Literature  and  learning

This page began as the result of several reading/discussion group meetings held during the summer of 1997. Nancy Fritz, Mary Troeger and Betty Simons, principle participants, identified an interest in and need for high quality and 'authentic' reading material to use with adult learners, as well as literature through which teachers can become familiar with important resources and information relevant to the cultures of their students.

In addition to annotations and links to sites relevant to literature, this page includes links to learner-generating writing, readings about diversity and multicultural classrooms and settings, writings about writing, and visual arts projects that work towards inspiring speech and writing as well.  Another page, Writing from the Field, includes practitioner and learner writing as well as sites devoted to the development of writing itself.  Learner writing also appears on LR/RI's learners page

We hope that these annotated bibliographies and resources around culture will expand with input from others. Please contribute suggestions, challenge our choices and add your own to this list, which we hope will become a dynamic and useful resource to others.

Links to related readings

Arts and Humanities in Adult and Continuing Education  - ERIC Trends and Issues Alert by Sandra Kerka, 1997

arts, literature, literacy - Zipper Workshops with Bonnie Soroke - "My workshops are an effort to integrate the process of art into the process of education. My dream is to see an accessible art studio in every classroom from   kindergarten to university."

Carpe Diem: The Arts and School Restructuring by Maxine Greene, from Teachers College Record, (summer 1994) in which Greene speaks to the way in which encounters with works of art or aesthetic enactments release the imagination; how being present to engagement with art opens possibilities and "opens us to vision of the possible rather than the predictable.."
read more about Maxine Greene in The Power of One, an article in Education Week, April, 2002.

Children's Literature for Adult ESL Literacy -   ERIC Digest by Betty Ansin Smallwood, 1992

Journal Writing and Adult Learning, ERIC Digest No. 174, by Sandra Kerka, 1996   This digest focuses on several types of journals, exploring their value in assisting adults through their learning journeys and summarizing advice from the literature on effective ways to use journals.

Valuing Diversity in the Multicultural Classroom - ERIC Digest by Elizabeth Quintero, 1994

Links to bibliographical resources, writings and related sites
 

Bookfinder.com - This is a book shopping search engine that scans bookseller databases to find new, used, rare, and out of print books.

Powell's Books - over a million used, new and out of print books in stock

American Communities: An Oral History Approach African American Experiences in Durham, North Carolina

As a part of Duke University's American Communities seminar, undergraduate students interviewed elders in Durham's African American Community. The students examined the history of the United States and the American South through the voices and perspectives of people who have lived, experienced, and "made" history firsthand. The site presents profiles of the students' interviewees and sections of the interviews... Also included is a concept index which groups the interview excerpts by various themes encountered by the students over the course of the semester.

Includes an article in three sections describing the benefits of using children's literature with adults, as well as additional links to resources for teachers, learners, parents and story tellers.

"Narratives of liberation are always tied to people's stories, and what stories we choose to tell, and the ways in which we decide to tell them, form the provisional basis of what a critical pedagogy of the future might mean. (Paulo Freire 1993, xii)

This paper addresses a problem [the author's] experience as a mother, an adult educator, and a lifelong learner which is at the centre of [her] research into the relationship between biography and participation in Adult Continuing Education. The problem is related to a conceptual (as well as practical) conflict between notions of progress and emancipation, both at work and in continuing education, and the needs, demands and desires associated with domestic life and relationships. "

"The Beat Within was conceived in October of 1995. PNS/YO! believed that a writing workshop in juvenile would give these unheard voices an avenue to express their personal stories, views, anger, and commentaries to a community that usually only hears from the politicians, teachers, law enforcement, etc. on the views of young people. Plus YO! has established positive working relationships with these young people as they do their time, and hopefully when they return home they will utilize PNS/YO! as a place to write, for job training, and of course as a support service/sanctuary for those in need."

from the Edmonton Art Gallery and Prospect Literacy Association; learners' writings in response to art at the Edmonton Art Gallery, accompanied by reproductions of the images (paintings, sculptures) about which learners wrote.

Center for the Study of Books in Spanish for Children and Adolescents - Isobel Schon, Ph.D., Director

Contains information about a number of books in Spanish, as well as links to other literature-related sites.

The Children's Literature Web Guide

This link is also found on Susan Gaer and Peg Donner's site; extensive links to a range of useful resources

cultural production [as] vehicle for thinking about integrating technology and learning - a site exploring possibilities for integrating technology and learning through a focus on cultural production.

domestic violence - online and print resources, including fiction and memoir related to domestic and political trauma

eastside out - young people's photography project Challenging Perceptions , edited with the young people by Annie Bungeroth and Anthony Lam

Part of the East End Festival site, including Words from the East End. The site is an extraordinary example of what a community can develop when it expresses itself on line. Pages focusing on current events, community history and creative expression and elements of community life.

