On May 19th, Rhode Island held its seventh annual State Adult Education Conference, supported by the RIDE Office of Adult Education, at Rhode Island College's Student Union Building (#29 on the map). (directions here; campus map here ).

- Janet Isserlis and the conference planning committee - Nancy Fritz, Jill Holloway, Eugenia White, Michele Rajotte, Alicia Pantoja and Howard Dooley.

conference program

Heidi Collins, Jill Holloway and a group of adult learners have developed the strand of workshops for and by adult learners:; (for a PDF flyer describing these sessions, please click here)

for a word document (fewer pages to print) of the conference schedule, please click here

overview - sessions at a glance

Morning sessions: 9 - 10:30

9-10:30: adult learner strand Student Leadership and Advocacy

workshop: Revamping activities to the RI Content Standards with cognitive demand and colleague input, Karisa Tashjian and Chris Bourret

workshop: Using Theater in Your Classroom, Tyler Dobrowsky

workshop: Come into our DEN and enjoy a snack!, Peg Chatellier and Sherry Lehane

workshop: persistence strand - Increasing Learner Persistence Through Self-efficacy, Silja Kallenbach and Michele Sedor

break:10:30 - 10:45

Morning sessions:10:45 - 12:15

10:45-12:15: adult learner strand Advocating for Adult Education at the RI State House

workshop: Turning Teaching Beliefs into Teaching Practice, Nazneen Rahman and Katherine Meyer

Teachers Supporting Student Writing for Publication: YES You CAN!, Mev Miller,

workshop: Year Up's successful strategies for engaging and empowering urban young adults, Richard Dubuisson

workshop: persistence strand - The Psychology of Persuasion, William Morrisette

Workshop: College for Adults: A Virtual Tour, Priyanka Sharma

lunch 12:15-1:15

Afternoon sessions: 1:15 - 2:15

1:15-2:15: adult learner strand Advocating for Adult Education in D.C.

Living Curriculum: EFA's Participatory Approach to Building Curriculum in the ESOL Classroom - Oscar Perez and Elizabeth Walsh

presentation: on the STAR initiative, Barbara Bowen

presentation: Tailoring Adult Education to the young participant (16-21): Creative Engagement Strategies, Inclusive Culture, and Soft Skill Development, Susan Jacobsen, Melissa Cupp, and Myles Winter

panel: persistence strand - On Persistence: what we did and why it matters, Lynn Foley, Nancy Fritz, Barbara Alsabek, Janet Isserlis

Paper: The forms and functions of teacher questions across different community-based ESL classrooms, Chun-Chun (Jasmine) Hsu

break

Afternoon sessions: 2:30 - 3:30

adult learner strand Adult Education from the Learners' Point of View:

workshop: Collective Drawings and Problem Trees: Exploring Health Issues using Popular Education tools, Alicia Pantoja

workshop: Learning to Teach: The Genesis ESOL Program at Brown University, Camilla Hawthorne, Nancy Fritz

presentation: Tailoring Adult Education to the young participant (16-21): Creative Engagement Strategies, Inclusive Culture, and Soft Skill Development, Susan Jacobsen, Melissa Cupp, and Myles Winter

workshop: Empowering Women Through Literacy: From Experiences to Practical Matters, Mev Miller, Sally Gabb, Denise DiMarzio

workshop: Collective Drawings and Problem Trees: Exploring Health Issues using Popular Education tools, Alicia Pantoja

workshop: persistence strand Tips, Tools and Strategies for Case Management with a focus on Persistence, Robin Adams

workshop: Teaching STAR vocabulary, Amanda Duffy

sessions in detail:

Morning sessions: 9 - 10:30

9-10:30: adult learner strand Student Leadership and Advocacy - an interactive and engaging session that will raise the awareness of all the roles students play as leaders. The concept and different forms of Advocacy will be introduced as well (using leadership skills to influence funders, elected officials and personal advocacy needs). This session is primarily for adult learners, although practitioners are also welcome. Heidi Collins, coordinator of the Adult Educator and Learner Consortium

workshop: How do the assignments you design for ESL students measure up? Revamping activities to the RI Content Standards with cognitive demand and colleague input
- Karisa Tashjian and Chris Bourret, RI Family Literacy Initiative (RIFLI)

This workshop explores the challenging process involved in modifying teaching activities in order to enhance ESL instruction and target specific learning outcomes. First, participants will go through the Standards In Action Project (SIA) steps RI Family Literacy teachers went through this year. As we look at the staff's trials and tribulations of matching instructional activities to standards, we'll illustrate the tools used to "ramp up" activities. By looking at the RI Adult Speaking and Listening Content Standards and Benchmarks, Bloom's Taxonomy, student samples, and colleague input, we'll see how each influenced the teachers' decision making in retooling activities. Participants will then see how these activities had changed in the 'before and after' of the SIA process. After discussing potential assessment techniques with regard to reading and speaking, we'll conclude by having participants work collaboratively on ideas for modifying their own speaking and listening activities. This provides an opportunity for everyone to experiment and think about how standards could influence the teaching and learning cycle in the classroom.

