Getting Started: (Advice for New Adult and Family Literacy Programs)

The Latest News from the Texas Education Agency
Your State Adult Education Office

There has never been a more important need for adult education and literacy programs in this country. Education means freedom for individuals. As adult educators and adult literacy volunteers, it is important that you know how important a difference you can make in the lives of the many adults you work with and how important you are and the work you are doing is to your community, your state, and our nation.

If one stops to think about it for a moment, you as administrators, teachers, counselors, support staff, and tutors are often a key link between the adult students and our state's economic development process. You are guiding the student in their goals for employment, upgrading their skills for improved employment, for securing that delayed dream of going to college or opening their own business. You are also a key link between the transference of new skills gained by that adult student in your class and their ability to improve their parenting skills through reading to their children, or involving them in community service and understanding the democratic processes through your citizenship classes.

We need adults who have good social and citizenship skills for the survival of our culture as we like it. They must possess those skills needed to work cooperatively with others. They must be able to assume responsibility as active, responsible citizens within their communities and as contributing members of the global village as well. They must be able to interact successfully with people of diverse cultures and varying backgrounds.

As adult educators and  adult literacy volunteers you will model respect for varied cultures, for the linguistic differences, economic circumstances and varying backgrounds of students in the development of curricula and instructional strategies. You will need to recognize your responsibility toward promoting the full participation of all citizens in the American experience.

Adults who can participate responsibly and productively as family and community members, consumers, workers, and learners are the core of a thriving self-renewing society. The preparation of adults to assume these roles is far more complex than ever.

You, as teachers, volunteers, and administrators, must be willing to use new strategies that address the whole person in your classroom and that focus on outcomes for the student that are useful not only in the marketplace for them as workers, but also at home as parents and in their communities.

You must be willing to move beyond just your program's concerns and collaborate to leverage all available resources for the good of all.

The State Office is partners with you in these requirements for meeting the needs of our students. We are all working together to increase resources by both changing existing policies and initiatives to support higher quality programs. Another way we are working with you is to assist you through evaluating your programs for continuous improvement on an ongoing basis to increase access to students by providing better outreach potential to students, necessary support services to make it possible for them to study, and more convenient ways to learn, including the use of technology. The third is to focus on improving the quality of instruction by supporting programs to develop goals and standards that reflect the concerns of all stakeholders, and help provide systematic program quality improvement, better trained staff, and expanded research and development efforts.

Learning does not stop at the school room door. Our field of Adult Education has always understood that education, training, and retraining are part of a continuum of lifelong learning. In the past, we could go to school, learn a trade, and do the same job until retirement, because our job function was always necessary. Today, we must be lifelong learners as knowledge bases are changing rapidly - now in months instead of years.

In closing, we know that learning is not a task or a problem. It is a way TO BE in the world. Individuals learn as they pursue goals and projects that have meaning for them. We also know that an underlying purpose of education centers around an understanding of the role of the individual in society and leads to the development of individual potential so that each of us may contribute fully to the enrichment of society and benefit equally from it.