CSAL Newsletter
Text Quarterly

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ADULT LITERACY

Advisory Board
Literacy Associates
Staff
Mission

EDITORIAL

NEWS

National Institute for Literacy - New Address!
Conference
More Conference News!

FEATURES

Women as Community Organizers, by Jearlean Osborne
Native Literacy: Empowering the Spirit, by Nancy Cooper
Problematizing women's literacy: The CCLOW experience
Who is the we when we talk about us? by Janet Isserlis
Performance-Based Learning: Confronting Violence and Discrimination Through Classroom Projects, by Anson Green
Irish Visitor in Atlanta, by Lori Elliot (Graduate Research Assistant, CSAL)
Book Review: "Until We are Strong Together: Women in the Tenderloin" by Caroline Heller

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ADULT LITERACY

Advisory Board

Dr. Dee Baldwin
Dr. Joan Carson
Dr. Nanette Commander
Carolyn Copeland-Simmons
Ms. Mattie Eley
Dr. Jim Emshoff
Dr. Joyce Many
Ms. Akilah Nosakhere

Literacy Associates

Dr. Joan Carson
Dr. Nancy Chase
Dr. Nannette Commander
Dr. Joanne K. Dowdy
Dr. Laura Frederick
Dr. Sheryl Gowen
Dr. Daphne Greenberg
Dr. Lynn Hart
Dr. Ruth K. Hough
Dr. Joyce Many
Dr. Deborah Najee-ullah
Dr. Karen Zabrucky

Staff

Dr. Martha Abbott-Shim, Director
Dr. Daphne Greenberg, Associate Director
Dr. Joanne K. Dowdy, Assistant Director and Editor
Sanquinette Vaughn, Administrative Coordinator and Layout Editor

Mission

The Center for the Study of Adult Literacy at Georgia State University engages in basic and applied research in adult, family, workplace, academic and second-language literacy, including literacy for special populations such as learning-disabled adults. CSAL also supports an exchange of information among the adult literacy professional community through publications and conferences. Funding for the Center and its research programs is provided by Georgia State University, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, State of Georgia, and foundation research grants. For more information, please contact the Director, Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, Georgia State University, University Plaza, Atlanta, GA 30303-3083.

EDITORIAL

This issue allows us the opportunity to hear from adult literacy providers who have created culturally relevant instruction at their sites. The voices come from a variety of cultural and national backgrounds. We also hear from many women on the issues that they face in the classroom or administrative roles as they work to make literacy learning an important part of the lives of the women whom they serve.

This thematic presentation follows from the conversations that began at the 2nd International Conference on Women and Literacy. It allows us the opportunity to keep the burning issues alive in the minds of those who attended the conference, and to plant some seeds in those who were not able to be with us in January, 1999. We hope that the newsletter will serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the two groups.

As our work continues here at C.S.A.L, we are beginning to see a clearer role in the discussion of the issues that our Women and Literacy Conference raised. We plan to continue sharing the conversations that we are privileged to be a part of and to develop new questions based on those exchanges. You can all look forward to hearing from a diversity of voices in our upcoming issues.

Joanne K. Dowdy

NEWS

National Institute for Literacy - New Address!

The National Institute for Literacy has moved!
The new address is:
1775 I Street, NW., Suite 730
Washington, DC 20006-2401
Phone: 202-233-2025
Fax: 202-233-2050

Conference

The 48th Annual American Association for Adult and Continuing Education Conference. October 12-17, 1999, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, San Antonio, TX.

For more information visit their home page at http://www.albany.edu/aaace/conferences/annual.html

More Conference News!

The Literacy Volunteers of America Conference is November 10-13, 1999, in Nashville, TN at the Sheraton Music City Hotel and Embassy Suites. Call 843-671-2008 for general information.

FEATURES

Women as Community Organizers

Women have gathered around in a discussion all across the United States trying to figure out what happened to their right to become better educated. The effect that gender and race play in society today, has had a direct effect on the way literacy support is delivered in the United States. The plight of women and the prevalence of racism, have come into play in the political policy making arena as they have many times before. In our past history, hundreds of years passed before women earned their right to vote and slaves, their freedom. Today, we are still fighting the mindset of people in decision-making positions, that operate out of a belief which promotes the concept of second-class citizens.

