Sitting Down Together at the End of the Year

Ann Cason

Three years ago I wrote about my experience with all-program evaluations at Jackson Mann Community School in Allston.1 Jackson Mann is a large community center with a comprehensive adult education program with full time staff. It is well established with a history of participatory program management. Currently I am teaching in a vastly different setting, a small, new ESL program which is one of many programs at the Log School Family Education Center, a settlement house on Bowdoin Street in Dorchester.

About the Log School

The Log School has been a pan of the Bowdoin Street neighborhood for over 20 years and is small enough so that community residents are often involved in various programs within the center. More importantly, there is an agency-wide philosophy of community empowerment and strong ties between the programs within the center. Students who enter the ESL program often have other connections within the Log School. They may be volunteers working in the Friday morning food pantry or parents with children in the pre-school. Many are members of the Family Cooperative and panicipate in aerobics classes or the crafts circle or take advantage of monthly holistic health clinics. The connections which ESL students have to programs within the Log School mean that students' roles at the center go beyond that of ESL students. These diverse roles mean that program participants have a broad view of the program and the center-a view that goes beyond what happens in the classroom. It also means that students feel a sense of ownership. This is their community center.

A New ESL Program

In many ways, the setting of the multi-service center, especially one which includes a family cooperative, is ideal for a participatory program. The fact that the ESL program is new, and that it was begun in response to requests from community members, and that many students were involved with the center before the ESL program was established, further suits it to participatory program development. The teachers and students meet together frequently, both in classes and at social events, workshops and orientations. Students have many channels within the center to evaluate the program and the classes. Many students have strong ties to the outreach worker at the school, others attend monthly cooperative meetings to develop and evaluate activities at the school. Yet even in this setting, unless a system for input is established, the hierarchical structure to which most of us are accustomed falls into place. In addition, with the very limited resources of our program, it is difficult to find time for staff and students to meet together.

The All-program Evaluation

After a little more than a year of ESL program operation, we decided to join the classes for a1l-program evaluations.2 While all teachers work with their classes on evaluating how well the classes are working and how well learners are meeting their goals, our idea was to get beyond curriculum and teaching styles to an evaluation of how the overall program is meeting the community's needs.

We had intended to meet as an entire program, but instead met in two separate groups to facilitate the participation of as many students as possible. We, as teachers, came to the evaluation meetings with specific questions meant to spark discussion if needed. These we wrote on the board. 3 (see Figure1)

FIGURE 1

Questions for Program Evaluation

1. Are the classes meeting your needs?

2. Are the levels good?

3. Are there other classes you would like in the program?

4. Are the classs times good for you?

• Do you know people who would like classes in the morning?

• Do you know people who would like classes at night?

5. Sometimes students stop coming to classes? Why?

6. What can everyone (students and teachers) do to help students continue classes?

7. In addition to classes we have child care, field trips, and some special projects.

8. What other things would you like to see in the program?

The two groups of students and teachers responded differently. The first group-the smaller one-was a group of about twenty students. This group used the questions as a springboard for the discussion of the program. The question that we focused on most was retention and what everyone in the program can do to enable students to participate fully in a complete cycle. Students had diverse ideas. Some suggested that new students need a more complete orientation to the program and to the whole process of learning English. As a woman from Brazil said, "Oh my god, the first day I came here, I felt like a baby. I was so nervous: I came with my husband. I said to him, 'Tell them I don't speak English.' "

Many students spoke of the difficulty of coming to classes when one is raising children, looking for a job, and going to appointments. We, as teachers, spoke of our need for information about when the classes or programs are not meeting students' needs, as well as the frustration we face of turning away students seeking classes because we don't want to fill someone's slot who may be planning to return. Some students suggested that teachers be more demanding about attendance.

The second meeting was a little bigger and the group followed the questions more closely. One student spoke of the importance of the native language tutoring project where every day for the past two cycles a more advanced student has been working with her. Other students spoke of the need to change the hours of the class and we talked about the possibility of a morning class for the fall. We discussed the difficulties of child care (we have child care available only during the afternoon) and of limited physical space at the school.

Some students talked about wanting teachers to assign homework every day, while other students said that they receive homework every day but not everyone does it. Some students suggested that there needed to be more time spent reviewing homework in class because many students don't understand it completely. One student said she tries to get extra help as much as possible from the family advocate at the school, but that the family advocate does not always have time.

