in addition to advocacy work, has done a great deal of work on and research into using the internet) has asked that we have a look at the inquiry maps on the Adult Literacy Resource Institute1s home page. As he explains, "[a]n Inquiry Map is a group participatory research process on a topic of high interest to the group. Participants (in this case, adult learners) make their own questions, and then set about finding answers to them. The Inquiry map is a process which is never finished. Many of the questions go unanswered, are only partially answered, or have only one answer given where other points of view are possible. So, there is room for other participants to join in the process at any time, to add their answers, their comments on the answers already given, and questions which they might also choose to research." Questions, answers and comments can be posted to David Rosen <DJRosen@world.std.com>, and he'll add them to the inquiry map. So, it keeps on being an inquiry process with each new person who reads and adds to it. He welcomes additions of questions and answers; as you may know, many internet sites run threaded conversations on a variety of topics. The ALRI sites are: http://www2.wgbh.org/MBCWEIS/LTC/ALRI/I.M.html and http://www2.wgbh.org/MBCWEIS/LTC/ALRI/IM3.html (How to make inquiry maps). The LR/RI website has added a page about technology and learning as well. The page consists of the beginning of a discussion about the ways in which technology can be used interactively -- is the screen just a big flashy workbook, or is there more to it? Your comments can be sent by email, fax or regular mail, and will be added to the page to continue the conversation.

and also from previous issues:

Workshops available - During the past few years I've worked with a team of women from around Canada, through the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women, on Making Connections: Literacy and EAL Curriculum from a Feminist Perspective. The curriculum was developed for learners in basic education and English language programs. A series of workshops have been developed and are available to anyone in the area with an interest in learning more about incorporating the curriculum and its approaches into their own work. Please contact me (Janet) at LR/RI for more information and/or to schedule a workshop. Information about the curriculum is also available online at http://www.nald.ca/canorg/cclow/EAL.HTM. While the cost of the curriculum document itself is $20, there is no charge for the workshops.

ERIC/ACVE continually collects written materials on all aspects of adult, career, and vocational education to be considered for inclusion in the ERIC database. Research reports, annotated bibliographies, conference papers, instructional materials, position papers, program descriptions and evaluations, curriculum guides, proceedings, lesson plans and teaching guides, and resource guides, are for the database. If you have a document or documents you would like to submit, contact Steve Chambers, acquisitions coordinator at chambers.2@osu.edu or call 1-800-848- 4815, ext 47642 or send your documents to: Acquisitions Coordinator, ERIC/ACVE, 1900 Kenny Road, Columbus, OH 43210-1090.

Materials are evaluated by subject specialists according to the following criteria: significance, relevance, timeliness, applicability, authority of author, comprehensiveness, clarity of presentation, reflection of emerging trends, capability of meeting users' needs, and generalizability. Every item submitted is given careful consideration. If an item is not selected for ERIC, the author is given an explanation of why it did not meet the selection criteria.