A myth has plagued the existence of adult literacy that is very similar to the ones that have been circulating across the nation about welfare recipients. Historically, the media has painted a picture in the minds of the public, that welfare recipients and undereducated citizens, are majority African-American women described as being lazy, shiftless characters who are creating a major deficit in our local, state and national economy. It is for that reason, and the minimum number of females in leadership roles at the policy level, that gender issues continue to be viewed as non-existent. Adult literacy is pictured as a resource that's utilized primarily by women. Therefore, the men in power don't see the urgency to fund adult literacy programs. That line of thinking was obvious in the changes made in an attempt to reform welfare. Under the new "TANF, Welfare-to-Work," guidelines, many women were forced out of literacy programs to take dead-end, low-waged jobs. Some women who were able to get their GED before the changes were made, enrolled in college as full time students, but are still required to work a minimum of 20 hours per week to receive their benefits. If we deny women access to education, we limit their ability to compete in the meaningful employment pool. Freedom of choice was deleted from the democratic process. Many literacy programs have had to close their doors because, "To be or not to be," educated, is no longer an option for women who are struggling to provide for their families.

In a recent "National Institute for Literacy" report on literacy programs for 1996, 331,511 participants earned a high school diploma or GED; 206,982 got a job or promotion; 175,255 moved on to more advanced education or training; and 33,095 left welfare. It is evident that literacy programs and the rights for women to seek education are needed. Although reports show a significant number of people rotating off welfare roles, many of them were sanctioned off for various reasons: leaving a job because of their inability to find childcare for night shift hours; not having dependable private or public transportation to get to and from work in a timely manner; inability to get dependable before and/or after-school care for their children. Though women head many households, there's not a requirement or standard in place to assure them equal access to earning a living wage. Women are often viewed as good helpers, but never empire builders. I've labeled this terminology as the "secretary" approach. Many secretaries are holding empires together at the seams, but the greatness of their work is not valued. In past years, primarily women utilized services offered by literacy programs in search of securing the "American Dream," but in my opinion, the role of today's woman has already been carved out by power holders, (especially the role of women who are undereducated).

Picture this! A group of women attended an adult education program located in the heart of their community. A 1994 Foundation for the Midsouth "Map Facts: Family Support" study identified their neighborhood as severely distressed. During their studies, the women learned the importance of their role in the political process. They joined a community organizing group and began seeking and making positive changes in their neighborhood, while working on their academic, social, and leadership skills. They began to understand the ownership of power at a deeper level. This group of women set up an appointment to meet with their councilman. The meeting was organized in a typical power struggle manner. The Councilman had invited one of his colleagues to sit in at the meeting to antagonize the women. The "Pow" approach he used to attack the women went as follows: " How many of you have a high school diploma or GED? How many of you are in the work force? What makes you think that you have the right to ask the city for any money?" The "any money," that he referred to was Community Development Block Grant funds, (CDBG). The women had every right to ask city officials to use part of CDBG funds to purchase lots to be used for the construction of Habitat for Humanities homes for low to moderate income families. They also had every right to ask their city councilman for his support because they were all registered voters. Based upon the line of questions that were asked, the women concluded that the men viewed them as being lazy, ignorant, and unworthy of their time. The city officials tried to discredit them based solely upon race, class and gender. This political tactic is more often than not, a part of the "norm, status quo, politics as usual." Based upon the decisions made to govern the fate of low income families and the images that have been associated with those families, it's no wonder why freedom of choice was taken out of the equation.

In conclusion, I feel that race and gender will continue to be important factors in the way that literacy support is delivered in the U.S., as long as the mindset of politicians is to continue to promote the concept of second class citizens.

Jearlean Osborne, mother of three children and grandmother of six, is the Community Organizer for Moore Community House. She has been employed at Moore for over twenty years and has professional experience in: developing and implementing educational tools for adult literacy, teaching non-traditional education, increasing community commitment through group advocacy, and strengthening interpersonal relations through group and community activity. One of her life goals is to empower the disenfranchised to lead successful lives through education, advocacy and community participation. Jearlean believes that every learning opportunity should be community centered, and has a commitment and determination to fight the stigmas (labels) that are associated with being disenfranchised. She facilitated a "Literacy Leaders Training," for residents of St. Thomas Housing Complex in New Orleans, LA., to help them learn how to effectively, integrate literacy into their community development and organizing work.

