Letter

A Response to Hofer and Larson on links between Literacy Practices & Community Development

Janet Isserlis
Rainmaker Project
Vancouver, BC
Canada

Judy Hofer and Pat Larson identified a critical component of literacy work in their article “Reflecting on the links between literacy practices and community development” (AiA, Vol. 5, Fall, 1993). Although many literacy practitioners assume that connections exist between classroom learning and community action, we seldom name these connections explicitly, nor do we always know whether the learners with whom we work share those assumptions. Do we believe that only through living and working within a community do we have the right and the opportunity to work with others in that community towards creating positive social change? Is our task to help adults learn about existing options within their communities, make informed choices and/or create new possibilities? Defining what we mean by community development may be slippery; finding ways to assess its growth is an ongoing challenge.

In North America, our assumptions about growth and learning are informed essentially by ‘first world’ thinking. This makes sense; contexts in which adult education occurs in Canada are not the same as those occurring in the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America, and elsewhere in the world. Examining the conditions in which community development and education occur in this country, in contrast to developing nations, is part of the larger work of thinking of human learning and development overall. How people come together and/or change lives in their communities is always contextualized and connected to particular conditions.

I wonder, too, how much the agenda for positive social change is generated by literacy workers, and how much community development work hasn’t yet occurred because people in communities are unaware of their options. How do prevailing conditions (such as welfare regulations, access to clear and readable information) perpetuate this lack of awareness? In whose interest is information made available or not? Does knowledge equal power, and is community development solely directed at access to power? Does access to literacy necessarily lead to greater access to that power? Power for whom? Gained how? Hofer and Larson list important questions to consider in finding ways to assess “improvement and change as a continuous process”, for individuals [and] the community of individuals”; in addition, I still want to know why we assume that adult learners might be interested in community and leadership development.
What about those people who are afraid to challenge the status quo because of their own histories as immigrants or refugees? What about those learners who seem or profess to be unaffected by conditions which others would challenge? Do we preach? Do we politicize? In whose interest?

The theme of community itself is one which learners may or may not want to discuss; they may or may not see any importance in examining their notions of community. Writing, drawing, making maps of people’s routes to school, shopping routes, streets, social/visiting routes or talking about community may lead to reflection about what happens in communities, good or bad.

As adult literacy learners become more capable readers and writers, do they then become more capable of doing the day to day things they want to do? Do other possibilities become visible, so these learners can choose to become more active participants in the lives of their communities? Will they want to take on issues that may concern them only indirectly? Is it our goal to help people see the links between seemingly unrelated conditions and their own lives?

The Rainmaker Project
In responding to Hofer and Larson, I want to briefly describe an intergenerational literacy project currently entering its second year in Vancouver, BC.

The Rainmaker Project was envisioned by Lee Weinstein as a community development effort where literacy would be a means through which intergenerational learning would occur, where people in an inner-city neighborhood would come together to address their own literacy needs, and where adults’ and children’s language development would be supported. The program was designed to serve the community surrounding Macdonald Elementary School in east Vancouver, as well as to meet the needs of children at the school. The school has a population of approximately 255 children, of whom half are First Nations (native Indian), 40% Asian (Chinese and Vietnamese), 5% Spanish speaking and 5% Canadian-born of Northern European origin. The school contains grades 1 through 7, as well as one ESL class. School staff includes classroom teachers, first nations resource workers, a family advancement worker, two learning assistance center teachers, a project teacher and a child care worker.

A guiding principle in the project’s relationship to the community is the notion of breaking down isolation and enabling people to feel connected to their world. A parallel objective is to develop a center and educational processes which could be adapted and eventually owned by community stakeholders.

In the first year, project staff worked to develop opportunities for intergenerational learning — for parents, children and other adults in the school and community. Learner-generated materials were a necessary focus and product of our work. Computers functioned as a primary vehicle enabling staff and learners to create necessary texts, including ongoing documentation/logs of daily classes and events, adults’ and children’s stories and classwork, as well as documents created by and for others in the school (newsletters, permission forms, announcements, grant applications, invitations).

During its first year, over 240 children and 40 adults worked in the center, a room containing two round tables, chairs, book shelves, reading, writing and drawing materials, eight Macintosh LC computers, and two printers. (The computers and one of the printers were obtained through a grant from Apple (Canada). Children in the school (both mainstream students and children for whom English is an additional language) worked on computers in the project center during regularly scheduled weekly periods (usually 45 minutes).

The center was open to classes in the school five days a week, and maintained drop-in hours for children every day after school, from 3 to 4 p.m. In addition, adults (with or without children) had access to the center from 4-6 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, from 4-8 p.m. on Wednesdays, and from 2 to 4 p.m. on Fridays. Children came to the center after school to do homework as well as to draw, write, play games and/or to spend time with peers and staff.

We utilized the computer as a tool which can help children and adults express ideas, draw pictures, write, revise, edit. We used standard word processing and drawing programs rather than (with few exceptions) educational software. Children began by using drawing programs to acclimate themselves to using the mouse and becoming comfortable with the computers. Through using the technology, children particularly in ESL and kindergarten classes — who were reticent to speak in their regular classes became quite engaged in what they were doing, and spoke to others to share their findings, and/or to ask how to do more or different things.

