Adult Education Responds to Workforce Needs With a Focus on Rider 82

About This Issue—From the Guest Editor

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the May issue of the Texas Adult & Family Literacy Quarterly. If you’re like me, perhaps you may find yourself still adjusting to the new name for our quarterly publication, which was known for many years as Literacy Links. For some of us, it may take time to transition to the new name (shortened to The Quarterly), but one thing remains the same—and that is our goal to serve the adult and family literacy community in our state with relevant, timely and interesting articles and information.

In this issue we are featuring ESL Career Exploration and Workplace Literacy in Texas and how some of the Adult Education programs are integrating industry-related curricula into the regular classroom instruction. “We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby,” would be one way I would have to describe the list of activities since Texas LEARNS began its response to the Texas legislature’s 2005 “Rider 82” mandate to develop demand-driven workplace literacy and basic skills curricula for adult learners.

From May 2005 to date, adult education has indeed come a long way with this challenging initiative. Here’s the short chronological summary: Between November 2005 to February 2006, preliminary development began with El Paso Community College, Seguin ISD, and Trinity Valley Community College to develop modular responses to workforce-related instructional needs of adult learners with limited English proficiency for three industry clusters—healthcare, manufacturing, and sales and service. Subsequently, curriculum development teams worked tirelessly, and by August 2006 soft launches of healthcare, manufacturing, and sales and service curricular modules were held in Socorro ISD (El Paso) and Seguin ISD. Further revisions were made, and from April to August 2007, two pilots for each of the three industry clusters were initiated incrementally in six adult education programs across the state: ESC Region 1 (Lower Rio Grande Valley); Harris County Department of Education (Houston/Coastal); Northeast Texas Community College (Mt. Pleasant); El Paso and Socorro ISD (El Paso); and Seguin ISD (Central Texas). Revisions from the statewide pilots are currently in process, and should be complete by the time this issue of The Quarterly is published.

Join us now to learn how your fellow adult education colleagues and their programs are stepping up to the challenge of developing innovative ways to partner and collaborate with business and industry in their local communities, as well as partner with the local Workforce Centers and post-secondary institutions in offering career exploration opportunities to our limited English proficient (LEP) population. Annie Walker, who teaches at the Central Texas Technology Center in New Braunfels, shares her walk down memory lane—a walk that helped her overcome the fears of teaching manufacturing-based ESL. Taking the I-BEST model from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, you will learn from David Borden and Nancy Meredith how Austin Community College has paired an ESL class with the Certified Nurse Aide (CNA) training course. Gaye Kendall with Harris County Department of Education will share her experience piloting the Sales and Service ESL curriculum—an experience that went from apprehension and reservation to total appreciation. David Joost explains how Houston Community College’s Adult Education program is beginning to experiment with Vocational ESL (VESL) models, connecting its adult education programs more closely to its occupational training programs, specifically the college’s basic electrician training and cosmetology programs. In my article, I encourage all programs to not be afraid to change the traditional look of the adult education classroom and to not let what seems like insurmountable obstacles get in your way of implementing industry-specific curriculum into the English language instruction. Recently the Texas Workforce Commission awarded four innovative projects that support the mounting need of businesses to recruit and employ job candidates from Texas’s growing multilingual workforce. Those awards went to the Alamo Community College District in San Antonio, the San Jacinto Community College District, the Harris County Department of Education Adult Education Department, and the Greater Austin Area Workforce Board. For more information on how your program can become involved, see the information provided by Texas Workforce Solutions.

I hope this issue of The Quarterly will be an encouragement to all—from students, to teachers, to educators from all institutions, and to the Workforce Centers. As Barbara Tondre-El Zorkani, has often said, “Our well-being is closely tied to future generations of children who will surely be left behind unless their parents’ family, community and work-related literacy needs are addressed by Adult Education.” See other useful articles, by Barbara, throughout this issue. I believe Adult Education in Texas is responding in a progressive and aggressive way to meet these growing demands.

Christia Moore, Director
Seguin ISD Adult Education Program