Literacy at Work

We real smart 

We go to school 

We work hard 

We'll get far 

We learn to read 

We want to achieve 

We learn to write 

We learn it right 

We shout out loud 

We are proud 

— NCSU Physical Plant ABE Class Poem 

Traditional approaches to teaching adult literacy usually focus on phonics, word endings, spellings, and other technical skills. When a student "knows" enough, some content can be introduced. This approach implicitly assumes that the reward for learning language skills is entrance into a world of adult content that is new to the student. Traditional literacy programs further assume that adult learners lack analytical skills; consequently, the reading materials mimic those used by children. 

The traditional view of adult learners also distorts effective teaching methods. Many literacy groups use only volunteer teachers and assign one student to one tutor. The skills-teaching approach leaves students feeling that they come with little to contribute, that they come to learn what the teacher knows and they do not. For many disenfranchised adults, the educational process mirrors a world divided into haves and have-nots. 

A different type of program has evolved at North Carolina State University. The Physical Plant Adult Basic Education (ABE) Program is a workplace literacy program started about 12 years ago to meet some of the educational needs of university employees and to provide on-campus field experience for students in adult education. Until recently, the program aimed to help the neediest employees with limited literacy training, such as how to write checks and read menus or utility bills. 

In the past three years, the focus has shifted to create an atmosphere where the employees' life experiences are the center of the curriculum. The instructors see the program as a place to help service workers counteract a history of failures, perceived inadequacies, and powerlessness. 

The 25 or so students are an important, yet almost invisible part of the university. As housekeepers, landscapers, painters, and maintenance workers, they keep the university going. They remember their own school experiences in a poor light. Because of financial difficulties, school segregation patterns, family responsibilities, or teacher techniques and attitudes, these students have limited confidence in their ability to cope with learning. 

"I used to wouldn't try to read," says Jimmie Dunston, a painter. "I could read a few words, just a few. I just depended on someone else. But now I see something, now I try to figure it out. (The program has) done a great deal for my confidence. With my kids, too, they love it. They like me helping them. In the past, in order to see the color of the paint, I had to memorize how the letters looked and hope I was right. Now I just walk right up, look at the bucket and read the name of the color of the paint." 

The program presently offers a GED class which prepares learners for high-school equivalency exams, a "pre-GED" class for those reading roughly between the fourth- and seventh-grade levels, and the adult basic education class for workers on a zero to third-grade reading level. 

In each case, the goal is to offer education as a vehicle for job advancement while providing meaningful educational opportunities that speak to adult issues. The social dynamic of the classes is critical. Learners meet in groups, rather than one-to-one, because people best learn language development from and in cooperation with each other. 

The group setting maximizes the sense that literacy is one of several related skills that include discussion, relating experiences, making comparisons, and analysis. The setting also allows the responses of the students — on tape and in writing — to be used in creating curriculum materials that reflect their concerns and that validate education as relevant to their lives. 

The program developed a manual — "Making Sense: A Resource Guide for a Collaborative Learning-to-Read Process" — which uses interviews with adult basic education (ABE) students across North Carolina as reading material for other ABE students. The collection features the students' own comments on the learning process, as well as language exercises and study questions developed by the program's instructors. 

In addition to the emphasis on personal experience, the Physical Plant ABE Program recognizes the significance of using materials that place the adult learners' lives in a broader historical and cultural context. Rather than ignore the experiences of working-class men and women, materials are chosen that give the students a richer sense of pride in the accomplishments of black people and a sense of how people succeed both individually and collectively (which has immediate application in the classroom). 

The program is now publishing a new manual, "Dream Variations: An ABE Language and Culture Workbook," which features the poetry of Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Nikki Giovanni, and Marie Evans, in addition to songs by Leadbelly, Billie Holiday, and Bernice Reagon Johnson. The literature and songs were chosen to elicit students' own experiences and observations, while sharpening analytical skills. The box on this page illustrates how a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks can become the center of several language skills activities.