Leah Peterson – The Well

Raise Your Civic Voice with The Change Agent

In yesterday’s blog post, Upping Our Civic Game, Andy Nash offered suggestions to help adult students engage in civic life. One tool that can help you do this is The Change Agent. Every issue of The Change Agent gives students a view of other adult learners’ efforts to make change in their own lives or in their communities, whether on the topic of work or transportation, or many others.

Issue 26, “Democracy in Action” is a great place to start the conversation. The issue opens with an activity that encourages students to consider three different types of civic participation – “a personally responsible community member, a participatory community member, and a justice-oriented community member” and then asks the students to consider how they fit in – and how this compares to their idea of what it means to participate in a democracy. Try the activity here!

Explore the rest of the “Democracy in Action” issue for articles and activities on the topics of: How do you participate?; No one will solve our problems; The politics and history of voting; Money and politics; Candidates, parties, and voting; and What is democracy? But there’s no need to restrict yourself to issue #26 – every issue of The Change Agent presents students with inspiration for raising their civic voices.

In issue 27, “Making Sense of Climate Change”, you can read about the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. Jennifer Salmons wrote: “Oceans are rising and warming. Many of the big cities in our country are on or near the coasts. So what do you think would happen to these cities? When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, tens of thousands of residents became refugees. Imagine if such a catastrophe were to strike New York, Miami, or Los Angeles?” How do these articles resonate with students watching, or experiencing first hand, the effects of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria this season? What has (or hasn’t) changed since these articles were written back in 2008?

Our current issue, “Career Pathways” includes not only an exploration of careers such as nursing and construction but also the pathways to being a “change agent”! Students can consider how they are currently involved in their communities and where they might like to go from there.

These are just a very small sampling of articles that could be brought into the classroom to catalyze discussions on how to advocate for what’s important to them. On the pages of The Change Agent the experiences of adult learners come to life as they write about their personal, national, and even global concerns.

The Change Agent is available through a very affordable subscription, both in paper and as an online subscription that gives you access to all the back issues. Lesson packets that use Change Agent articles are freely available on a wide range of topics including packet #10: Taking Action at Work”. Encourage your students to share how they’ve raised their civic voices to advocate for change, in response to a call for articles or by emailing us at changeagent@worlded.org. The Change Agent is published by the New England Literacy Resource Center (NELRC) at World Education. If you are in an NELRC state, contact us to find out if you are eligible to access The Change Agent online for free.

Mathematizing ESOL

Math skills are a critical part of everyday life that contribute to academic and workforce success. For English language learners, the struggle to learn math can be complicated by language and cultural barriers. In addition, math classes are not always readily available as math is often not a part of ESOL programs. Recently, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) has brought attention to the need for math instruction with English language learners. As programs begin to change their curricula, ESOL teachers often find themselves unprepared to incorporate math into their lessons. Even when they are comfortable with the math concepts, they generally face a classroom where students have been grouped by language level, not by math background, resulting in huge variation in math backgrounds. Students’ use of differing forms of math notation from their countries of origin also adds to the confusion.

To help teachers get started integrating math into their ESOL classes, TERC’s Adult Numeracy Center teamed up with the EdTech Center at World Education to develop a series of online professional development courses. These courses were developed by the MA SABES PD Center for Mathematics and Adult Numeracy at TERC, with funding from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They are also offered for free to MA ABE practitioners through the SABES PD Center for Mathematics and Adult Numeracy.

Each course takes on increasingly complex math topics, starting with the basics of introducing math in an ESOL class in Mathematizing ESOL I to incorporating proportions into ESOL classes in Mathematizing ESOL III. Throughout each six-week course, participants interact with course materials, fellow classmates and course facilitators through readings, videos, online discussion boards, assignments and other activities. For example, in Mathematizing ESOL I, participants build and then share lessons, contextualized for their own learners, based on the “Show Me the Money” activity, which you can download here as a Word Doc and in action in the classroom.

Teachers taking the courses have repeatedly commented about their increased comfort with bringing math into their ESOL classes and have shared their and their students’ appreciation of lessons that build conceptual understanding while staying grounded in everyday situations.

