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From: lgale@edc.org
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Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:395] Re: Re Searching for UNational (Urban) Models
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Hello George:
Your program sounds intriguing.
Would you share a little about how you recruit agencies -- did they
approach you or vise-versa? Who at the community sites "approved" the
sites' participation in the project? And, perhaps my most important
question -- why did the sites sign on with this project?
We've found through our experience that well intentioned people with good
ideas are often well received, if the circumstances are right. However,
the challenge is to find a way to get the sites to own of this program, and
therefore do all the stuff that literacy programs need to do to exist
(i.e., respond to reporting requirements). We've had no problem suggesting
to various agencies that they consider providing literacy support to
clients and employees, and many have and continue to provide limited
support to literacy learners, but for the agencies to truly own it, they
need to see that it helps them solve an internal agency dilemma in addition
to the community need. For example, an agency might be concerned about its
ability to recruit and retain folks in programs -- literacy becomes, yes,
another program, but one that draws people to the agency a little more
readily than other programs.
Also, staff turnover is a big issue. Imagine a year from now, when key
people that you have been working with who understand what and how the
project work decide to move on. Please think about ways to continually
keep the wider agency involved, so you don't find yourself struggling to
identify the next group of people to be your partners within the agency.
Share your reports with your sites, its ED, program heads, etc.
Lisa Gale Van Brackle
Director, Program Development
Adult Literacy Media Alliance
lgale@edc.org
lvgale@aol.com
"GEORGE E.
DEMETRION" To: Multiple recipients of list
<gdemetrion@ju <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov>
no.com> cc:
Sent by: Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:393] Re Searching for
nifl-povraceli UNational (Urban) Models
t@nifl.gov
02/07/01 06:00
PM
Please respond
to
nifl-povraceli
t
(My comments in response to Debbie D'Amico's recent message on national
literacy models)
Debbie:
Thanks so much for your comments. Here's a belated response on my part.
I'm on too many lists and have too much else going on!
Our community in Hartford is a bit smaller than that described in The
Adult Literacy Media Alliance and we're talking about a specific program
focus (the Community Literacy Initiative) within a single agency Literacy
Volunteers of Greater Hartford). LVGH has been involved in small group
community-based tutoring since the early 1990s, largely thanks to my
predecessor, Steve Bender, an incredibly gifted community activist.
During that time I was also at LVGH, operating the agency's centralized
site, then referred to as the Bob Steele Reading Center. Various of my
publications refer to this work.
After a four-year hiatus from LVGH I came back, taking over Steve's
position, with the work defined now through the Community Literacy
Initiative.
To briefly recap, the objective of the project is to identify agencies
that seek to develop adult literacy and/or ESOL programs. The agencies
would recruit students, volunteer tutors, or in some cases, hire
teachers. They would also provide a liaison to oversee recordkeeping on
site, including transmitting appropriate data to our office, and to
provide on-going support to the instructors in coordination with our
staff. LVGH would provide tutor training, guidance on instruction and
curriculum development in response to the desires of the students as well
as in relationship to the focus of the agency. LVGH would also provide
on-going tutor support and visit sites at least on an every other weekly
basis (often a lot more).
It's important to keep in mind, also, that this is the first year of the
CLI, so it would be premature to make definitive statements of its
relative success. The project calls for 10 sites to be up and running
within the three-year period of the project, which includes the four
sites that had been in place at the beginning of the project, but which
were not based on the specifications of the new model. There's a certain
grandfathering of some of the sites, which we are okay with. though we
desire to move toward the new model in all of our sites to the extent to
which that is feasible.
At this time we have programming in 6 sites with another site ready to
start very soon.
In addition we also have substantial discussions going on with a couple
of additional sites, so in terms of meeting the numbers of sites the
project calls for, that should come to fruition. I would say four are
running close to what the model calls for with varying degrees of
internalizing the model of full autonomy for which the model calls.
Although a substantial grandfathered program exists at one of the other
sites, most of the students and tutors were recruited by our agency,
though we are beginning to work more dynamically with agency staff with
the hope and expectation that they will be able to recruit their own
students as well as volunteer tutors (or perhaps hire paid tutors) over
time. Moreover, the sites with which we are currently having discussions
also have a good grasp of the nature of the kind of programming we seek
to develop within the city.
So the more I write this, the better I'm feeling, though I think the
broad issue remains the degree of internalization the programs can both
develop and sustain with the support of our ongoing training and
consultation. That's one issue we're wrestling with--whether this model
works or whether more of the work should come from the literacy agency
that then would require additional resources to support the effort.
Another issue is the extent to which community based programs are able
and want to take on the reporting requirements that our agency as a whole
needs to do, both in terms of qualitative and quantitative information.
With the tightening pressures of accountability and the increasingly
narrow interpretation of what this requires, that could be a sticking
point in community-based programs, which work from the premises of their
own logic and cultures. On the other side, the work required to maintain
a well-developed qualitative assessment design might also prove
inhibitive. Yet without such work, the very fine instruction, to say
nothing of the more intangible realms of support students draw from each
other as well as from the agencies where the tutoring takes place, would
go unnoticed and thence, reinforce the marginality that is
all-too-pervasive for the field. Currently, as a near term strategy, our
program does at least some of the testing and all of the coordination of
qualitative assessment. My current strategy to obtain qualitative
information about the program consists of
* Selective transcript interviews of students and tutors
* The development of a project-wide portfolio with varying degrees of
contribution from each of the sites
* The development, probably, of a project-wide collection of student
narratives
* Informal participant-observer observations of class sites
Information from all of these sources, in addition to statistical data on
numbers of students, hours of instruction, and test scores go into
various reports to the funders of the project. This will also include an
annual review of the project. We also use these materials to provide
feedback and support to students and tutors largely through instructional
materials, tutor training, in-house publications, and
on-going verbal communication.
The short of it is, however autonomous the programs become, it seems that
where I sit now, the brunt for much of the assessment will remain ours,
and if so, that will call for certain readjustments of how we go about
our work and the resources needed to do it effectively for the important
task of developing community-based literacy in Hartford.
What do others think? What may be some other models for developing
community-based literacy and ESOL programming in urban contexts?
Regards,
George Demetrion
Manager of Community-Based programming
Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford
(860) 233-3853
Gdemetrion@lvgh.org
Gdemetrion@msn.org
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