The Latest News from the Texas Education Agency
Your State Adult Education Office
by Sheila
Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Senior Director, Division of Adult and Community Education
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.
  
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