Training the Tutors : New York's Tri Library Volunteer Tutor Conference

This past weekend (April 9, Saturday)I took the 7 local from Jackson Heights to Flushing's Main Street. Two very distinct neighbourhoods within the city of the world - the city of New York. It was the first sunny day New York had seen since Christmas'10.The signboards, the shop signs , the billboard ads went from a mix of Hindi/Bengali/Punjabi to Hanzi/Kanji. Its amazing how the city has these culturally diverse yet segregated pockets around varioius neighbourhoods. Crossing Jackson Height's 74th street also called Indian Street is a totally different experience from walking down Main Street Flushing. I don't wan't to go Segwaying, but here is another one. I got my first close up view of the Citifield. This a day after New York Mets' openning day. The night before I could see its bright and humming neon signboards and ad signs far on the horizon from my apartment window.

 I was heading to the Flushing's branch of Queens Library that was hosting the 16th Annual Tri-Library Volunteer Tutor Conference. This was a collaboration of the Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library and Queens Library Adult Learner Programs and sponsored by the Mayor's Office of Adult Education. I was hoping that either Mayor Bloomberg or the new schools chancelor Walcott would show up to flag it off. Last week had been a turbulent time for the Department of Education as Cathy Black was forced out by the parents and teachers of the city. The Mayor himself had taken a lot of flack, for his ill-fated choice to select her as the schools chancelor. Deputy Mayor Walcott took over the role, and well atleast the Library administrators saw him as a strong support in the Mayor's office for the adult learner program. The Mayor's office was represented by the late arrival of Paul Kim. Oh and the infamous G train took the blame yet again. Paul himself has his roots starting of as a volunteer tutor with the adult learner program.
The conference was a development and continuing education opportunity provided for the volunteer tutors. It was a great platform to share my tutoring experiences with fellow tutors and learn from their experiences. It was a good way to refocus on the basics and pick up a few tips and resources from the library.
For the morning session I attended the "We Are New York" workshop. We Are New York [WANY] is a an award winning TV series that builds communication skills and strengthens communities at the same time also dealing with issues that matter to our students. David Hellman one of the writers of the series and Mark Trushkowsky from CUNY office of Academic Affairs were the presenters. The room was a mixture of tutors like me who hadn't used the series as yet and others who had. The session looked at various pre- and post viewing techniques that the presenters had suggested to use with the material. This by far to me is the most engaging stimuli for a student that I have come across, and I am most certainly going to plan out a few lessons on WANY. They were giving away the DVD and the learning material at the end of the session. For more information visit www.nyc.gov/LearnEnglish . The full lesson set for WANY is available here.

For the afternoon session I attended "Introduction to Numeracy" presented by Gladys Scott and Haniff Toussaint from the Brooklyn Public Library. I hadn't really delved much into Numeracy in any of my sessions as yet, but this was an eye openner to the concept, and showed us how to introduce numeracy to students. Infact the first thing I observed when going over the basics mathematical operations this Monday with my students, was that Numeracy is probably as intutive as verbal communication itself. An adult with no schooling in today's world has a pretty good grasp of the basics mathematical operations. As I was explaining Multiplication and division, I was surprised how my students were able to give me the correct answers even though the weren't able to explain or write down the steps that they had take to arrive at the answer.

Through out the day the raffle tickets were given out to the attendees, and with my luck with these things I had no intention of sticking on for the Prizes and Closing after the long day. I ended up taking a few wrong turns and walking in to the proceedings. I can't say I was disappointed I won a Queens Library Umbrella.


cheers,

Ajay

P.S. Tomorrow Applebee's is conducting a Dining to Donate for Queens Library. So all you people in Queens head out to the Neighbour hood Bar and Grill , while you eat , 10% of your bill will be donated to Queens Library Foundation. Don't forget to take a printout of this flyer http://www.queenslibraryfoundation.org/site/DocServer/QLF_Applebees_flyer1.pdf?docID=1141 .
Below is the mail I got from the the Queens Library Foundation :

Applebee’s Restaurants in Queens are supporting National Library Week with "Dining to Donate" for Queens Library. On Thursday, April 14th, Applebee’s will donate 10% of each lunch or dinner bill to Queens Library Foundation for every customer who presents a "Dining to Donate" flyer. All money raised will go towards Queens Library Foundation’s Buy-A-Book program.


