[NLA] Volunteers and credentials

[David Godsted]

Dr. Muro and the list,

In a time when we are faced with such extreme battles as WIA
Reauthorization, No Child Left Behind (rather than No Person Left Behind),
federal funding redirection that is based on an ongoing wartime scenario
rather than an accurate assessment of who needs to be funded and where, we
instead choose to fight each other as opposed to the real battles that are
looming.  It is a fight I thought we had laid to rest around a year ago.
Yet, here we go again.

> I would like to live in a
> society where adult education programs are adequately funded, and teachers
> are adequately prepared and compensated, and every adult that wishes to
> attend  ABE programs will be able to access one nearby, at an adequate time
> of day, and taught by a person who is an expert in doing this well,
> consistently while treating the student with dignity.

I would very much like to live in a society where all adult learners fit the
traditional classroom mode, being able to come to class when the institution
dictated, and being able to receive all of their instruction in a classroom
setting as opposed to a one to one setting (due to learning disabilities, a
total mistrust of the educational system that drove the adult learner out in
the first place, time constraints caused by family issues, work issues,
health issues, etc., etc., etc.)

> Unfortunately, we don't
> live in this society yet, but I will continue to struggle towards this goal.

No, we don't live in this society yet, but well-trained, intensely committed
literacy volunteers who do it for reasons other than money will also
continue to struggle towards this goal.

Andres, there are many types of adult learners out there.  Not all of them
fit your mode.  That is why we are here.

You seem to be saying that if there were no volunteers, that ABE teachers
would be paid more.  In New Mexico, we have worked long and hard at a state
level to help legislators to understand that ABE and volunteer services are
*complementary,* that community based programs help the hardest to serve,
the classroom inappropriate, and there are thousands of them.  When a
student chooses the GED as a goal (and this is not always the case, believe
it or not, sometimes an adult learner simply wants to read the Bible, or the
newspaper, or a children's story), and if that student is classroom
appropriate, then they are referred to an ABE program.  Vice-versa as well,
when and where the appropriate agreements are in place.

The correlation that ABE programs would receive more money if volunteer
programs weren't around is presumptive at best.  Community based programs
delivering high quality services could say the same thing, if we weren't so
occupied with working towards a seamless delivery of services for adult
learners, recognizing the strengths of both systems.

> I have no problem with people volunteering to provide a service. However,
> when we resort to volunteers to provide for something that is inadequate and
> grossly underfunded, then we are doing patch work.

"...resorting to volunteers..."?  1500 New Mexican literacy tutors, and 3500
New Mexican adult literacy students who currently receive their unique
services, would not consider this a 'resort', not to mention the ABE
programs in our state that would be lost without the community outreach
those literacy programs provide them.

> Adult literacy education
> in this country is patch work. The unfortuante thing is that when congress
> hears that with volunteers we can do an excellent job, they probably wonder
> why fund ABE. More Money to the military and to the Department of Defence and
> Justice, less to the USDE.

Since our services are a vital link in the delivery of literacy to adult
learners in New Mexico, I for one am not going to go away.  And this is the
key: showing them the unique value in both, and not dismissing what one or
the other does.  

This sort of divisiveness specifically causes the lack of funding you
mention, not the mere existence of both entities.
-- 
David Godsted, Executive Director
New Mexico Coalition for Literacy
3209 B Mercantile Court, Santa Fe, NM 87505
1-800-233-7587
dgodsted at nmcl.org - http://www.nmcl.org

_______________________________________________
NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org