Note: eastside out is currently not on line.  try this, for brief information:  http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/templates/news/detail.cfm?newsid=271

FRET new resources -  [from Free English Teaching Resources] - UK-based English language teaching site; includes resources for learners at a wide  range of levels

Grassroots,  Community Writing: Literacy and the Homeless, 2001

Grassroots,  Community Writing: Architecture of Literacy, 2002

Intergenerational Cultural Traditions - Melissa Wilhoit, Susan Gaer

Concrete examples of ways to use literature and illustration to engage older and younger people in sharing stories.

Language Through Art -  An ESL Enrichment Curriculum for adult ESL students

LITERATURE for LITERACY: - Website created to provide practitioners with links to literary organizations in the United States. "The movement of American literature in the millenium is as exciting as the changing language and landscape of the American culture. Contemporary writers are as diverse as the themes they tackle, a reflecting pool of the student body in adult education." site created by Bino A. Realuyo as part of an institute on integrating technology and learning.  This site seems to have disappeared, but see Bino A. Realuyo's personal website for far more.

Masks/las mascaras - documentation of a mask project created by students at Roger Williams Middle School with their teacher, Julie Nora and very capable students at the RISD photo department, including Lindsay Kelley.

Merlyn's Pen - Fiction, Essays, and Poems by America's Teens, based in Rhode Island (Merlyn's Pen, Inc. P.O. Box 1058 East Greenwich, RI 02818).

Stories in Merlyn's Pens collections are wonderful in and of themselves, and many are especially appropriate for adult readers.

Recommeded Trade Books for Adult Literacy Programs Compiled by Patricia L. Bloem and Nancy D. Padak

Ohio Literacy Resource Center page containing annotated bibliographies with teaching suggestions.

Poets against the War - links to on-line resources advocating peace

Quietly Torn- "The sole purpose of our magazine is to be the voice for our community and ourselves. To let the world and other communities around  us know of our existence. To let people know about the hardships of growing up Iu Mien in America, changing our  individual lives to fit into our environment, finding th middle ground between our two cultures and at the same time, figuring out who we really are.  Fifteen Iu Mien young women from Richmond, California contributed to this magazine." [This link has disappeared, but if anyone knows where it's gone, please contact lr/ri.] other info about quietly torn: http://www.3gf.org/grantee_quietlytorn.html

Royce Fellow Sarah Wells uses poetry to teach English - George Street Journal, November 19, 1999.

Spreading the Word - Annotated Booklist

Resources used in an intergenerational storytelling project in Vancouver, BC, 1995-96.

This Community Learning Network Theme Page has links to two types of resources related to the study of Stories and Fairy Tales: curricular resources (information, content...)as well as links to instructional materials (lesson plans). Follow the links from Myths and Legends for American Indian Youth to cultural property (A Line in the Sand) to learn more about the importance of context and appropriation of stories and cultures not one's own.

(from A Line in the Sand: "Cultural property includes not only land and other tangible property, but ideas, traditions, and other non-tangibles. Cultural property belongs to the cultural group, rather than to an individual. As an individual has the right to control use of his/her property, the cultural group has the right to control the use of its property. Not all people recognize cultural property. As a result some individuals will use another group's cultural properties without permission; often that use is offensive to the cultural group, because their property is used in a way that distorts or is disrespectful to the group's beliefs."

"This page acts as a showcase for students' own original stories. Each week, a new story written by an adult learner will be featured here as the 'story of the week.'"

"Following the tenets of liberatory or radical pedagogy, many writing teachers explicitly state that fostering social change is a goal of their classes. In order to pursue this goal in a responsible way, writing teachers must forthrightly address the possibilities and problems it raises, especially vis-a-vis teachers' and students' responsibilities for the ways language is used, teachers' and students' responsibilities to each other and to society, and the responsibilities of educational institutions in society. The purpose of this roundtable is to explore what the goal of teaching writing for social change means to students, teachers, academic institutions, and the society at large and how this goal is best accomplished in writing classes."

The Write Site - from The Center for Literacy Studies' Locally Produced Materials page

"... a place for Tennessee's adult learners to show the world the progress they have made through reading and writing. The material was solicited by adult education programs across the the state and selections were made by the Tennessee Literacy Coalition (TLC) Student Roundtable."

Times Square Photo, images from homeless and underhoused people, as well as links leading to more locally-created cultural production - photos, poetry, etc.

Voices - the Intercultural Poetry E-Journal from the Multicultural Pavilion

Voices from the Gaps - Women Writers of Color

links to resources, writings by and about women of color

Write on Nashville's objectives are to:

foster writing instruction and practice in adult education and English As a Second Language classes ...;

encourage adult basic education students at every level to communicate life experiences through writing;

help adult learners appreciate writing as a useful and creative communication tool;

use writing as the medium to introduce and involve undereducated adults in the arts, particularly theater and literacy arts, and

motivate undereducated adults to set and meet reaming goals.

LR/RI home

last updated November 13, 2006