Native Literacy: Empowering the Spirit, by Nancy Cooper

"Native literacy is a tool which empowers the spirit of Native people. Native literacy services recognize and affirm the unique cultures of Native Peoples and the interconnectedness of all aspects of creation. As part of a life-long path of learning, Native literacy contributes to the development of self-knowledge and critical thinking. It is a continuum of skills that encompasses reading, writing, numeracy, speaking, good study habits, and communicating on other forms of language as needed. Based on the experience, abilities and goals of learners, Native literacy fosters and promotes achievement and a sense of purpose, which are both central to self-determination."
-Ontario Native Literacy Coalition

This definition of what Native literacy is and does helped me to decide to become involved with Native literacy in Toronto. I have been involved with the Native literacy community for the past seven years. I coordinated a literacy program for Native women in an inner-city women's resource centre for three years. From there I started coordinating an innovative literacy program for Native men and women for the Toronto District School Board called the First Nations Adult Education Program (FNAEP). This program took literacy learning to where people felt most comfortable. Because of the devastating effect that the education system has had on many First Nations people, there is a valid mistrust by many adults of a school or classroom situation. The FNAEP instructors worked in womens' shelters, community centres and homeless drop-ins to name a few places. This past September I started working at Centre Alphaplus Centre, a Toronto based provincial Literacy library serving the Literacy and ESL communities in Ontario. As the Field Consultant for the First Nations community, I work with 31 Native Literacy programs all over the provence. These programs are both on and off reserve, as well as both rural and urban. They run the gamut from a program in downtown Toronto, the largest city in Canada, to a program in a community that is only accessible by air or train on the coast of James Bay.

As a result, the needs for learners are varied but at the same time have many similarities. One of these similarities is the need for Holistic programming and curriculum that addresses the whole person and does not "compartmentalize". This programming and curriculum should look after the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical needs of the learner:

Emotional - security, self-esteem, confidence, belief in self, hope, faith, trust, pride, validation, independence, interdependence, freedom, vision, peace, courage, caring, and language

Mental/Mind - courage, communication, language, reading, writing, arithmetic, logistics, thinking, problem-solving, skill, belief in self

Spiritual - faith, hope, peace, belief, purpose, respect, sharing, generosity, recognition of gifts, reciprocity, courage, interconnectedness

Physical - housing, shelter, food, money, security, clothing, transportation, child care, safety, health, wellness

Native literacy practitioners assist learners in developing their literacy skills in a way that is culturally appropriate and holistic. It is the practitioner's responsibility to help learners overcome their challenges to learning, while providing a positive, reaffirming and culturally based literacy education. With this model the learners are seen first for their gifts, talents and abilities. It also recognizes the interconnectedness of mind, body and emotions, and the familial, community and social forces that impact learning.

Nancy Cooper is a mixed race Ojibway-Irish woman from the Chippewas of Mnjikaning First Nation in Ontario, Canada. She has lived and worked in Toronto for the past seven years. She is a field consultant at Centre Alphaplus Centre in Toronto. The webpage for Alphaplus is http://alphaplus.ca.

Problematizing women's literacy: The CCLOW experience (notes from a session at the Women and Literacy Conference, Atlanta, January 1999) Linda Shohet

[ In this session, my colleague Isa Helfield talked about her experiences in a Montreal adult literacy classroom working with women and using CCLOW materials. She was one of the teachers who pilot-tested some of the women's literacy curriculum materials, and has worked with alternative methods for many years. Without being actively involved in the organization, Isa epitomizes the people who have benefited from CCLOW publications and activities.]

The Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW) is a national organization committed to researching and promoting education and training for women since 1979. For the past decade, the organization has undertaken a series of research, curriculum development and facilitator training projects on women and literacy. Through a rapid overview of the organization and their literacy work, I want to suggest that these projects have helped shape international discussion of the issue and have uncovered problems that mirror some current debates in both the women's and literacy movements.

To situate this discussion, CCLOW was founded in 1979 by a group of Canadian feminists who perceived the need for an organization dedicated solely to the learning issues of women. Within ten years, they had achieved recognition in academic and government sectors for their research and advocacy on women's education and training. They had created networks in every province and developed two publications, one of them Women's Education des femmes, a bilingual journal with serious gender analysis and strong classroom connections. They had also organized the first national conference on women and technology (1982) and initiated innovative projects such as the first bridging program for women in Canada.

