Most teachers agree that it's impossible to teach an ABE or ESOL class based on one or two textbooks. Even if we start out with the intention of following a book, our students bring real-life language and literacy questions, needs, and interests into the classroom, and these topics catapult us into unplanned lessons or curriculum units. A cousin's funeral, a termination from work, a car accident, a television show, anything can provide motivation for language and literacy learning. While moving away from a predesigned text is liberating and responsive, it is also a lot of work, and can be intimidating and confusing to new teachers. How do you structure this kind of teaching? How do you pull it all together? I have found over the last twenty years that teachers who are the most successful at veering away from the text have in place—implicitly or explicitly—a framework for guiding their teaching. The ABE curriculum frameworks, for example, give teachers a scaffold for using real-life content while integrating language and literacy structures and behaviors. The Equipped For the Future (EFF) frameworks also guide teachers by providing standards and activities while still allowing teachers to choose authentic materials as a basis for teaching and learning.

This issue of Field Notes drew such a large number of submissions we had to expand it to 28 pages, and even then, some articles have spilled over to the summer issue. The articles printed here offer a glimpse of the ways ABE and ESOL teaching can reach far beyond the text. Alexis Johnson shares a framework for using authentic materials while systematically attending to all aspects of language learning. Lisa Garrone describes how her program ties advocacy to language learning, community building, and confidence building. The use of drama, fables, family trees, pottery, and scavenger hunts are explored as rich sources of teaching material. Cynthia Zafft provides a glimpse into the use of portfolios as a way to document students' work and progress—an important element when diverging from a prepackaged curriculum.

Learners and teachers often express the need for an anchoring text—a grammar book, reader, or skills builder. Providing students with a text need not prevent teachers from drawing from the wealth of real-life topics and materials around us, from survival skills "realia" to discussions about current events. We are lucky to live in a print-rich and culturally-rich location, an area where speakers will readily come into our classrooms, where museums welcome us with educational guides, where the internet provides us with late breaking content on issues that critically affect our students, where television shows, films, and DVDs promote laughter and glimpses into popular culture. In fact,I miss having my own class just so I can teach, using, say, an episode from The Simpsons or Six Feet Under. So go ahead... use what's out there!

Lenore Balliro is the editor of Field Notes. She may be reached by e-mail at: lballiro@worlded.org