From a participant’s course reflection: “My own thinking about math has changed: I understand now that there are multiple ways to frame and approach a problem, and I have already introduced this flexible way of thinking to my classes. We did a lesson on converting kilograms to pounds in my Level 1 class this week, and I felt much more comfortable leading it and more helpful to the students having participated in this course. I really enjoyed the activities where we developed and adapted word problems for different levels, and I see lots of possibilities for using these in class and developing role-plays to go along with them.” -Brian Jordan, ESOL Instructor, Mattapan, MA

As more and more programs begin to offer their English language learners the opportunity to improve their math skills along with their language skills, we hope that this course series provides teachers with the confidence, math knowledge, and inspiration to venture into new territory and to improve their practice.

To learn more about registering yourself or ESOL teachers in your program, please contact Leah Peterson at leah_peterson@worlded.org or 617-385-3740 or visit us online at http://elearningpd.worlded.org/ .

Three Cheers for the E-Learning PD Online Course Facilitators!

June is a good time to reflect on the school year that is coming to a close. As I look over course evaluations and prepare reports, one thing that strikes me each year is how fortunate we are to have such excellent facilitators for our online professional development courses. Course participants have commented over and over again how much they appreciated the thoughtful feedback and gentle nudges that our facilitators provide. In the words of one course participant: “Thank you to my instructor for helping me to grow as a teacher!” I’d like to take this opportunity to thank each of them.

This year World Education E-Learning PD ran 32 facilitated online course sections with 15 dedicated facilitators. Many of our facilitators are World Education staff, and others work in adult education organizations across the country. One thing they all have in common is their commitment to helping teachers and program staff improve their practice. For full bios of all of our facilitators, visit : http://elearningpd.worlded.org/meet-the-instructors/

This year’s facilitators and the courses they taught are:

Amy Vickers – Data: Helping Students Interpret Numeric Information
Barbara Goodridge – Foundations of Teaching Adult Numeracy and Geometry: Teaching about Shapes and their Measures
Chris Stanyer – Navigating Pathways to Opportunity
Cynthia Peters – Helping Students Stay: Exploring Program and Classroom Persistence Strategies
Diana Satin – Integrating Technology with Project-Based Learning and Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE & ESOL Classroom
Ellen Hewett – College Readiness for Adults: Beyond Academic Preparation and Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE & ESOL Classroom
Jody Angelone – Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE & ESOL Classroom
Jody Maloney – College Readiness for Adults: Beyond Academic Preparation and Addressing the Impact of Stress on Learning in the ABE/ESOL Classroom
Pam Meader – Data: Helping Students Interpret Numeric Information and Number Sense: Teaching About Parts and Wholes
Priyanka Sharma – College Readiness for Adults: Beyond Academic Preparation and Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE & ESOL Classroom
Rebecca Strom – Number Sense: Teaching About Parts and Wholes
Sandy Goodman – Navigating Pathways to Opportunity
Sherry Lehane & Melissa Braaten – Mathematizing ESOL
Wendy Quinones – Helping Students Stay: Exploring Program and Classroom Persistence Strategies
Wynne Ferdinand – Contextualized Instruction

I’d also like to thank Kaye Beall, who reads and responds to each and every submission for participants completing our free self-paced courses.

Read on for more comments from participants about their facilitators:

“Thank you for all your patience and guidance–you are an insightful course leader, especially dealing with both participants who are in career readiness programs and those of us who are trainers, and who may have other roles.”

“As our course instructor, you have guided us through the course with awareness and knowledge. Your comments and suggestions were prompt and encouraging which allows us to view other perspectives in variety topics, readings, and postings.”

“I’d like to thank our instructor for her insightful and prompt responses to our questions.”

“I appreciate the one-on-one contact and encouragement from my facilitator.”

“I would like to thank my instructor for the wonderful information in this class. I hope to have her again as an instructor for other classes.”

I’m looking forward to another year of online professional development courses and hope that you’ll join us too.