YWCA Adult Literacy and Learning

YWCA Adult Literacy and Learning

Tutor Talk

Of Creepazoids and Tutelaries

Ah, the best part of summer vacation – the beach book! (No, I don’t mean the dazzling white sand beaches by the sparkling waters of a Caribbean resort, but the pine- and oak-shaded sands by the chilly waters of Higgins Lake in northern Michigan.) I read five or six books in the swing under those oaks on my vacation – a John Grisham, a Carl Hiassen (best-ever character name: Honey Santana), a Janet Evanovich (still the best-ever cliffhanger: Was it Morelli or Ranger telling Stephanie, “Nice dress. Take it off”?), a Dean Koontz, and a couple of others I’ve already forgotten.

I haven’t forgotten, though, a couple of words Koontz introduced me to: creepazoid – of course, definitely a Dean Koontz-type word – but also tutelary, a most decidedly un-Dean Koontzlike one. Imagine my surprise when my research revealed that creepazoid is a “real” word, with 102,000 results in my Google search! Even though I can hardly wait to try to slip creepazoid into a conversation some day, it is tutelary that has struck a chord with me. In The Taking, protagonists Molly and Neil, accompanied by a dog named Virgil, set off on a mission to save the town’s children from the apparent Armageddon. They are tutelaries – guardians or custodians.

You can see where my tale is going. Tutelary looks and sounds like tutor and, sure enough – thanks again, Google! – they have a common etymology. Tutelary and tutor, along with intuition, come from the Latin root tut or tuit, meaning “to protect, watch, guard” and, from there, “to teach.”

Adult literacy tutors, as our volunteer tutor job description states, do not teach adults how to read but rather facilitate their learning how to read better. Your primary responsibility is “to encourage and support learners.” In fulfilling that responsibility, you protect your learners by helping them overcome past feelings of failure and develop a positive attitude about learning, by praising and supporting them for their efforts rather than criticizing them, by seeking to understand the psychological, emotional, and physical problems that may have caused them to have difficulty learning to read. You watch your tutoring practices to ensure that you are involving them in decisions about the learning process, that you’re selecting adult materials and approaches that are suitable for their abilities and interests. You guard against frustration and discouragement by scaffolding your instruction to provide success in every tutoring session, giving them plenty of guided practice, and demonstrating to your learners the progress they’re making toward their goals.

Summer will be over all too soon, and it’ll be back to more serious reading – adult education journals and texts, resources for tutors and learners, professional development materials. I have read plenty of “serious” literature and nonfiction this summer, too, but perhaps nothing as important as a Dean Koontz beach book – Dean Koontz, writer of what Publisher’s Weekly has called “brilliant if superficial exercise[s] in terror” – that taught me this important word. It is a word that will surely inspire and guide my work. As you work with your learners remember that, as tutors, you have the unique and lovely role as guardians equipping them for successful futures. Thank you, tutelaries! §

The Components of Reading: Motivation

Last in a Series

In this series, stretching over two years, we’ve examined the component skills of reading. Reading is the process of deriving meaning from print, and the necessary components fo that process are:

• Alphabetics (an understanding of how speech sounds are related to print and skill in identifying unknown words)

• Vocabulary (word knowledge) and background knowledge (“world” knowledge)

• Fluency (speed, ease, accuracy and expression in reading)

• Comprehension (strategies for constructing meaning from print and for monitoring and repairing understanding when that process breaks down)

Research in reading instruction for adults includes one more necessary component in the definition of reading: the development and maintenance of a motivation to read.

You know that famous Mark Twain quote, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read”? Our mission statement begins, “We believe that all adults should be given the opportunity to improve the quality of their lives through literacy,” and our vision statement, “all adults will read and learn for information, for practical application, for pleasure—for a lifetime.” Put another way, our program aims to create women and men who can and do read. Alphabetics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension are the can and motivation is the do.

However, while alphabetics and the rest can and should be part of reading instruction for adults, we cannot teach motivation. We can and should, though, help our learners develop and maintain a motivation to read.

Our adult learners enroll in programs like ours to reach their personal goals at home, on the job and in the community. In other words, they come to us motivated – although realistically, of course, their motivation may be external rather internal, as when a family member pressures them to get a GED. For however long they’re with us and however hard they work while they’re here, part of our jobs is to create internal, intrinsic motivation if it’s not already there, develop it further if it is and maintain it so that our learners stay in the program long enough to meet their goals.

The first way to do that is to work in collaboration with our learners to establish a learning plan based on their goals, needs and interests. Research tells us that working as partners gives learners a measure of control, which may help motivate them to persist.

Another way is to make sure the tutoring activities we plan are connected to their goals – and that the learners can see that connection. If they don’t see the relevance in and usefulness of what they’re doing in those sessions, they may stop coming. You may need to explicitly demonstrate how the reading skills they’re practicing relate to out-of-class contexts and tasks at home or work. You may have to teach learners to transfer and apply those skills and give them plenty of practice doing so, including giving them the tools they need to learn outside of class.

Finally, use authentic (real-world) materials at an appropriate level of challenge. Be sure to include literacy-rich experiences in your tutoring sessions as well, reading and discussing stories and poetry, essays and articles and “Y Not Read?” selections, or researching topics of interest to them.

Make motivating your learners part of your mission – and part of every lesson plan! §

Tutor Tips

Strategy of the Quarter: Motivating Learners to Stick to It

We know that it’s important for learners to stay in our program long enough for them to improve their literacy skills and to achieve their personal learning goals. They stay so they can succeed. However, they stay only as long as they are motivated to stay.