You can help get new books for your local library by participating in "Dining to Donate" at Applebee’s. You MUST present the "Dining to Donate" flyer in order for Applebee’s to make the donation.

Hope you can make it to Applebee's on April 14th and support Queens Library!

Sincerely,
Tom Galante
CEO
Queens Library


Diana Chapin
Executive Director
Queens Library Foundation

The Adult Learning Experience from the eye of a rookie tutor : Post 3 Language Experience Technique

This is an exciting technique that I came across during my tutor training. It works for any level beginners.All this requires is a stimulus or a cue that gets your group talking freely and emotively. For instance my first Language Experience cue was to read aloud an article from the Coumbia Spectator about Diwali celebrations in the Columbia University campus. On another ocassion the stimulus was reading aloud a news article titled "Walks to Remember", about a holiday fashion show at the Kids Center; a Pediatric treatement center for special kids.

The first article was a random seasonal pick. Or rather the talk of the town at that time. It worked fine as the Nepali lady in my group was some what familiar with Diwali and was able to talk about the festival and describe it to the rest of the group.

The rest of the group then fed of what they learnt from her and the article; and then reflected on their new learning.

The second article was more of an informed pick. This was during my fourth or fifth session with the group. I had known by now that while one already works with kids as a nanny the other one aspires to be a trainer at a school for special kids.

"In the Language Experience technique students dicatate a story to the tutor. The text that is created provides familiar and immediate reading material in the students' own language."

The text generated can be used for a variety of other excercises.

• Reading aloud.
• Generating sight word cards
• Ask the group to decide upon an appropriate title for the story they have come up with.
• The group then copy the story in their notebooks making for a great writing session.
• The story when typed out neatly can be handed out to the group on the next session for more working and refining.

All this while the group feels self validated for having worked their own material and refined it over and over to a fine product at the end of a few sessions.

As you can see the language experience is a very powerful and versatile tool in the hand of a tutor. But just this one tool does not make a complete session of two hours. In the next post in this series I will look at the components of an entire lesson plan for a session.

Peace,

Ajay

The Adult Learning Experience from the eye of a rookie tutor : Post 2 "Getting to know you !"

So here it is post 2. I am glad I am not slacking off  and am following up on my previous post. These posts are a mere reflection on my tutoring sessions. Don't go looking for the right way of doing things here.

At the ALC (Adult Learning Center) I am obliged to conduct two sessions of two hours each every week. I hop in after work from 6 pm to 8 pm for these sessions. Hunger and the cold are generally on my mind when I head out of office.

On the night of my first ALC group session I had a familiar tune in my head.
"Getting to know you! tu du du tuoooo...
getting to know you! La la la!"

Ever since I had labeled this session "Getting to Know You" on my tutor file these were the exact thoughts that were going through my my mind on the train ride from work to the library. If you don't get what I am saying just watch the embedded youtube video below.

It was essential that I established why the learner has approached ALC to get tutored. As I mentioned in my last post, the motive of these learners is very different from that of a learner enrolled in a school or university curriculum. Their needs are more immediate, for instance : writing a check out, reading the weekend subway plan changes, filling out a government form or job searching.The main aim is to have motivated learners and the trick is to find out what motivates them and incorporate that in my lesson plans for the following few weeks. The ALC program doesn't have a fixed curriculum, teaching is need based. Learners often leave after they have acheived their immediate goal.

Assessing their current proficiency was a main takeaway from this session. This wasn't easy. I used an ice breaking technique. Thing in the bag. [won't work on your potential date :)] I asked them to take out an item in their bag that they would never leave home without. I picked out my MTA card and gave five reasons why it is important to me. Then I asked the two of them to tell me about why the mobile phone or the little bag in the bag the two had picked were important to them. This got them talking more to each other and share a few anecdotes about the thing in the bag. After getting the ball rolling, I got them to read out aloud different levels of materials, write a sample piece and do a little Language Experience. I will elaborate more on Language Experience and my take on lesson plan on my next post.
Handing them different levels of reading material to read out I looked at a few key abilties that make it easy for me to assess them. These are Sight word recognition, Letter name recognition and  decoding abilities. Looking at their writing sample helps too. I see misplaced capitals, misused punctuations, poor letter formation techniques : all very actionable and a definite on my lesson plan.

Last but not the least I ask them about their BackStory. What? Why? When? Where? Who ? How? were my friends on this session. This helped to find out wether they would be able to take time outside the two weekly sessions to work on their take home assignments. I could gauge to some extent a reading material that the learner would use in real life. The kind of support from a spouse or the family is also another thing I found out about. 

Some words I used here which I was clueless about before attending Tutor training -

Sight Words - words that can be recognized by the learner without sounding them out. i.e. recognizing words the same way that they recognize familiar faces in a picture. 'EXIT' , 'STOP', 'Coca-Cola', "McDonald's" etc.

Letter Name recognition - The ability to say the names of the alphabet

Decoding - The ability to break printed words into segments. This is a slower process than sight word reading as the reader has to disect a word by producing sounds and then combine the segments to form words. Non native english learners might be able to read the word correctly but not understand what they are reading.

During the course of tutor training I actually compared these aspects with my experience with Tamil. I have pretty much forgotten how if I hade any problems with English and Hindi. I was too young to recall anything now. But I started learning Tamil the summer before my parents planned to move to Chennai. I vividly remember my Grandpa instructing the two of us(sister and I) first on the alphabet and then the possible sounds and combinations on words. Till date I can read tamil at most times without understanding what I am reading. Largely because the language used in written tamil (books, periodicals and poems)are notches above Chennai Tamil [completely basterized by english,hindi and telugu words seeping in a-plenty.]. Well atleast I have graduated to watching Tamil movies without english subtitles now.

So that was my agenda for the session.

"Haven't you noticed Suddenly I am bright and breeeeeezy"

Getting to know you !

Ajay

The Adult Learning Experience from the eye of a rookie tutor : Post 1 Androgogy

I walked into the Elmhurst Library in search for a quick fix to my boredom on the train. It was early August 2010, around four months since I had moved into New York City. "A few graphic novels" I thought to my self - yes those are the easiest to digest and should keep me occupied on the commute. Leafing through the dc superheroes section I see a yellow Queens library flier. Its for the adult literacy center (ALC). [Link Here] I turn around and I see the door leading to the ALC located in the basement of the Elmhurst Library.The Library has the hustle and bustle of the community. My new community. A community to which I was new to. It was the need to get absorbed by the community that got me to sign up as a volunteer tutor at the ALC. I spent Saturdays in the following September attending tutor training sessions along with a bunch of other first time volunteers from all across Queens. Queens has around 65 public libraries [Link Here] , and 6 of them have ALCs located on their premises. The training period was lively, and full of debates, discussions and disagreements on methods of tutoring adults. A number of the volunteers had teaching background at schools. They were taken back by the difference in techniques that need to be used when tutoring adults. I found myself more open to these methodologies than the teachers were.

Andragogy, or the study of adult learning was developed out of a realization that there is a difference between the way adults learned as children, and the way they approach learning as adults.

"..if in an educational situation an adult's experience is ignored, not valued, not made use of, it is not just the experience that is being rejected; it is the person. Hence the great importance of using the experience of adult learners as a rich resource for learning. This principle is especially important in working with the undereducated adults, who, after all, have little to sustain their dignity other than their experience" 

 "...For the most part, adults do not learn for the sake of learning: they learn in order to be able to perform a task, solve a problem, or live in a more satisfying way .."

Excerpt from : Malcolm Knowles (1984) Andragogy in action : Applying Modern principles of Adult Learning

Malcolm Knowles is one of the most frequently cited theorists in adult education, and is frequently referred to as the "Father of Andragogy".

Through out these posts I will try and bring out how my experience as a tutor, has fared over time. I will end this post with a short introduction to the learning group assigned to me. My learning group has two adult learners. Again I would hate to call this a class, or any form of tutor and student model. As a tutor I am learning as much from them about literacy coaching as they are about the written form of the language. A middle age Nepalese lady, working part time as a baby sitter in Queens  is my first learner-friend. Her husband works in a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. She has three school going kids, no formal education and been in New York City for five years. A young African-American lady, a high school drop out is my second learner-friend. Her husband is a painter, electrician and a plumber . She has four kids, all of whom live in Alabama with her cousin. She has been in New York all her life.