In the Fall of 2008 RIFLI was one of two RI programs to participate in the national piloting of teaching and training materials to support the implementation of standards based adult education. Throughout the Fall, the staff of RIFLI met weekly to assess the quality of the assignments they designed for beginning and intermediate ESL students using a structured protocol. The goal of the meetings was to help teachers examine assignments and student work to whether assignments were rigorously aligned to the standards, whether the skills and knowledge that students need to demonstrate proficiency matches the demands of the standards and how to improve assignments and instructional practices.

Karisa Tashjian is Literacy Program Coordinator for the RI Family Literacy Initiative. She has an MEd with endorsements in ESL and Social Studies.

Christopher Bourret has been an ESOL teacher with RI Family Literacy/Cranston Libraries since 2001. Before that, Chris spent 5 years as a teacher-trainer with US Peace Corps in Poland. He became interested in teaching adult immigrant students when he started volunteering with RIFLI and Genesis Center back in 1994.

workshop: Using Theater in Your Classroom
- Tyler Dobrowsky, Education Director and Artistic Associate at Trinity Rep

This workshop will focus on ways theater and performance can be utilized in the classroom, especially in regard to literacy, cognitive understanding and public speaking, but also in other disciplines. The session will explain, step-by-step, how theater exercises can be used as either a warm-up or ice-breaker, how performance can engender community and trust building, and provide a deeper understanding of a particular text (or formula).

Tyler Dobrowsky, Trinity Rep's education director the past five years, has supervised the expansion of the Young Actors Studio after-school and summer programs, as well as Trinity's Project Discovery program, which has allowed over one million students throughout New England to discover live theater. Tyler received his masters in Education Policy from Brown, and has studied at Holy Cross.

Monitoring Adult ESL Learner Reading Comprehension, Sonnie Kpangbai

Literacy is the process of outgrowing barriers and obsticles that hold an individual back from effective communication. In order for a Second Language Learner to fully comprehend the new language he or she is learning, he or she needs large amounts of meaning-focused practice of the new language. Monitoring Comprehension is the ability of a reader to be aware, while reading, whether a text is making sense or not. Comprehension monitoring involves the use of specific, related strategies that keep the readers constantly abreast of how well they understand the text. These strategies help readers recognize minor comprehension breakdowns before they escalate into major ones. To monitor understanding, effective readers employ the strategic behaviors of revising predictions, self-questioning, making associations, restating and clarifying.

Participants will have multiple opportunities to engage in activities such as shared reading, guided reading, independent reading, which include participants writing and drawing in small and whole groups.

Sonnie Kpangbai., author of Monitoring Adult ESL Comprehension is an Adult ESL instructor at the Genesis Center and has several years of classroom experience with elementary and ESL students. Sonnie will graduate with a B.A in Elementary Education/English from RI College this fall. She loves teaching and is an advocate for Adult Education. She was a co-chair of the Rhode Island Adult Education Advisory Council Board, spoke at the United Way Annual Gathering, at The Genesis Center Annual Fundraising gathering, and many more. In the spring of 2008, she was chosen to present her final senior research project, "Finding The Power and Magic in Reading, A Careful Look at the Before, During and After the Reading" to a class of PhDs students. Sonnie has participated in many educational conferences and trainings that have shaped her perspectives on learning and teaching and made her the kind of person she is. Her most recent trip was Washington D.C., attending the VALUE conference (Voice of Adult Learner United to Educate). She met and spoke with congressional leaders as well as educational specialists about the importance of adult education. Sonnie hopes there will someday be the NO Adult Left Behind Act and that her stories will inspire others to make teaching and learning a priority.

workshop: Come into our DEN and enjoy a snack!
- Peg Chatellier and Sherry Lehane

In this introduction to DEN, attendees will participate in a tasty real-life math activity targeted for a multi-level class. Using samples of participants' and students' math work, we will Describe and Evaluate what the learner knows, and then decide on the Next Steps to maximize student learning.

Attendees will participate in a cake decorating production line in small groups to contextualize a rate/proportional reasoning math problem that will be used to introduce the DEN process of looking at student work to determine the next steps to take in order to maximize student learning.

Participants will do math together in groups to answer questions and graph data based on the rate/proportion question posed at the outset. The presenters will elicit responses from the participants regarding the data they gathered and what they noticed about the math used in the different groups. As the groups debrief, the presenters will record the comments on sheets labeled D, E, or N. A discussion about Describe, Evaluate, and Next Steps will follow based on participants' observations and experiences.