In 1990, CCLOW received the first of several grants from the National Literacy Secretariat. This was a 2-year study of twelve adult literacy programs across the country, focusing on women's everyday experience in these programs. The programs had a variety of mandates and organizational structures; sites ranged from urban to rural, from the east to west coasts and the far north. They were located in community colleges, a union, and a prison; six were community-based: on the street, in store-fronts, in public housing, in a Native friendship centre and in a community centre. At least two women from each of these programs considered what happens when women decide to engage in learning activities designed specifically for them; they called these activities "woman-positive." This phrase has now come into wide usage internationally without much awareness of its origins.

The project was groundbreaking in several ways. It did not start out to test any hypotheses, to increase students' levels of reading or writing or to improve grade standings. It did not set out to empower women or to encourage feminist analysis, or even to help programs become more woman-positive. But these things still happened.

As participatory action research, the project trained these women, then provided support and resources as they planned and implemented woman-positive activities in their programs. They developed a collaborative analysis and a series of recommendations. And they documented every step. Among their findings was the prevalence of violence in the lives of adult learners that researchers such as Kate Rockhill and Jenny Horseman had recently written about. The direct outcome of the literacy research was a set of three publications under a general heading of Women in Literacy Speak Out, including a detailed description of the project and a text for adult literacy classes. One recommendation lead to a second national project -- developing curriculum for women's literacy.

Modeling its commitment to feminist process, in winter 1994, through a national "Call for Participants," CCLOW put together a team of 15 women with classroom experience who had developed teaching materials. They attempted to have balance in locale(urban and rural), geography (regional), socio-economic status (full-time teachers and community-based part-time instructors/tutors), and race. Fifteen women from amazingly diverse backgrounds formed a writing team during one intensive four-day retreat, then worked independently over the next year communicating by phone, fax and computer. They reconvened the following year for another intensive week-end to share their "chapters" and to designate one "editor" and an editorial committee. Thirteen women completed modules which were published in 1996 as a "curriculum" called Making Connections. This collection provided a source book of woman-positive materials for literacy or ESL in many settings. The voices of each author were left intact framed by chapters on "Feminist Curriculum" and "Dealing with Violence." It aimed to be inclusive and sensitive to class, race, gender and social-economic inequity.

But many programs across Canada had never seen such materials before and did not know how to use them. Their questions lead to the most recent of the CCLOW projects -- to train another diverse group of women to lead workshops for other teachers and tutors. The same feminist process was adopted to bond the group, but this one took the organization in new directions when facilitators returned from a year of pilot-testing in June 1998 to share their experiences. Several native women and women of colour expressed dismay or anger at materials they found to be inappropriate for their communities, and some of the women felt they had not clearly understood what CCLOW was when they became involved.

Connections. This collection provided a source book of woman-positive materials for literacy or ESL in many settings. The voices of each author were left intact framed by chapters on "Feminist Curriculum" and "Dealing with Violence." It aimed to be inclusive and sensitive to class, race, gender and social-economic inequity.

But many programs across Canada had never seen such materials before and did not know how to use them. Their questions lead to the most recent of the CCLOW projects -- to train another diverse group of women to lead workshops for other teachers and tutors. The same feminist process was adopted to bond the group, but this one took the organization in new directions when facilitators returned from a year of pilot-testing in June 1998 to share their experiences. Several native women and women of colour expressed dismay or anger at materials they found to be inappropriate for their communities, and some of the women felt they had not clearly understood what CCLOW was when they became involved.

During a weekend retreat, deep wounds were opened as issues of race and class were uncovered, and women of good will discovered that they were not speaking the same language when they used the same words. This literacy project was in fact about literacy at its most profound -- the ability to make meaning and communicate across barriers. The problems that were unearthed shook the entire organization and forced it to re-examine both the way it has defined itself and the way it is perceived by others.

This crisis both heightened awareness at the directors table and mirrored some of the larger debates. These questions touch both women's and literacy organizations: What has feminism to offer minority women? Who can claim to speak for all women? What are the dominant discourses? Whose literacy is privileged? When do women's loyalties to their racial or cultural communities supersede their commitments to women's issues?

Where does that leave CCLOW and the work it has done? I would argue that CCLOW has moved the women's literacy agenda forward as no other organization has. In looking systematically and steadily at issues that no one wanted to talk about -- women's learning needs, violence as a barrier, feminist process-- they have touched practitioners around the world and seeded further research. A large strand of CSAL's Women and Literacy conference is built around concerns explored by them. That is a strong legacy.

