[NLA] Volunteers and credentials

Mon Jul 8 14:23:15 EDT 2002

Dr. Godstead:

I do not disagree with your views of volunteers, differences, etc. However, I disagree with your reading of my message which is a misinterpretation of what I am saying. 

1st: Exchanges in this list are not, at least to me, fighting. They are explorations of issues that shape our field and educate us on various perspectives. We need to fight against all the things that you suggest. However, we should engage each other in dialogue about the issues that we are discussing since they are part of literacy and the way literacy is being funded, etc. 

2nd: I agree that communities are different and programs should be designed around each community to meet the needs of them. There is one thing that I believe that is common to all communities though: Literacy is serious, hard, intellectual work that needs well prepared people. This does not exclude the work of volunteers. 

3rd: I never said that if we eliminate volunteers, we would be able to get more money to pay for staff. I am advocating for having well prepared teachers and program administrators that can facilitate literacy program development and implementation throughout the entire country. I am talking about thousands of well prepared people like you and me, and Joe,  David, etc who have spent several thousands of hours to become experts in the field, have the ability to built model programs and have serious impact in our communities. I am also advocating for people with expertise to be compensated appropriately, so I can be sure that these experts would continue to work for years to come. If they get ill, they will be able to rely on health insurance and so on. Why is it that I should expect a person to have knowledge of adult education, to devote his or her life to adult education, but shouldn't pay this person? The majority of people that work in literacy should have expertise in literacy and should be dedicated to the field. This dedication and expertise must be compensated. 

Just becuase you do one to one with a learning disabled individual  restricted to a limited environment does not mean that the person doing it shouldn't  have expertise and not be adequately compensated. Why aren't you paying the people that do one to one? Answer: The govenrment does not think that the people receiving training are worth their investment. They will not give you moeny so that you can hire someone with expertise in learning disabilities, etc to facilitate literacy. So, the only way that you can provide a service is by relying on volunteers. If I gave you a grant to pay 50 people to do one to one work in the community, would you turn me down? 

Andres

The above are things that I think are worth discussing and fighting about as much as WIA-NRA, In fact, I think that the government can through upon us whatever they want, because we are un underprepared field w/o expertise. Since we don't know what is best for our students they will tell us. 

Andres  

>>> dgodsted at nmcl.org 07/08/02 10:38AM >>>
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 

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