After the DEN process is reviewed, sample(s) of student work will be distributed to the groups for the participants to assess using DEN. The discussion, based on a specific sample(s) of student work, will focus on clarifying description and evaluation, and deciding on next steps to take to help students. Participants will receive a copy of the written material distributed during the workshop and a set of activities to take back to the classroom. To conclude the workshop, participants will be asked to complete a questionnaire to provide feedback to the presenters.

Peg Chatellier, M.Ed., an ABE/ASE teacher for 9 years, includes TIAN (Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy) approaches to teaching math in context in her classes.

Sherry Lehane, an ESOL /Adult Basic Education teacher for 15 years, participated in the TIAN Institute and experiments with different approaches in her math classes.

workshop: persistence strand - Increasing Learner Persistence Through Self-efficacy
- Silja Kallenbach and Michele Sedor

Studies consistently associate self-efficacy with persistence: When students believe they can perform a task proficiently they will become more engaged in the activity, work harder in face of obstacles, and achieve better outcomes. This participatory workshop introduces participants to four key ways that improve self-efficacy related to academic learning.

All adults have a need to feel competent in key aspects of their lives. A decision to return to school as an adult bespeaks of adults' desire to build their competence in domains which more schooling can address, for example reading to their children, navigating life in an English-speaking environment, or getting a better job. In that process, adults' beliefs about and realistic assessment of their competence in these specific areas can have a profound effect on their persistence and achievement. Such beliefs reflect their self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to people's beliefs in their capabilities to learn or perform specific tasks at designated levels, and to meet specific goals.

Unlike the more general concepts of self-confidence or self-esteem, self-efficacy is context or domain specific. Adult learners, for example, may have a high level of self-efficacy in non-academic domains while their self-efficacy in reading or writing English can be low.

Studies with youth and college students consistently associate self-efficacy with persistence: When students believe they can perform a task proficiently they will become more engaged in the activity, work harder in face of obstacles, and ultimately achieve better outcomes.

This workshop will introduce participants to four key ways that educators and adult learners themselves can improve their self-efficacy related to academic learning:
1. Mastery experiences
2. Vicarious experiences
3. Social persuasion
4. Stress reduction, and

Information about the specific strategies and resources for each of the four areas will be followed by an activity where the participants work in small groups to identify how they are already addressing these areas in their work, and what they'd like to add or change. They will have an opportunity to work on each of the four areas as a small group.

Silja Kallenbach has served as Director of the New England Literacy Resource Center since 1994, and co-directed the New England Learner Persistence project.

Michele Sedor has worked in the field of ABE for over 20 years. She is currently a staff development specialist with SABES in Massachusetts.

break:10:30 - 10:45

Morning sessions:10:45 - 12:15

10:45-12:15: adult learner strand Advocating for Adult Education at the RI State House - another interactive and engaging session, in which participants will develop skills and knowledge of adult education advocacy at the state level. After learning about the state budget process in the RI legislature and ways to advocate for state investments in adult education, participants will take on different roles, develop message points, and role play speaking to legislators. Participants will also be informed of, and encouraged to attend, the Skills2Compete Day on May 20 at the statehouse. This session is primarily for adult learners, although practitioners are also welcome. Heidi Collins, Coordinator of the Adult Educator and Learner Consortium

Turning Teaching Beliefs into Teaching Practice
- Nazneen Rahman and Katherine Meyer, International Institute of RI

"As teachers we need to be clear on the connections between the values we espouse, on the one hand, and the decisions we make and the actions we take day in and day out, on the other."
- Mark Clarke, Common Ground, Contested Territory

What do you believe about learning and teaching languages? How do you practice those principles in your classroom? The purpose of this workshop is to raise awareness of your own teaching beliefs and to examine how they can tangibly inform your teaching practice. Such a process can result in a more authentic and reliable basis for planning lessons, sequencing activities, and making in-the-moment decisions in the classroom.

In this session, practitioners will articulate at least one of their own teaching principles and will work together to develop a sequence of techniques/activities for the ESOL classroom that demonstrably implement that belief. Handout will include readings and other resources.

Katherine Meyer assists with PD in the Education & Training and Refugee Resettlement departments at IIRI and teaches at the RI Labor Institute.

Teachers Supporting Student Writing for Publication: YES You CAN!
- Mev Miller, WeLearn

Using the WE LEARN publication Women's Perspectives as a starting point, this workshop will provide teachers a chance to explore concerns about helping students to write and to gain practical tools to assist students to write for publication. Lesson plans and writing samples provided.

