When I was tutoring, one of my students was a 24 year old Mom who, along with her husband, owned a Gym. I really admired her strength. She had been in a car accident and was told she would not be able to walk, but she did. Her motivation to learn was to be able to read picture books to her daughter.
I remember the tutoring session where she learned about word patterns, a fun skill for picture books. It was just like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one for her.
Please share your student stories about parents with us. Send your story toliteracyflorida@hotmail.com and we will post them on our blog and wiki. Let's celebrate Family Literacy Month by letting others know about the impact of volunteer literacy on families.
Sandy Newell, VALF President
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
NCFL Book for Volunteers
Planning for Volunteers in Literacy: A Guidebook is available from
NCFL Look under Life Literacies which also includes health, technology and other free resources. A lot in this guidebook will not be new to established programs, but the unique aspect is how to work with families. The book can be downloaded and covers such topics as assessment, cost/benefit, developing staff, roles, recruitment etc.
Some volunteer programs find they need to go into the home to work with the full family. One, very well trained volunteer, can provide the four components. The tutor can more easily model PACT, parent and child together time in the home. Some of the best learning is by seeing and doing. Home visits work well for babies and toddlers.
Family literacy is challenging for volunteer programs. Most find it easier to add components, based on the goals of the parents. So, if a parent said his/her goal was to help their child with literacy, a tutor could add a PACT component working with the child. Of course, before that the tutor must provide a parenting session covering strategies for the parents. This works well in small groups. Parents enjoy learning and advising each other, if they have the time to get together.
Sandy Newell, President, VALF
NCFL Look under Life Literacies which also includes health, technology and other free resources. A lot in this guidebook will not be new to established programs, but the unique aspect is how to work with families. The book can be downloaded and covers such topics as assessment, cost/benefit, developing staff, roles, recruitment etc.
Some volunteer programs find they need to go into the home to work with the full family. One, very well trained volunteer, can provide the four components. The tutor can more easily model PACT, parent and child together time in the home. Some of the best learning is by seeing and doing. Home visits work well for babies and toddlers.
Family literacy is challenging for volunteer programs. Most find it easier to add components, based on the goals of the parents. So, if a parent said his/her goal was to help their child with literacy, a tutor could add a PACT component working with the child. Of course, before that the tutor must provide a parenting session covering strategies for the parents. This works well in small groups. Parents enjoy learning and advising each other, if they have the time to get together.
Sandy Newell, President, VALF
ESL List of Resources for Educatiors
This list is maintained by a literacy provider in New York. I don't think it has the latest. If you know of good lists of adult literacy material, please put the link in comments.
http://www.lacnyc.org/resources/adult/printresources.htm
http://www.lacnyc.org/resources/adult/printresources.htm
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Comprehensive Family Literacy
I spoke a little too fast yesterday about community leaders lack of knowledge about the reading level of parents. After I wrote my post, I read an article in the Tallahassee newspaper from the St. Pete Times. In the story,a principal invited 10 parents to have dinner with him. Five came.
The purpose was to increase parent involvement. But, what I really liked was that he gave the parents a clear set of instructions on how to interact with their child. It wasn't how to be the child's teacher. It was about listening to their child and demonstrating an interest in their learning. The article clearly indicated that the principal understood that it was possible that some of the parents couldn't read. How did he know? He grew up in such a family!
So, what is family literacy? A FL program has 4 components: 1. child learning 2. parent learning 3. parenting in the context of helping their child learn and last, but certainly not least 4. parent and child together time (PACT) When a parent takes his child to the library and the child plays in the library, browsing books and the parent goes along with the child... Guess what that is a family doing PACT, but it is often a middle class mom or dad with their child. PACT is what the principal was modeling! More about family literacy....
The purpose was to increase parent involvement. But, what I really liked was that he gave the parents a clear set of instructions on how to interact with their child. It wasn't how to be the child's teacher. It was about listening to their child and demonstrating an interest in their learning. The article clearly indicated that the principal understood that it was possible that some of the parents couldn't read. How did he know? He grew up in such a family!
So, what is family literacy? A FL program has 4 components: 1. child learning 2. parent learning 3. parenting in the context of helping their child learn and last, but certainly not least 4. parent and child together time (PACT) When a parent takes his child to the library and the child plays in the library, browsing books and the parent goes along with the child... Guess what that is a family doing PACT, but it is often a middle class mom or dad with their child. PACT is what the principal was modeling! More about family literacy....
Monday, November 16, 2009
Family Literacy Blog and Adult Literacy
The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) has their own blog
http://www.famlit.org/blog
I am getting tired of adult literacy being left out of the debate over the dropout rate for kids. Consistently the talk is that parents must be more involved. They said it again on one of this Sunday's news programs. When this is mentioned, they rarely (almost never) acknowledge that parents who can not read well and lack a diploma, just don't have the skills or knowledge of how to work with children. That's 43% of the US adults who read at basic or below basic level.
NCFL gets it, but many other kid focused literacy programs don't.
So, what is comprehensive family literacy? More about this in my next post.
Sandy Newell
Presdient, VALF
http://www.famlit.org/blog
I am getting tired of adult literacy being left out of the debate over the dropout rate for kids. Consistently the talk is that parents must be more involved. They said it again on one of this Sunday's news programs. When this is mentioned, they rarely (almost never) acknowledge that parents who can not read well and lack a diploma, just don't have the skills or knowledge of how to work with children. That's 43% of the US adults who read at basic or below basic level.
NCFL gets it, but many other kid focused literacy programs don't.
So, what is comprehensive family literacy? More about this in my next post.
Sandy Newell
Presdient, VALF
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