I typed up the notes from both of the evaluations so students could have a record of what we discussed in both groups. I also typed a letter to students with the program changes that we were implementing along with some of the changes we were not able to make at this time, but that we are exploring for the future.

Changes

These discussions affected not only the teachers' methods, but the program as a whole. Here are a few of the concrete changes that came about as a result of the all-program evaluations:

• We decided to establish two drop-in tutoring times, one before the first class in the afternoon, and one later in the afternoon to enable students to get some extra help on homework or other learning areas.

• Through discussion of the balance betWeen reasonable expectations and the logistics of dealing with life and the need to consider students on our waiting list, we decided upon a clearer orientation on program objectives before classes begin, and to include sharing by students who have been involved in the program for some time.

• Resulting from the second meeting, we are considering a morning class for September, depending on space and the needs of incoming and current students.

• We decided to expand our participatory philosophy to include the orientation process so that students are aware, from the beginning of their connection to the program, that we have strong beliefs about teaching and operating a program.

• We instituted a new attendance policy. If a student misses three classes, a teacher will contact him or her to see if the student plans to return to the program that cycle.

Concrete changes are important. It is encouraging when there are some straightforward solutions or compromises to try out. Often, however, teachers struggle with the lack of funds and other resources and feel there are few options, not seeing the value in exploring what students would ideally like from the program. While the immediate changes that we can make are the most concrete benefit of exploring these needs, they are not the only, nor perhaps the most important ones. The less tangible gains of building the program's sense of community, envisioning the program as part of a larger entity, and getting outside the classroom to involve students in leadership roles may be far more important in the long run.

It is the discussion, the opportunity not only for student feedback, but for dialogue across classes and between students and teachers which is most important in this enterprise. I believe that the more we share with students our vision of the ESL program as one component of a larger whole and as a community program which is meant to respond to their interests and needs, the broader the effects of the program, and the way in which students view the program, will in turn have an effect upon classroom learning, curriculum, and attendance.

As students see the ESL program as part of a larger whole, they begin to bring more community issues and concerns to the program, and to see those concerns as legitimate topics of discussion and action for the ESL class. One example of this in our program has been the issue of safety in Ronan Park, a nearby park. The park is beautiful, has a playground, basketball Courts, and overlooks the harbor, but is underutilized due to safety concerns. A few weeks after the all-program evaluation, when we were planning a picnic in Ronan Park, students in one class brought their concerns about the park to class and asked the teachers to set up a meeting with the Log School director and the police. Since this time, several students have participated in meetings on neighborhood safety with a coalition of community residents, merchant, health, and social service organizations, and the police. One literacy class had a discussion and language experience letter centered around the strategy of community crime watch. Police feel that this is the most effective tactic, while students are frightened of repercussions and feel that the police need to take more responsibility.

We still have a long way to go in terms of developing our program evaluation meetings. We still struggle with lack of time in everyone's schedules to reflect among ourselves as teachers. I think at the next program evaluation it would be good to ask students to develop questions before the evaluation. While I have learned enormously from students, volunteers, and staff, both at the Jackson Mann and at the Log
School, I feel as though I still have much more to learn. I think there is sometimes a push in adult education for new and exciting tools, so at times we underestimate the value of something which is so simple.
Experiences at both Jackson Mann and the Log School have taught me that the all-program evaluation elicits information and builds community. It is a tool that, while helping us to look back, is really just a beginning.

Notes

1. Nash, A., Cason, A., Gomez-Sanford, R., McGrail, L., and Rhum, M. in press). Talking Shop: A Curriculum Sourcebook for Participartory Adult ESL. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice Hall.

2. It is imponant to note that this all-program evaluation took the form of a town meeting. It was not intended as an objective tool for producing quantifiable data on how the program operates. Rather, the point was to receive feedback on program operation and share information about and responsibility for program operation.

3. Program participants at the Log School are from Cape Verde, Haiti, Latin America and the Caribbean and Vietnam. The first group did not require translation because of their more advanced English skills. For the second group, translation was provided by advanced students from the first group and a teacher who speaks Haitian Creole.

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 3 (April 1992),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 2003.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.