WE LEARN developed the Women's Perspectives Student Writing Initiative to showcase writings by adult literacy/basic education students across all levels. Each year, the publication focuses on a specific theme selected by our member constituents. Students write about the broad spectrum of issues related to the theme focused on women's experiences using pre-writing activities and lesson plans provided by WE LEARN.

WE LEARN knows that the success and nature of the Women's Perspectives Initiative offers a unique opportunity to become a quality and innovative teaching and learning tool. We can see the ways in which this publication has supported women learners in their pursuits literacy and basic education, as well as encouraged their engagement and leadership in broader activities. Many teachers have enthusiastically embraced it as a positive forum for their students' voices, as well their writing development.

Though close to 400 students from more than 50 programs from the US and Canada have participated in this venture, only a handful of students from RI have participated in this unique opportunity. A recent query to practitioners netted these responses:

In all these cases, though, the teachers indicated that more professional development in this area would be helpful.
With this workshop, I hope to learn more from area practitioners about their PD writing needs, outline the experiences and successes for both students and teachers who have participated in Women's Perspectives, and demystify some of the process of student and teacher participation in future issues of WP. WE LEARN is applying for grant money to more directly address these issues in RI in 2009-2010.

Mev Miller, Ed.D., Director of WE LEARN (Women Expanding Literacy Education Action Resource Network) has edited and produced several volumes of ABE student writing.

workshop: Year Up's successful strategies for engaging and empowering urban young adults
- Richard Dubuisson

The Problem:
There are over 13,000 disconnected young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 in the state of Rhode Island. For many of these young people, reality will consist of low-paying jobs without any real chance at progress and no real opportunities to further themselves. The situation in RI is not isolated to this state. All over the country young adults are finding themselves shut out of the mainstream because of a severe lack of marketable skills, formal education, and relevant experience. In fact, a recent Annie E. Casey Foundation report (Kids Count Data Book, 2007) estimated that about 4.3 million youth in this country between the ages of 18 and 24 have not progressed beyond a high school diploma, and are neither employed nor enrolled in postsecondary education. Youth experiencing this "disconnection" from the economic mainstream make up nearly 15% of all 18-24 year olds, and illustrate the magnitude of a national "opportunity divide" that is getting worse.

A Solution:
Year Up is an innovative workforce development program serving disconnected young adults from major urban areas. Year Up is based on a simple premise: if young adults from urban communities are challenged and supported to learn real job skills and gain hands-on work experience in a corporate environment, they're more likely to get livable-wage jobs and go on to college. Year Up now serves over 800 young adults yearly in six cities: Atlanta, Boston, New York City, Providence, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. It has also developed unique partnerships with institutions of higher education to provide its students with up to 18 college credits upon graduation. And, it has developed a network of more than 100 corporate partners; companies that support Year Up's unique apprenticeship program.
Year Up's model works. Since 2001, Year Up has served over 2,000 at-risk young adults. Over 70% of its students have completed the intensive year-long program. More than 85% of Year Up graduates secure full-time employment earning an average wage of nearly $15/hour (equivalent to $30,000 annual salary) within four months of graduation. Year Up is providing real opportunities for urban young adults to demonstrate their potential and, at the same time, partnering with corporations to provide them with a new source of talent.

Sharing the Model: The focus of this workshop is to share Year Up's model and the impact it is having on its students and their communities, with specific focus on the work being done in Providence. In addition, participants will experience some of the key elements that contribute to the success of the Year Up program, including our admissions and orientation processes, and our contract and feedback model. Through various hands-on activities and interactive exercises, the workshop will address what makes a Year Up site a unique and empowering environment for our urban young adults to learn and develop as professionals. Participants will walk away with specific examples of successful strategies and proven techniques for engaging and empowering urban young adults at their respective schools or program sites.

Richard Dubuisson serves as the Academic Director for the Year Up Providence site where he is responsible for program quality, training and developing instructors and providing technical assistance and training to other academic teams across the organization.

workshop: persistence strand - The Psychology of Persuasion
- William Morrisette

This workshop is designed to aid participants in the identification of psychological persuasion principles that are at the core of persistence in adult education learners. In many cases, practitioners engage in endeavors that increase persistence but are not able to articulate the psychological mechanisms that are at play. For example, a waiting list could potentially trigger, in an adult learner, a feeling of scarcity consistent with the psychological principle by the same name. The Principle of Scarcity states that human beings view opportunities or things that are scarce as more valuable and experience increased desire for attainment. If a practitioner understands this principle and how a waiting list fits, they can adjust their presentation to the learner in order to maximize the effect.

The workshop will be designed as an interactive endeavor where the presenter will share particular psychological principles and invite the participants to identify existing or potential adult learning program activities that might be maximized to generate the highest levels of persistence. The workshop topic areas will include: