[NLA] Re: Reading Instruction and Policy Advocacy

[Art LaChance]

I apologize for the length of this.  Eileen has brought a serious issue to my
attention.  Who am I, to you who read this list?
Knowing Eileens history gives me insight and assigns validity to her words.  I
believe this might be important in understanding where I'm coming from.

Eileen,
    I fully  appreciate this, your history and how you came to be here, and the
foundation your philosophy towards adult ed is based on although I feel what you
say here is just a sampling of the experiences that form the actual foundation.
I don't think for a minute that I have a corner on reality, I know for a fact
that there are many others, and many of those monitor this list and the LD list
(the only ones I monitor due to time).  I came here looking for consenus, and I
found it, but I found it in folks who are very resistant to exposure, for
whatever reason.

I also came to adult literacy by accident.
I experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI), to Broca's area primarily, with
moderate damage to Wiernekes area, at the age of 10. I completely lost the
abitity to express myself via English language, with significant dysfunction in
receptive language. I don't remember when or how I regained the ability to
speak, but I do remember communicating in grunts and head nods or shakes for a
long time.  In 1953 they couldn't even spell TBI yet so the injury went
completely unnoticed (much family influence there, not enough room to explain).
I redeveloped capacity to communicate albeit only what was absolutely necessary
to get by, little or no spontaneous converstation, for over 40 years. Failed
everything from 6th grade on yet "graduated" from HS because I could figure out
multiple choice tests and get by (my right hemisphere rescued me).  Same with US
Navy, although as I aged the brain adapted to what was "needed" for verbal
survival so I managed to get by there and acquired my BS in Ed at age 40 shortly
before retiring in '85 as an aircraft electronics tech supervisor.  From the
late 80's on I was a volunteer in a church "reading program" to help local
residents learn to read and prepare for the GED.
In '90 I returned to work as a counselor / program manager in a rural
rehabilitation facility, and returned to college and earned my MEd in rehab
counseling.  During that period I rediscovered the TBI I had experienced while
working with disabled folks in the rehab field.  At that point I decided to
prove out the plasticity of the (my) brain by addressing my prominent
dysfunction, verbal delivery.
     In '93 I found myself as director of the newly formed Gilmer Learning
Center, and part of the GA adult lit scene.  I resumed forcing verbal delivery
by volunteering to present workshops on brain functioning at a lay level.  I
also resumed use of the word processor functions offered by the computer because
the expressive dysfunction also included writing.
Around 1995 I participated in two years + of practitioner research guided by
Cassie Drennon at UGA.  The second project looked for TBI's in adult students
simply because I wanted to see how many other folks might have been affected by
an early TBI.  Little or none as it turned out.  But what did turn up was
overwhelming evidence that every one of the 10 students I interviewed randomly
and used as data for that report showed clear history of an unresolved emotional
impact within a year of their assessment grade levels as determined by TABE when
they entered our program.  I have also proven this out over the years since, now
going on 7 years, that pretty much every adult student who finds themselves in
adult literacy will have a clearly defined history of some emotional difficulty
in early grade school that affected their progress, and in most cases it can be
localized to a very specific incident.
     I also worked with multitudes of children in a family literacy program here
for three years where we addressed the problems children were having in
kindergarten through middle school.  Many of these children were in the process
of being diagnosed or had already been diagnosed as LD, ADD, ADHD.  Without
exception we were able to help these kids recover, regroup, and return to
apparently 'normal' functioning, many of whom also excelled and passed up their
peers in reading capability and were awarded 'most improved'.  This program
required that I interface with public school teachers, counselors, and
administrators, and involve myself in various professional case "reviews" that
included those children.
     Additional activities include participation in NCSALL activities,
presentation of workshops for various organizations including adult literacy,
the Alternative School, Rehabilitation, Head Injury, and ESL both in GA and in
TN, over the past 12 years.
My philosophy has been stated here and on the LD list for several years now. I
stand by every word, and continually gather additional substance every day to
further support my views.

If you've made it this far in this longwinded dissertation, bless you.

Art




Eileen Eckert wrote:

> Art,
> I should probably let your comments sit for a while before answering, but
> here goes anyway. First, you don't have the corner on reality. This
> rhetorical strategy--if you disagree with someone imply that they're living
> in some dream world--may work on talk radio, but I hope we don't resort to
> it often here. I've been giving this a great deal of thought as I near the
> end of my sojourn in the ivory tower. Let me tell you a little about my
> experience, because I think it has bearing on this discussion. I came to
> teach adult literacy by accident, with a bachelor's degree in English
> Education and never having heard of the GED. Pity the poor students, but
> they were patient, we muddled through, and a few years later I went back to
> school to get a master's in adult education and ended up sort of sucked into
> the vortex of a Ph.D. program (some of you will no doubt recognize this
> experience). Life intervened, I moved west and went back to work in ABE/GED
> and didn't get anything done on the Ph.D., finally deciding if I was going
> to finish I needed to come back full-time. I learned a great deal while I
> was working full-time, but guess what? I'm learning even more from that work
> experience now that I have the luxury of time and a good library to help me
> make sense of it. I wish I could have had some of this time to spend on
> reflection/discussion/learning while I was working, but there was never
> enough money. With an agenda that covers all the perceived needs of adult
> and family literacy, and funding to do maybe 15% of that, somehow spending
> always starts at the top and very little of it trickles down to where the
> practitioners are. What good is it to have a policy if you can't implement
> it?
>
> Second, about policy mandates, teacher preparation, and what/how teachers
> end up teaching students. There is no consensus. We discuss and argue
> methods and techniques while ignoring the underlying conflicts in the
> philosophy they're based on, and we wonder why we don't understand each
> other. That's why teachers need to learn how to judge for themselves. Many
> already do, but the push for standardization makes some understandings
> "righter" than others. I get to hear a sample of teacher preparation classes
> from my office at the university; actually, I get to hear professors' voices
> about 90% of the time, and often they are lecturing their students about not
> lecturing. A policy mandate that is implemented by people who don't
> understand it, who are merely paying lip service, is useless. And it's
> harder to influence because the decision and its implementation are several
> steps removed from each other. We're trying to get policy to take the place
> of learning, and to take the place of constituents making their needs known
> directly. If there's a policy that says teacher preparation programs have to
> instruct teachers in phonemic awareness, then the teachers themselves don't
> have to make their needs known; they can let policy do it for them. Mandates
> let people off the hook for grassroots advocacy because they are supposed to
> take its place (but they don't work). Mandates are an enemy of the
> democratic process--now I sound like a talk-show ;).
>
> About students knowing what they need: we've all encountered the GED student
> who "just wants to pass the test," and my answer to that is to talk with
> that student, not once but on an ongoing basis, about their goals and
> objectives. I don't dismiss their short-term goal, or refuse to help them
> meet it, but I do try to help them expand it by discussing it with them.
> Brookfield's discussion of self-directed learning gets into the limitations
> and complexities better than I can.
>
> Thanks for the thought-provoking comments.
> Eileen
>
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