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Why Everyone Should Care About Adult Education
By Silja Kallenbach
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This week is the
Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. In most communities, it is much like every other week of the year when it comes to adult education – away from the limelight, without resources to shine the light on why we would even have a national Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. After all, why should anyone care about the 36+ million adults in the U.S. whose academic skills are well below high school level or who have limited English proficiency? We, adult educators of course care because we witness the benefits to individuals, families, and communities from newly gained competencies, credentials, and self-confidence. But why should any of this matter to others? What should we, adult educators, tell them? |
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Join us all week long on Twitter with
#AEFLWeek as we celebrate adult education and share resources and ideas.
National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week is celebrated each year in September to raise awareness, share resources, and celebrate successes.
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Parents and Children Bonding Through Math
When Calvin Brown's daughter asked him to help her with her math homework, he felt a sense of dread. He sent her to her mother. He avoided the interaction. But then he realized he was missing out on one of the "best parts of life -- like when a young father helps his beautiful, intelligent daughter with her math homework." He didn't want to lose this opportunity to connect with his daughter, so he enrolled in a math class at TASK, an ABE program in Trenton, NJ. Thanks to his teachers and his own persistence, he is spending more time with his daughter, and he can "see the change it has made in the bond between [them]." His daughter jokes with him about how they are both getting an education. And they are developing a shared dream of owning a restaurant together someday.
Another learner, Abir Yousef, says, "When my children were small, I could teach them math. As they've gotten older, some of the problems are too hard." Abir identified that she needed to improve her English to be able to support her children in school, so she enrolled in the IRIS Mother and Child ESOL Program in New Haven, CT. When she was growing up in Syria, her own mother, who did not go to school, used to cry because she could not help her children with their school work. Abir is committed to breaking that pattern.
These stories and others in the current issue of
The Change Agent, "Our Math Stories," illuminate one of the main reasons adults go back to school -- they want to better support their children! Furthermore, adult learners are great problem-solvers! They are figuring out how to help their children when their children don't have textbooks or notes that the parent can use to look for models. They are finding programs with free babysitting, so they can pursue their education. They are identifying how they were hurt (emotionally and physically) in their childhood math classes, and they are figuring out how to move beyond that to create a new relationship to the subject. They are using everything from origami to sports statistics to bring math into their everyday life.
Learn more about this issue by
joining us for a FREE webinar
(Thurs., Sept. 27 at 3:00 Eastern Time) on how to use the Math issue of
The Change Agent in the classroom: (The webinar is free, but you must
register to participate. If you can't make the time and date of the webinar, a free recording will be available on our website.)
Try using this free
Lesson Packet based on a story by a student who discusses the math he used to start a poultry farm.
Or
subscribe to
The Change Agent. An online subscription costs only $20 per teacher per year, and you get access to our current issue, all our back issues, and all our audio.
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Innovation Workshop at NCTN 2018
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Claiming Our Seat at the Table: How Adult Educators Can Inform the Future of Work Conversation
Wednesday, November 14th, 2018
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
The US labor market is changing. News stories are full of speculation about how robots and the gig economy will alter how Americans work, and which workers may lose their jobs in the future.
But there is much
less conversation about how adult educators — the people who are on the frontlines of upskilling American workers today — are already equipping workers to respond to the changing labor market.
Join us for an interactive session that will use practical examples to jump-start conversation about what adult educators know, and how we can bring our practitioner wisdom into the policy conversations going on around us.
Amanda Bergson-Shilcock is Director of Upskilling Policy at the
National Skills Coalition (NSC).
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In the U.S., our mission at World Education is to strengthen the effectiveness of educators, organizations, and systems to support adults, older youth, and communities to thrive. We hope our resources help bring best practices and inspiring content to the adult education classroom and beyond. |
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World Education
44 Farnsworth Street
Boston, MA 02210
617-482-9485 |
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