In relation to the huge divide that was uncovered last year, again there has been a move to find common ground. A group of women who participated in that project have spent the past months trying to make sense of it; they came to this conference to talk about their experience of "othering" and have suggested some directions that might move us outside of our ethnocentric bounds. Centuries of oppression and conditioning have created these bounds, and no magic formula will dissolve them quickly. But the women who have chosen to engage with the problems and search for alternatives, other than rage and hate, seem to me to embody the best of what CCLOW has offered: Opportunity. Without CCLOW, they would not have known one another and had the opportunity to work together.

And CCLOW is trying to reinvent itself as well in its twentieth year. They have opted to use this year's funding to host a national congress in November. They will invite women who are committed to the goals of promoting women's learning to come together to define what they see as the key issues in that area for the next decade and to say whether there is energy and commitment to reshape CCLOW to address those needs. If there is a response, then CCLOW will exist in an as yet undetermined form in the year 2000. If there is not, then it will celebrate its 20 years of achievement and close down with dignity, allowing other groups to take up the challenges.

Linda Shohet is Director of The Centre for Literacy (Montreal). She has been the Quebec member on the CCLOW board since 1993 and chairs their Literacy Committee. She was a team member on both the curriculum and facilitators projects. This article was written as a report to CCLOW.

Who is the we when we talk about us? by Janet Isserlis

Education workers are in privileged positions as people who use their ability to read and use language to assist others who want to develop that ability themselves. In so doing, if we're fortunate, we become parts of communities of women who've lived lives of exceptional courage, of ordinary boredom, of the not so unusual comings and goings associated with being a woman in the latter part of the 20th century. These communities exist in and beyond classrooms and consist of women learning, teaching, running programs, writing grants, making policy.

Lisa Delpit writes of how difficult it is to listen with all our senses to the needs and means of learning of other people's children when she describes clashes of learning and teaching across race. How clear and yet utterly not simple are her words for teachers around the importance of listening, and learning about how people live and make sense of their world before trying to actually 'teach' anything to anyone. Wendy Luttrell writes of women and learning in some depth, too, as do numerous others; writing, thinking and working towards learning to see what difference difference makes.

All of this work throws into question the issue of who has power, whose voice is heard and how learning transpires. I think of many years of teaching with my eyes closed, of power remaining invisible to me. I'm mindful of ways that I've separated myself from colleagues whose opinions I neither understood nor accepted, and of ways that I've framed difference between/among learners and colleagues. How do I move beyond my own way of seeing into understanding the joys and difficulties that shape the lives of women with children, husbands or partners, single women, American, First Nations, South Asian, Deaf, disabled, married, White, Black, Latina, immigrants, refugees from all over the world, all those others? I suspect the movement I strive towards entails understanding that there are differences and commonalities between and among colleagues and learners. I need to understand the strength behind the words women speak and learn to read and write. I need to listen before I speak.

for example

Learning about my own racism began when a friend -- in possession of sufficient love, anger and energy to compel me to do something with my discomfort -- helped me to begin to understand simply and forcefully how racism works. I can get on the bus, go shopping, get through customs. I can pass, I'm white. She can't. She isn't. That simple fact has nothing and everything to do with the way my words and actions, and the thoughts that underlie them have shaped my responses to students and colleagues whose colour, class, marital status, formal education or ability haven't been the same as mine.

When we're in a discussion circle with learners on a Monday morning, and I talk about what I did with my male partner over the weekend, what can my gay colleague talk about? How insidious and invisible are the ways in which certain lives become normalized or not in the work that we do? If we engage in adult education as I believe we must -- ready to listen with all our senses and most especially to listen before we speak -- we must come to understand that people make sense of their worlds in different ways. Difference, as Nancy Cooper has eloquently pointed out, isn't something only other people have, it's the collective sum of all our learning and being, of lived experience and ways of making meaning.

When I, along with a group of Canadian women, finished writing a curriculum for literacy and language learning from a feminist perspective, I thought I had contributed to something explicitly addressing oppression -- racism, xenophobia, homophobia -- in some small way. Two years later a small group of strong women challenged us as writers for the absence of first nations people and people of colour in the curriculum and its own normalizing of certain power imbalances. The voices that weren't heard were conspicuous in their absence. I found myself responding to the critiques of the curriculum with interest, and with regret, because we hadn't known then what we were learning now, two years later, once women of colour had taken the work to their communities and found out where it wasn't helpful.

