The Texas Adult Education Content Standards & Benchmarks

How I Became a Standards Specialist

As an administrator, I always want to know what is going on, so I can improve my adult education program, myself, and my staff. I am also very good at delegating and volunteering my teachers and sometimes I even volunteer myself for all the new projects or ideas that Texas LEARNS seems to find for us. Volunteering is how I began my journey to become a Standards Specialist. It started with an administrators’ meeting – it seems like many years ago- in Austin when we were told by experts that our Texas Standardized Curriculum Framework (which we had borrowed from Florida) was lacking “real” standards, and we needed to start over. So we did, and I started volunteering my staff for tasks. I volunteered a classroom and group of students for a focus group led by the Texas Adult Education Standards Project. I volunteered two teachers to pilot the original standards, and set up phone conferences for them to report back to the project researchers. And I volunteered two teachers – both reading specialists - to become part of the standards and benchmarks writing team. Then I found that I also needed to be the designated driver for my volunteered teachers to travel to and from College Station. So I did, and I soon realized that I also had been volunteered to be part of the writing team.

As part of the writing team, we had a choice of being on the reading, writing, or math team. I didn’t think I was an expert in any of the choices, so I decided to take a different approach. Remember the commercial “Let Mikey try it,” where before any child would eat a new food, they would see if Mikey liked the food, and then they would eat it, only if Mikey said it was good. I decided I would be the “Mikey” for the math group. I would join the Math team. The standard of course was Use Math to Solve Problems and Communicate. There were already great experts on the Math team, and I became the “Mikey.” As the math team developed benchmarks and the examples for the benchmarks, it was, “if Nancy can do the activity/example, then it stays.” Of course there were many frustrating hours of the team having to explain examples to me before I would okay it.

Then, when I was happily volunteering four more teachers to field test the final version of the benchmarks and lessons plans, it happened again. I was volunteered to be one of the trainers to train the standards specialists for the “Texas . . . Reaching New Standards” conference in Austin, Texas. Then, I really started learning and stressing. I wish I could go back and do that initial training in Austin over again. I’ve learned so much more since then in the many trainings I have done for my teachers, my program, and other programs as part of the South Central GREAT Center training team. I actually know now how to “unpack” the benchmarks. Not only that, I was able to explain the new version of Bloom’s Taxonomy to one of my teachers who said that she finally understood what she hadn’t grasped in her college student teaching course. That really made me feel good.

As an administrator, the Use Math to Solve Problems and Communicate standard and benchmarks have fulfilled one of my program goals for the year. I am trying to develop a transitioning program – from ASE/GED into our local college. Level six of the Use Math to Solve Problems and Communicate standard has given me the benchmarks and examples for my teachers to know and use to help the students effectively transition into college. I believe that the additional research into Equipped for the Future (EFF) materials, reviewing other states’ standards, and personally knowing and understanding the Texas Adult Education Content Standards and Benchmarks helped me write a better grant this past year and will help with future collaboration grants. Becoming “Mikey” for the math standards writing team was the best thing I have ever done – volunteer or not.

Nancy Bentley Dunlap has been the Coordinator of the Northside ISD Adult Education program in San Antonio for the past 11 years, and is a member of both TexTESOL II and TALAE. Prior to becoming a coordinator, she worked for the Adult Education Program at Region 20 for 20 years. Nancy’s educational background and experience is in teaching, counseling, research, and professional development training. She currently is one of the Standard’s Specialists.