Parents play a primary role in the development of children's literacy. But what happens when adult family members themselves need literacy support? At Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, an innovative program promotes lifelong literacy skills for university physical plant employees—and helps these adult learners support their children's learning in turn.
Participants in the Winthrop's Investment in Life-long Learning (WILL) Project work in the university's custodial, gardening, and refuse collection departments. Some have less than a 6th grade education. On the job, these adults must improve their literacy skills to read the safety guidelines for work-related supplies. At home, limited literacy means they struggle to read portions of the local newspaper and to read aloud to their children. Without educational intervention, a cycle of limited literacy may continue through generations of the employees' families.
To address these literacy needs, the university released employees for two hours each week to participate in special sessions developed by university reading faculty. The sessions, rotated in 12-week cycles, are kept to a maximum of 10 participants to permit individualized attention. The program cultivates a community of learners through literacy activities that reach out to employees and their families. The instructional activities link families through children's literature, work-related literature, and personal literature.
Helping Adult Learners Take Control
Through a constructivist approach, the literacy program is designed to give participants more control over their learning; opportunities for active involvement; problems to solve creatively and cooperatively; and relevant, meaningful instructional activities that promote lifelong learning. The core literacy activities use three types of literature in instructional modules: (1) children's literature, including stories with repetition, predictability, and well-developed story grammars. These stories are strategically organized around the theme "triumph of the human spirit" and are suitable for employees to share with family members; (2) work-related literature, including workplace materials, forms, and newspapers relevant to employees' daily lives at work and home; and (3) personal literature, including language experience stories, that exemplify life experiences, genealogy, and areas of personal interest.
Using children's literature. In the first program module, which focuses on children's literature, the adult participants combine reading with reflective writing activities. To ensure that the literature meets the instructional and personal needs of the students, the instructors choose books that contain stories that are easy to follow and retell. The children's literature is thematically grouped around stories that demonstrate the triumph of the human spirit, and instructors use literature at a variety of reading levels to accommodate the literacy levels of program participants. The adult learners often select books they want to read aloud to their own children or other family members.
Instructors use each book to teach a specific literacy strategy, including prediction, characterization, sequencing, inferencing, and imagery. Participants react to the literature and the strategies by writing in learning logs. At home, as participants read books to their family members, they occasionally pause to discuss the contents, thus simultaneously improving their own reading and reflection strategies while encouraging family literacy.
Using work-related literature. The second program module, which employs work-related literature, centers around an important pamphlet for university physical plant employees, the Material Safety Data Sheet Guidebook, which contains standards for handling hazardous materials. The pamphlet has few illustrations and difficult vocabulary. To encourage reading the pamphlet, instructors ask the adults to bring labels from hazardous materials at home, such as cleaning solutions and gardening supplies. They then find words in the pamphlet that are also on the labels. As students examine the labels in several activities, the information on them becomes more meaningful. In addition, participants can now categorize and sort the information. This learning process boosts the participants' job-related knowledge.
To extend the work-related literature module to families, participants discuss chemicals in the home that adhere to the safety guidelines with their family members. Safety at work translates to safety at home and advances the importance of reading labels for information.
Using personal literature. Perhaps the most successful module for these adult learners is the personal literature module, which incorporates language experience activities. The program participants form interest groups and write stories to share. Unlike previous modules in which participants read and react to literature created by others, this final module centers around opportunities to develop their own reading resources. Participants produce short stories, poems, and other creative works that reflect their experiences. Most of this personal literature centers around family members, including children who are developing their own literacy skills.
Bill's Story
One participant in the program is Bill, a physical plant refuse truck driver, who has been employed at the university for more than a decade and who has two children at home. Bill's 6th grade reading level often interferes with his desire to share material with his family. At the outset of the program, Bill described what his family meant to him in a series of one-word responses (which would later be used in an activity on descriptive adjectives). He completed the sentence "My family brings me. . ." with the following: "enjoyment, fun, happiness, comfort, love, sadness, togetherness, and strength." It was clear that Bill's family could serve as a motivating factor for his successful completion of the literacy activities.
A flat tire and Mother's Day. The first book Bill chose to read was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst (1972). After the staff provided a brief overview of the book, Bill stated that he had a flat tire coming to work that day and that this book might make him feel better about his own troubles. He practiced reading the book so he could share it with his children, and he wrote in his response log that the "book makes me feel happy." Around Mother's Day, Bill wanted to read a poem entitled "Mama," from Joyce Carol Thomas' book Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea (1993). To practice the poem, Bill and some of his colleagues read it to a group of 4- and 5-year-olds in the university laboratory school. The experience increased his confidence and delighted the children.
Avoiding chemical hazards. Bill was very concerned about his ability to read and understand the pamphlet on hazardous materials for his job. After some discussion of the pamphlet, Bill and his classmates decided to develop a database of hazardous chemicals and the dangers they pose. The adult learners discussed how chemicals can harm the skin and eyes. Bill found warning labels from chemicals at home and discussed them with his family. He also contributed to the completion of the database of hazardous chemicals.
Bible verses and a family reunion. Along with his job at the university, Bill served as a lay minister on Sundays and worked as a self-employed custodian in his off hours. Many of the employees participating in the literacy project held multiple jobs. Bill extended his learning in the university program through several literacy-related activities. First, Bill developed, with staff assistance, an interactive, multimedia stack on the Bible that included his favorite parables and verses. To accompany these verses, he brought in pictures to scan. Many of these were family photos.
Bill also knew that he would be organizing the summer family reunion. In preparation, he wanted to assemble a family calendar to distribute that would include birthdays, deaths, and other important announcements. He used a calendar-creating computer program and scanned in photos and other memorabilia. On the back of each calendar page, Bill wrote something special about that particular month. The calendar was a hit.
Finally, Bill and the other participants developed a newsletter to distribute to all physical plant employees and their families. The newsletter includes employee news, reviews of books they are sharing with their families, recipes, and an important "thought for the month." It was Bill's assignment to develop the thought for each month, a task he thoroughly enjoyed. During later activities, Bill would e-mail these thoughts to others involved in the literacy seminars and the reading instructors. Bill's family, as well as those who worked closely with him, were proud of his accomplishments.
Literacy Connections
The Winthrop University project engages adults who were previously disconnected from the university learning environment in activities that reinforce their literacy skills—and create literacy-building experiences with their families. The project continues to demonstrate how creating an inclusive community of adult learners touches the lives of families.
