New Project at TCALL
to Support Printing and Implementation
of Texas Industry-Specific ESL (TISESL) Curricula
by Harriet Vardiman Smith, TCALL Director
As described by Barbara Tondre-El Zorkani in her article on page 4, the Texas Industry Specific ESL (TISESL) curricula are a rich instructional resource for introducing adult English language learners to vocabulary used in three key industry sectors – healthcare, sales and service, and manufacturing – as well as for building generalized employability skills for any workplace setting. However, the sheer volume of print materials included in TISESL can be an obstacle to some literacy programs that are interested in implementing the curricula, but have limited budget for printing.
Some programs have found that printing TISESL materials locally is cost effective when compared to the cost of commercially-published student texts they might otherwise have purchased. Others have established partnerships with an employer or their local workforce board or one-stop center, with those organizations financing printing and reproduction of TISESL print materials. Still other programs have obtained small grants to support their implementation of TISESL.
Nonetheless, state leadership has been concerned about the obstacle created by the volume of print materials that make up TISESL. A complete set including all three industry areas prints out as well over 4,000 pages, filling three dozen binders. Although Texas Education Agency-funded literacy programs have had access to TISESL materials in electronic format for over a year, to even fully grasp the components and possibilities of TISESL can be a challenge until a program has access to a hard copy version of all TISESL print components.
As is often the case with challenges, this obstacle to implementing TISESL also led to an opportunity. In the fall of 2008, Mrs. Barbara Bush asked TCALL how The Barbara Bush Texas Fund for Family Literacy might consider responding to the destruction, dislocation and economic hardships that had affected Texas in the form of natural disasters that summer and fall – namely, Hurricanes Ike and Dolly and historic, sustained flooding on the upper Rio Grande River. Mrs. Bush was particularly interested in how the Fund could assist literacy programs directly affected by these events, as well as the adult learners served by those programs statewide, both in disaster-affected areas and in other areas of Texas where dislocated families had moved.
In response to Mrs. Bush’s question, TCALL worked with the Barbara Bush Texas Fund leadership to develop two new short-term projects. One project – Disaster Recovery Grants to local literacy programs – was implemented in the winter of 2008 and spring of 2009. You can read about that success story in the June 2009 issue of The Quarterly.
The other project developed out of Mrs. Bush’s question is the new Workforce ESL Curriculum Support Project. This project is enabling TCALL to coordinate with Texas LEARNS, Project GREAT TISESL trainers and leadership of Literacy Texas to make this rich instructional resource available in a comprehensive, supported context including print materials for local programs along with training and technical assistance as those programs implement the curricula in the coming year. The project prioritizes making TISESL available to community-based or volunteer literacy programs that do not receive funding from Texas Education Agency, but that have requested and been granted a TISESL copyright license from the Agency through Texas LEARNS.
In late August, a two-day training was conducted by TISESL trainers Denise Guckert and Irene Ramos, and generously hosted by Region 6 Education Service Center in Huntsville and its regional GREAT Center project. After requesting and being granted a Nonprofit TISESL Copyright License, five community-based or volunteer literacy programs from around the state participated in the training: Adult Reading Center of Pearland, Arlington Reads, East Texas Literacy Council, Huntsville Area Literacy Council, and Victoria Adult Literacy Council. A team including a program leader and one or two teachers from each program attended, with support for their travel and lodging costs provided by the Volunteer Training Initiative at TCALL, a partnership with Literacy Texas. San Antonio ISD Adult & Community Education also sent a team to the training.
Participating programs received a complete set of hard copy TISESL materials and a classroom set of student workbooks in the industry area each program selected to implement this program year. Follow-up technical assistance for the volunteer/CBO programs will be provided by TCALL Adult Literacy Specialist Federico Salas-Isnardi. Both the printing of TISESL materials and Mr. Salas-Isnardi’s time dedicated to technical assistance on TISESL implementation are funded as part of the Barbara Bush Texas Fund’s generous support of this new project at TCALL.
TCALL looks forward to sharing outcomes of this new project in a future issue of The Quarterly.
  
|