Literacy Tutor Update #2 : Tania's Thanksgiving update

Hi Everyone,

John, Linda, Theresa and Merlene.  Thanks a lot for your input.  It was very helpful. My tour for tutoring my particular group is ending soon.  The original tutor should be back by the beginning of December.  Boo hoo. I was really bonding with these ladies. But I am sure Ken and I will be able to come up with another exciting assignment.

John, I like your "sinking ship and deserted island"  exercise and was also impressed by the list that came out of it. You mentioned that sometimes your group goes as high as 10 students. Is that more difficult to manage?  And what would you consider the ideal size? Theresa, I like the idea that you are introducing more difficult words to your group, such as intimidating.  I just assigned egregious and chaperone to mine recently. And there were quite a few groans from the students about that. But I figure books are not just made up of simple words.  It certainly can't hurt for them to learn a few big ones.  In fact, I dare say it would be "egregious" if they didn't.  (tee hee.).  Merlene,  I really liked the way you  called your group a family.  I look at my group like that too.

It is amazing to me how dedicated these students are.  They come in all kinds of weather and no matter how bad the transit system is. They may come late, but by Jove, they're there!  The enthusiasm to learn how to read is quite high. I happened to arrive during the registering of new literacy students and could barely enter the building because of the crush of people, some pushing, others shoving to get inside. The last time I saw something like that, Macy's was having a HUGE sale. 

Well I have to skedaddle. Tomorrow we will be reading about the tsetse fly and going over our word lists.  

I hope everybody has a Happy Thanksgiving and I also hope to see everyone at the ALC annual Holiday/Winter Party Tuesday, Dec. 14th, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Cheers.

Tania

Literacy Tutor Update : Tania's Learning Group

Hey Everybody,

Hope you are all well.  I just finished my third class coaching adults in literacy and so far it has been great fun.  I have an unusual arrangement.  One of the tutors was leaving New York for a month and asked Ken if I could sub for her during her time away.  I had met this tutor when I did my observation of her class.  We hit it off and the rest is history.

The class I've taken over consists mostly of four or five women, ranging from the age of 35 to perhaps mid 40s.  They hail from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guyana and our very own Jamaica, Queens. They are reading I think at a third grade level.    We meet at the Central Adult Learning Center every Monday and Thursday, 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. 

The tutor and I work a little differently than what was taught in the tutor training workshop. We don't do silent reading. Everybody always reads aloud. This helps us as tutors pick up any mistakes that are being made. We also correct ungrammatical or pronunciation errors, but we do so gently and never harp on an error.  The students don't mind and the extra help definitely makes them better readers. I seen improvement in just the three sessions.

Homework is given sparingly, although I have made it a point of giving each student a list of five to eight words to define and put in sentences after every session.  If they do it, great. If they don't, we don't sweat it. We can do the assignment right there at the table. The words usually come from the story we have read, but also from any discussion that arises. For example, one of the words they had to learn was peroxide, because one of the students arrived in class with dyed blond hair and was sharing the process of hair coloring with everybody.  They also had to learn carburetor and transmission, because another student bragged about her expertise in fixing cars. Today's words included marathon, because one just happened, climate, because everybody was stumbling over the word in the text we read, and whole, because they kept confusing this word with hole.

We also discuss a little geography if it comes up in the text. I grab a globe and the students must find the region, country, island, continent, etc. on it. We discuss phonetics as well. One student kept complaining about seeing an upside e every time she encountered a pronunciation key.  At the next session we discussed how the upside down e is part of the phonetic alphabet and is pronounced "uh." 

These strategies seem to be working mostly because the students are at a fairly high reading level. I'm not sure if I would employ these techniques with students who are trying to learn the alphabet.

Well that's it for now.  If anybody has any tips or stories about their literacy tutor experience, please share.  Knowledge is power.

Cheers.

Tania