Reflecting on my learning from these and other women and men with whom I've worked has led me to frame questions that shape my work on a daily basis. Who are the women in this classroom/in this meeting/ on this committee/ reading this newsletter? What do they know and how have they come to know it? What can I learn about them before presuming to tell them what I believe to be important? How can I do the work of listening respectfully, considering, agreeing, disagreeing in ways that enable us to move our work forward?

When educators work to build community in and beyond classrooms we need to acknowledge, and not erase, difference. Difference can be a dynamic vehicle through which we can work towards some sort of understanding and collective action. We don't pretend our differences don't exist, nor do we focus entirely upon them. We try to learn through one another (our experience, histories, world views), and see what common threads can draw us together. If we believe that education has the potential to be transforming, and that thought and discussion can lead to positive action, we need to be particularly aware of the fact that each learner and colleague is an individual with whom we ultimately hope to forge connections and a collective learning community. We need to avoid the common traps of imposing world views and assumptions upon learners and each other while encouraging one another to freely and respectfully express opinions and exchange ideas. Knowing about our learners/each other, knowing that there are many things we can't know, but can be aware of, is critical to the way we work to develop community. I can't know everything there is to know about everyone with whom I interact, but I can understand that I need to be aware of all the things I don't know, -- religious background, country of origin, marital status, sexual orientation, political viewpoint -- in order to not silence or frighten others. I must understand that I have the power to silence and frighten, and to impede learning. And that others have the power to do that to me.

If I believe that the content of the grammar, language, vocabulary that my students will learn should be elicited from their direct experiences, then I must be aware of the fact that some of those experiences will be more difficult than others for learners to share. I can't assume that we all want to have careers or that we all want to be parents. I can't assume that progressive causes will be popular with my students or peers, or that all immigrants will share the same views about immigration. If I can remember this, and remember the complex sets of factor which form and inform each individual with whom I work and learn, I can attempt to proceed in an open way, leaving room for a range of opinions and participation, making the classroom, the meeting, the planning session as inclusive as possible.

We need to be aware of the ways in which childhood, educational experiences, gender, race, class, nationality, ability, sexual orientation and a myriad of other factors impact on a person's sense of self. We need to realize that a personal sense of self sharply defines the way a person interacts with the world around her/him. When one feels relatively secure in one's identity, that particular barrier to learning is lowered. When that sense of self is threatened or challenged in frightening ways, learning becomes difficult. Work becomes hard to do. Survivors of domestic abuse aren't only learners, older colleagues aren't without contemporary interests, assumptions about who's who will not serve us well. Listen and learning might.

An earlier version of this article, and the resources cited here, appear on line at http:/www.brown.edu/Departments/Swearer_Center/Literacy_Resources/atlanta.html

Janet Isserlis has worked with adult learners since 1980. She is Project Director of Literacy Resources/RI, has taught ESOL and ESOL/Literacy, and worked with community-based, intergenerational and workplace learning programs. Janet is currently working on a fellowship from the National Institute for Literacy to explore connections between learning and violence in adult education.

Performance-Based Learning: Confronting Violence and Discrimination Through Classroom Projects, by Anson Green

Learner-centered instruction and content driven curricula specific to learners' needs are instructional approaches making more and more in roads into the field of adult literacy. Nationally, Equipped for the Future, an education reform initiative sponsored by The National Institute for Literacy, has designed its system reform around these objectives, building an educational framework around the expressed educational needs and concerns of learners. More and more practitioners and programs are rethinking their classroom dynamics and program designs to place learners at the center of all aspects of the educational experience, from intake and initial assessment, through the design of classroom activities, to outcome assessment and transition.

I work in an adult literacy and workforce preparation class in west San Antonio, Texas which is part of a Welfare?to?Work program designed for women receiving TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) benefits. We meet twenty?five hours a week in a classroom situated in an unemployment office. Women in our program typically range in age from their late teens to early thirties and are primarily Hispanic. Students bring a variety of histories to class. Some have suffered extreme hardships and obstacles related to abusive relationships, poverty and weak support systems.