Parents who were studying English as an additional language in the room every morning were quite interested in seeing their children use the computers, although most preferred to stay at the conversation table. The adults who studied in the morning (from 9 to 11:30) were mothers of children in the school, and had little previous involvement with the school. Most of these mothers would not have sought out more ‘traditional’ ESL classes at other sites (community colleges, adult learning centers) but were drawn to our center because of its location at their children’s school. As well, child care was provided on-site and there were no fees involved for either classes or child minding.

In addition to parents participating in English language classes during the mornings, other Canadian-born, English-speaking parents used the computers on a drop-in basis to write letters, poems, resumes, and songs, and also to do work for other teachers in the school. As the center became better known to people in the community, there was a steady increase in its use, and adults were increasingly comfortable coming to either watch their children and/or to work alongside them learning to type, exploring software options, writing themselves.

During its first year, the center was an active place. Part of our purpose is to enable community people to increasingly define the goals of the program. Ultimately, our mandate is to have the project, should it continue to be funded, run entirely by people of the community itself. This process will take some time and involves ongoing support from the team and the school. As of this writing, it is likely that some form of the project will continue within the school, and other funding has been secured to start a similar project within another nearby elementary school.

Indicators of effectiveness
A learning center which allows participants to identify their own needs, to seek assistance when and as needed, and which provides both staff and equipment as resources is an asset to a community. When that learning center can open its doors to the community at large, it has a real opportunity to facilitate learning, literacy and community development. We have seen the increase of participation in the program, both among children and adults at the center. We now need to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness and to evaluate this progress in ways that meet funders’ requirements while also remaining consistent with our program philosophy.

In terms of the kinds of evaluative questions literacy workers may ask are the following: Does helping Gwen write her many letters constitute community development? Does Lawrence’s phone list? What about the Christmas cards generated by him and his family? What about kids’ exposure to the possibilities of technology? We seem to agree that we don’t want tightly sequenced computer programs. We do see some kids writing for their own authentic purposes — S’s note to her substitute teacher, A’s letters to her mom. Many kids, though, still resist writing, and now that the novelty of the technology has worn off, we are faced with dilemmas similar to those faced by classroom teachers. How do we argue compellingly for kids to write? Is it through reading to them? Showing them possibilities? Asking them to take their work seriously and to read to one another? Are they inspired by seeing adults who are not teachers use the technology for their own purposes? In some ways we are very limited by the fact that we do not work in classrooms, and are seen as a support to classroom activity (and in some cases a diversion from it). As we continue to slowly and carefully build connections to teachers and students at the school, we may be able to bridge some of that distance. We must move carefully and slowly; this process of building trust is essential to the work we hope to do.

One way of viewing assessment, raditionally, has been to see whether those goals have been met. Who sets these goals? for whom? who measures growth? how? As the literature on alternative assessment continues to expand, and as alternative assessment itself becomes its own norm among adult literacy practitioners, new questions about links between classroom work and community action are being raised. Does participating in a literacy center where one can write letters to social service and housing agencies, to newspaper editors and policymakers constitute a part of community development per se? Does the awareness that these letters can be written constitute a change in behavior? Does this writing work to break down isolation in some tangible way?

A Personal View
I don’t live in the community in which I work. I’m a middle class white woman working among women, men and children from Canada, Asia and South America in an inner city neighborhood. How do I deal with the conflict I feel between wanting Asian women to learn about First Nations’ concerns and events? Who am I to say that helping Asian and First Nations parents come together is a desirable goal? What concerns are shared by those ethnic communities within their geographic community? Can collective action around such concerns as safety, security, heavy traffic on streets near the school, and drug use bring people together? Does problem posing work within the conversation group facilitate the development of collective action? Can literacy work around neighborhood flyers and newspapers help to increase consciousness about both problems and opportunities for change within the community?

Questions about learning and community development seem inevitably linked to questions about our own roles as residents, no-residents of commuities, towns, cities, countries. Thinking about returning to Vancouver, I realize again why I went there to work two years ago. The political agenda among many of my colleagues is far more explicit and articulated than was my own two years ago when I first arrived in BC. As I struggle to name important processes, even within this writing, I realize that I need to learn more. Much of the work done by adult educators in the US and Canada is funded by sources for whom the agenda is clearly economic. Adult learners are being trained into jobs they may not want to do, or worse, still, into jobs which may not exist. Practitioners in either country must be able to articulate why the political agendas which underpin funding may be racist or discriminatory and to help other adults be able to articulate these problems, too. Many adults in communities are already quite capable of naming these problems, but may feel they lack access to those people (policymakers, politicians) through whom change might be enacted.

Programs which allow adults and children to work together seem to facilitate positive growth in communities. Programs which offer the potential for community people to run the centers in which they began as learners enable positive growth to move one step further. Finding ways to articulate what that growth is and how it helps people and communities over time seems the logical next step in the course of plotting assessment that truly tells us and the learners with whom we work where we’re going — by helping people look at where they’ve been and at where they decide they need to go. As I struggle to complete even this essay, I realize I’ve raised far more questions than I can or should hope to answer at this moment.

Author’s note: The Rainmaker Project team has included Lee Weinstein, Louié Ettling, Rani Gill, Manabu Seki, Anne McDonald, Dwayne MacKenzie, and Nancy Goldhar. Pieces of this writing have been adapted by other writing Lee Weinstein and I have done about the project.

This article was published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 7 (December 1994), SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 1994.

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.