Family Literacy

Learner, Family Member, Parent:
Making Adult Education Relevant for the Many Roles of Adult Students

The theme of this Literacy Links issue hits close to home with Project LEARN. Lamar Consolidated I.S.D. is in it's eleventh year of family literacy. In each of those 11 years, students have reported that the primary reason they enrolled in family literacy was to learn to help their children in school.

Practical experience confirms the adult learning theory premise that adults are highly pragmatic learners. Adults will invest time in learning when it can be applied to their every day lives. A parent's desire to give their children better opportunities is a powerful motivator. The intended beneficiary of their learning, however, is clearly the child. Their role as a parent supercedes their own aspirations. Therefore, it becomes the role of the adult educator to help adult students experience the by-product of their learning: the student's own personal success.

The parent education component in family literacy programs provides a natural avenue to address adult needs regarding their children. Skills learned in parent education equate to life skills. Problem-solving, communication, and decision-making are samples of skills taught in parent education that have application in the home, the work place and in every day life.

Project LEARN parents rate parent education as one of their favorite aspects of family literacy. Why? Consider the following: instructor expertise, research-based information, integration across family literacy components, cultural responsiveness, high interest and applications to work. Continuously improving quality in these areas will yield a class that is productive for the student and the program.

There is no substitute for knowledgeable instructors. There is a body of knowledge in parent education just as there is in science or math. Instructors with true depth of knowledge will be far more effective in the classroom. If you do not have access to professional parent educators on staff, you can bring expertise to your program through partnerships, community support and local universities. The Texas Agricultural Extension Service has family life professionals on staff in every county. These county agents have access to a wealth of parent education resources that you can use at no cost. Other sources for parent education partnerships include Parents As Teachers programs, PEP programs, and Mental Health Associations.

Parent education skills strike a unique chord with students. It is helpful to observe other parent education classes to familiarize yourself with the class dynamics. Learn the material well. Be prepared for pointed questions.

Every instructor has family experiences. Although it is appropriate to share personal experience at times, the course content must provide the depth of knowledge that can only come from a research-based model. Research-based curriculums minimize subjectivity and the influence of the instructor's personal experience, good or bad. Research-based curriculums give instructors and students the research behind the objectives plus share possible ways to apply new skills. For example, a research-based lesson on oral communication with infants will contain several critical elements. First, it will introduce the benefits of talking to their infants. Then, it will provide an explanation of what happens in an infant's brain when he hears conversation on a regular basis. The same lesson will also answer parent's unspoken question, "What happens if I don't talk to my child?" Finally, the lesson would include specific suggestions on how parents can increase oral communication with their children.

Curriculums available for purchase include Family Frameworks, available from TASB, and Practical Parent Education, from the Texas-based nonprofit Practical Parent Education. Parenting information is also available on the World Wide Web [see suggested sites at the end of this article]. One caveat applies to information from the World Wide Web: the information is not refereed. You must evaluate it for appropriateness in your class. Consider the author's perspective, links to and from the site, whether the information is current, and whether the page is commercially sponsored or sponsored by a special interest group. One example of a Web site that would be useful in an adult education classroom is http://www.parentinginformation.org/internetresforfam.htm

Integration across family literacy components presents the opportunity to reinforce new concepts in a variety of settings. Using the example above, infant communication would be the subject of the parenting class. During Parent and Child Together (PACT) Time, parents and infants could pair up to read, sing, act out nursery rhymes, take a mock "tour of the nursery" or any number of related activities. The goal is to have parents experience positive reactions from their children while using some form of oral communication. An adult ESL lesson on communication could include learning to give personal information, to interview for a job, or to communicate with school personnel. GED classes could study communication as a tool for retaining a job. Students can study various means of communication and compare articles for fact verses opinion or comparison and contrast. This type of true curriculum integration helps to link family literacy components together. I recommend staying with one theme long enough to develop it fully, a minimum of one month.

Intense planning and coordination is needed to achieve integration across family literacy components. Schedule time each week to plan with other teachers, track your progress, and make adaptations. If funds are not available from the adult education cooperative for this additional planning time, Even Start, Title I or special project funds can be used.

Workshops such as Family Reading by Robert Pinhero, an Austin-based consultant for adult literacy, will help programs get started. Family Reading uses an adult level literature piece to teach parents vocabulary and reading strategy while addressing GED or ESL content standards. Once the material is mastered, a parallel children's literature selection is introduced. Ideally, the children's literature piece uses concepts and vocabulary similar the adult literature piece. Parent's confidence is boosted because the children's literature piece seems familiar to them. Meanwhile, early childhood teachers have been introducing some of the characters and vocabulary at an age-appropriate level in the children's classes. Parents and children are both ready for the next step: adults and children pairing up for shared reading.

For example, try the children's literature The Little Red Hen with a parallel adult literature piece http://www.ajkids.com Ask the question, "What is the origin of the food wheat?" A complimentary parent education lesson could be family roles and responsibilities.

A skilled instructor displays a respect for diversity. Students know if their opinions matter to the instructor. Therefore, the instructor needs to have the ability to relate the course content to the students' daily lives. A culturally responsive instructor will know enough about his or her students to make classroom problems and examples relevant to their students' lives. For instance, a culturally responsive instructor will acknowledge that the amount of oral communication in students' homes may vary from the research model and be willing to discuss this with students.

A culturally responsive teacher can figure out what to do when textbook examples make no sense to her students. Let's say a textbook refers to downtown living in high rise apartments, owning no automobile, and riding the bus or subway to work. What might a culturally responsive teacher working with rural students do? She could introduce the concept of urban living, and she could explore with her class how living in an urban setting might be both similar and different from rural life.

This is the opportunity to tie parent education skills to the work place. Referring to the example of infant communication, the student learned basic communications skills in the parent education class that can be transferred to communications skills used in the work place in a GED classroom. Now the student has made the connection between improved parenting skills and success in the work place.

Consider the examples of The Little Red Hen, the Internet information on wheat, and family roles and responsibilities. As employees, these students will also have roles and responsibilities. Instructors could shift the focus to the workplace by discussing chains of command and job responsibilities. Students could research the requirements for getting a promotion or a better paying job. This lesson could also develop into a future unit on goal setting.

Adults adopt many roles throughout their lifetime; for example, they are family members, spouses, parents, workers, and learners. At one time or another, many adults will be responsible for another person, whether that person is a child or another adult. Facilitating adults in developing the skills needed to be successful in these roles is relevant to students' current lives. These skills meet their stated need to "learn to help my children," and has application in future life roles.

Two by-products are produced in the parent education learning cycle. The adult student experiences personal growth while the adult education program maintains higher retention rates and produces stronger test scores. Everyone wins.

Elizabeth (Beth) Breaux Thompson is the Project LEARN Coordinator for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District in Rosenberg, Texas. She has served as Coordinator since 1995. Project LEARN is one of the largest family literacy projects in the state, providing all components of family literacy to over 300 families each year. She is a Certified Family Life Educator, a professional certification awarded to persons completing a combination of college/graduate coursework, work experience and continuing professional development in the ten areas of family life instruction. Beth earned her bachelor and master degrees from Louisiana State University. She is currently a member of the Texas Adult Education Credential Project Work Team. She may be reached at bethtpsn@lcisd.org