Project-Based Learning

I came to project-based learning that year through my work in the Project FORWARD initiative, a staff development project sponsored by El Paso Community College. A major objective of the initiative was to implement student projects in our class. I have been a member of project FORWARD for three years and my class has worked on projects as diverse as a class orientation book designed to address the welfare system, our class from a student's perceptive, a series of presentations given to junior high students on the dangers of dropping education for gangs, drugs and early pregnancy, and a class web page where students can share "their worlds" with the world at large.

This year my class was awarded a special grant to produce a "Welfare to Work" curriculum from the learners' perspective. By bringing their everyday realities and past experiences to curriculum development lessons, we hoped to reach themes learners feel are crucial to transition from welfare to work. Unlike other workplace curriculums, which present situations where the employer is unquestionably right, critical "attitude" is frowned upon and the employment "system" is always on your side, I wanted to create a critical forum for learners to examine personal and employment obstacles and work collaboratively toward viable alternatives and hopefully greater self actualization..

In the past year, we have been working on a welfare to work curriculum students called La Cocina de Vida: The Kitchen of Life. The women involved in the La Cocina project are producing a series of participant-centered, work-culture activities that address the complicated obstacles many women face transitioning into work. The overriding focus of La Cocina is to address barriers women face going to work or school by providing a mechanism to facilitate basic skills development in the context of rich, problematizing activities that have women working through both intrinsic and extrinsic obstacles to employment or school. Rather than providing "aspirin solutions" to difficult issues, the project aims to encourage women to reach a middle ground consisting of personal empowerment and knowledge which helps establish a level playing field both at home and when moving into work. To date, the curriculum includes units on sexual harassment at work, working through domestic violence, and overcoming welfare stereotypes.

Performance

The time spent working on La Cocina De Vida in the past few months has been, at times, exciting, vibrant and even explosive, and at other times overwhelming and frustrating. It has been real work. Rather than dry, often disconnected, preparation for a test, we have been engaged in critical evaluation and reevaluation of our mind-sets, assumptions and limitations on a variety of "life-skills." I ask myself, "Has there been real understanding on learning associated with the project? Have students implemented their understanding in their lives? Have they applied their learning in "context"-at home, in relationships, with each other? Has the work brought any change to their lives? Are they "reading" their world more critically?"

Only now, as we end the project, am I getting a comprehensive picture of just where our work has taken students.

Still, with the dust still settling on our work, it's difficult to paint a comprehensive picture of student achievements that remains true to the spirit of the moment.

Conclusion

Adapting participatory instruction and utilizing learners' voice in class projects and lesson themes allows students to adapt learning directly to their lives. Day to day work is "authentic," building on the immediate concerns of the group. It is thus learning that is truly transferable out of the classroom and manifests itself in examples of "performance" where students can reflect on their past to affect change for the future. Basic skills are developed while working on projects that lead learners to reflect on their roles in the "system of poverty" and plan ways to break this cycle by confronting harassment, violence and racial stereotyping and seek counseling to assist themselves and their children through change.

Anson Green is a computer preparedness and life-skills instructor in a Welfare to Work program at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas. This year he is working on a National Institute for Literacy Fellowship project focusing on the impacts of domestic violence on students' learning in the classroom and transition into employment.

---

Irish Visitor in Atlanta, by Lori Elliot (Graduate Research Assistant, CSAL)

On July 12, 1999 the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy was privileged to have Mr. William Francis Monghan speak about adult literacy programs in his native Ireland. He began by explaining that adult literacy in Ireland was initiated around 1978 and, then, in his hometown of Galway in 1983. After sixteen years of hard work, Galway now has a resource library with reading material, a computer loaded with adult literacy software programs, and a small language laboratory. However, their focus still remains on meeting the individual needs of their participants.

Mr. Monghan described the shape of the service provided to adult learners in Galway as "center based with out-reach facilities." Instruction is provided in a variety of ways including one to one, small literacy and numeracy groups, community education, distance learning, and family literacy programs. However, the most unique feature of the service in Galway is the out-reach program where tutors go into the homes of the participants. For one hour a day three days per week for fifteen weeks, the tutors go into the homes of the participants where they meet 'around the kitchen table'. As Mr. Monghan explained, "we are there consistently on the agreed upon days and after a few weeks the 'honeymoon' period is over and real learning begins because we drop the mask." Participants may choose to take advantage of the other resources that the literacy center provides and meet with other adults in small groups in order to continue their lifelong learning. Participants have experienced a lot of success under this model, as is evident by the following poem written by one of the adults in Mr. Monghan's program.