Studies by ProLiteracy and the New England Literacy Resource Center (NELRC) have found a number of factors in learners’ decisions to stay in literacy programs. These so-called drivers of persistence may come from the learner, the volunteer tutor, the program itself or a combination of factors. They include such things as the amount of support the learners have, their sense of belonging and community and, as mentioned earlier, relevance, usefulness and opportunity to see measurable progress towards goals. By intentionally addressing these drivers, we can help our learners stay so they can succeed. However, research has also found that learners who succeed, stay.

Don’t we all experience this? When we enjoy something, we do it; when we do it, we get better at it; when we are good at it, we enjoy doing it even more. Conversely, we avoid doing things we don’t like or aren’t good at, so we don’t get any better at them, and our cycle of success turns into a downward spiral.

Feeling comfortable, confident, competent doing a particular task is necessary to being successful. Think about the story “The Little Engine That Could”? The little engine says, “I think I can!” – and he can! He’s a great role model for us of self-efficacy, perhaps the most important driver of persistence. Self-efficacy refers to a person’s belief in his or her capabilities to plan and carry out a course of action for a particular task in a specific context. It is believing “I can!” – even in the face of obstacles and possible failure. The Little Engine is “built for” pulling a few cars on and off the switches. He feels comfortable, confident, competent with that task. This sense of self-efficacy gives him the ability to try a new challenge, to take a risk. He tries a hard new task, thinks he can, and can!

Using role models like the Little Engine provides learners with vicarious experiences of self-efficacy. They begin to believe, “If they can do it, so can I.” You can read and discuss “The Little Engine That Could” with your learners, soliciting from her what qualities the Little Engine exhibits in the story. Answers like he’s not afraid to try, doesn’t get discouraged or give up, is courageous and uses positive self-talk can help learners see what they themselves can do to succeed.

An even more effective way of building learners’ sense of self-efficacy is through mastery experiences. Play a game where you take turns naming specific tasks you can do – that you feel comfortable, confident and competent doing. Model this for your learners by leading off with something like, “I can pay a bill online” or “I can grow tomatoes.” Talk about statements like, “I can divide whole numbers, so I can learn how to divide fractions,” or the difference between “I can’t do math” and “I can’t divide fractions (yet).” Imagine the effect of starting each tutoring session with affirmations!

Another great activity to try is a self-efficacy touchstone exercise. Have your learners think of a time when they experienced 1) high and 2) low self-efficacy for a particular task, along with how each influenced their choices, efforts, persistence and feelings. For those highs, learners will more than likely find that they tried harder, stuck with it longer and felt better than for the low experiences. Help your learners see how they can use these experiences to feel more confident and, thus, succeed in new tasks – like dividing fractions, reading more fluently, passing the GED or getting a better job.

Spotlight on Service

Congratulations to Volunteer Tutors of the Year

Each year, Susan and I have the opportunity to nominate volunteer tutors and adult learners for Spotlight on Service and Spotlight on Achievement Awards, presented to the top ten volunteers and learners by the Secretary of State and the Illinois Press Association. It’s a real pleasure to be able to spotlight two women this year for special recognition for their special and unusual service.

Sarah Marty-Schlipf

Few persons have the opportunity to touch as many lives as Sarah Marty-Schlipf has in her two years as an adult literacy volunteer at YWCA Adult Literacy. She is undoubtedly unique for having worked with 181 learners and counting. Well, she’s a unique lady.

Sarah easily agreed to take on the challenge of providing a full range of literacy and support services to women at our county jail – and later, to women and now men at the federal prison camp. This summer she’s conducting a women’s writing class here at the YWCA. She is changing lives and making our program’s vision a reality. The women she’s worked with – a difficult and underserved population of learners – have learned not only to read and write better, but also to read and write for pleasure and with passion. They consistently produce stunning examples of their progress not only with literacy and life skills, but with empowerment as well. Many of their essays, poems and stories are proudly published on Sarah’s blog (http://unfinishedportraitofsam.wordpress.com).

Sarah says, “As a tutor, I find it a rewarding challenge to teach that particular content in that particular place with that particular group of women, most of whom seem to be working very hard to come out of incarceration in a different mental, emotional and intellectual place than they were when we went in. I can only hope they’ll continue to teach me how to be a better teacher (and writer, thinker, woman) to meet that challenge.”

Sheron Lounsberry

Sheron is the miracle worker behind the astonishing success of Adult Learner of the Year Bob Wright, a man whom she has taught to read following a stroke that robbed him of his ability to speak and read, as well as his sense of worth. Sheron has restored not only her “miracle man’s” ability to read, but also his self-respect and interest in living. In two years, she has helped Bob go from a 0.0 to a 5.7 reading level, from struggling to remember the names and sounds of letters and the way to write his name to programming his VCR to even reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Weathering depression, impatience and frustration from Bob, Sheron has been unfailingly cheerful, patient and calm, gently bringing him back around time and again to resume work. Along the way, she used every tool she could think of – a sheet magnifier, word masks, a straight edge under a line of text – to help him process the meaningless lines of letters he tried to make sense of. Bob has learned the names and sounds of letters, read the 500 most common words, learn to self-monitor and self-correct and more. He’s happy, too, with the change in his quality of life the ability to read off of a TV menu has given him – “which (for a man),” she says, “lets him use the remote!”