Things the Teacher Missed It was always hard to concentrate on a list. Even if I knew then what I know now. Even if the teacher knew the things she missed. At the age of five the world is coming alive. My thoughts buzzing around the outside of my head, like a swarm of bees around a shaky hive. If I could stand up, tell her I'm only five But all my senses are alive. She tells me to concentrate in a class full of windows. Stop day dreaming. What's the meaning? At the age of five, you had to please the teacher to survive. The outside world beckoned me through the glass. Stronger than the Spelling I could never grasp. Noise of diggers building the new church made my mind wonder in search. The smell of fresh cut grass gave me satisfaction at the back of the class. The teacher caught me with her sly eye, which made me feel kind of shy. Time would never fly. I could dream of building a church, walking through the grass, things outside of class. Could I survive, keep concentration alive, at the age of five? In search of a world, boundaries beyond the new church. Is it worse? Some sort of curse to notice all this, with sights and sounds all around? These are the things the teacher missed John Adult literacy participant Galway, Ireland

What was the last thing you wrote? Why did you write it? /Who was your intended reader? What occurred because someone read what you wrote?

Setting aside for a moment what a writer does or who she is, consider the innate need we humans share to express and assert ourselves through language. I am writing this review because I want you to read this book. I want people to take it up, consider and act upon the idea that writing is a vehicle through which many things are possible.

People talk a lot about the power of stories because for many of us, stories make ideas, events, even abstract principals [come alive, take form, grow arms, legs and faces]. Telling, writing, and listening to stories was a means of enabling women in the Tenderloin Women's Writers Workshop to know that they held knowledge, that their knowledge was important to others and that they in fact existed. Caroline Heller tells the story of their evolution as a community of writers with grace, honesty and depth, and without the edge of 'otherness' that sometimes infects even our best -intentioned attempts at recounting what happens when adults come together to learn, to work, to write.

Caroline Heller doesn't explicitly speak to us as a teacher, but through her work as a participant observer and historian of the workshop, teaches us important truths about what happens when women in a community come together to write.

Heller came to the Tenderloin, a San Francisco neighborhood, in the fall of 1987, with the intention of learning about "the body of research...that examines how reading and writing are used in groups and communities apart from formal schooling." (page 10). Ten years later, with a scholar's understanding of how literacy functions in the world, and an educator's ability to contextualize her observations of and interaction with the group, Heller has written an accessible book about a specific group of women whose activities can teach us much about writing in a very general sense if we're wise enough to pay attention.

Heller interweaves her own understandings of literacy theory into an analysis of the activities that shaped the work of the writers and the dynamics of the writing workshop. Although initially intent upon completing a doctoral research project, she developed an ongoing relationship to the group, and was embraced by its participants as its historian, documenting their sessions and forming relationships with the writers that moved beyond that of researcher and subject. She problematizes issues of class and power -- her own and that of the writers and facilitators of the group -- throughout the text in ways that are very real and appreciable to others doing similar work in 'regular' adult education settings, and/or in other community-based groups where people come together to write, make art, make meaning.

Heller's assertions are amply illustrated by transcripts from writing sessions, by writing produced by workshop participants, and by her own detailed accounts of the ups and downs of maintaining a group of writers when many of the writers are homeless or are housed in single rooms from which they could be easily evicted by the perfidies of housing codes and developers. Over the three years that Heller spent with the writers, a core group attended consistently; from this group, Heller focuses on individual women whose stories are at once unique and emblematic of the range of issues, challenges and rewards emerging from pursuing the goal of writing together.

Not surprisingly, many of the women form close connections to one another. We hear from several of them, through transcripts and interview summaries, and from the group's facilitators about issues as diverse as housing, cancer, feeding tubes, Native culture, racism, love, hate and loneliness; all issues that arise through the process of speaking, writing, reading aloud, and making meaning within and through the workshop's evolution.

Writers, teachers, men and women even thinking about community development work of any sort stand to gain much through a reading of the text. I'd love to talk to others about what it's made me consider and reflect upon; if I had a book group, I'd bring this there.

- Janet Isserlis

This book is available in our Resource Center. For more information call 404-651-0400.