Last week, I laid out a concern facing many adult language learners: when you've maxed out the course offerings at one site, how do you find the next class? Especially in a climate of long waitlists at the publicly- or grant-funded programs sought out by many low-income immigrants? At my former small agency, where we could only support a five-month beginning-level ESOL course, the issue of connecting students to "next steps" became so paramount that one of the most important parts of the program became what students would get to do after the program.
Because all of my students wanted so badly to keep studying English once they'd gotten an initial taste, I developed, through trial and error, a series of activities designed to help them do just that. I had a few guiding principles. First, I wanted to elicit students' interest in next steps. I had my own theoretical bases for why it was desirable for students to keep their language-acquisition momentum, and was happy enough to share it, but I tried to maximize their own urgency. Second, it's a big, bad (well, at least long-waitlisted) world. The Boston area, like many metropolitan regions, is replete with agencies, course offerings, and levels of study. Negotiating these thickets in English is hard enough; harder still if one is learning English. I was there to support students. Finally, I made the process iterative. This might be nice: write down three program phone numbers; add water; enroll in intermediate English. But it's unrealistic. The issued needed to be visited, then revisited.
So here's the rough sequence of activities to help students explore--and secure--"next steps":
Pose the Problem: Using the "problem-posing" methods derived from the revolutionary Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, I introduce a "codification" of the problem of continuing English. Usually I show students a picture of a few adults sitting at home, looking downbeat (thanks, Google Docs), with a couple lines of dialogue from each I've typed on the paper: "I used to study English at X location. I called Y program. I'm waiting." I lead students through a five-stage process to uncover the dilemma, make meaning of it, and develop an action plan for the characters. At the end, I ask: What would you do in this situation? And it turns into an action plan for themselves.
Write a Script: Students brainstorm questions to ask a program when they call it, e.g., Is there a cost? What levels do you have? When does class meet? What's your address? Students can usually hit the main ones themselves. Teachers can suggest others they might have missed. I help them collectively edit the quesitons, then pass out a "next-steps" form. They write down the questions, and the form goes in a sacred spot in their binders.
Practice Phone Calls: This is your classic practice asking and answering the questions students have devised. Student A is potential program registrant; Student B is a staff member at the agency being called. It's more fun when students pull out their cells. For those who are ready, it's most fun (and realistic, and challenging) when one student goes into another room, actually calls the other, then holds the conversation.
Bring in a Guest Speaker: In the past, I'd invite an adult-ed mentor of mine, whom I'll call Tim, a highly-respected program director at another program, to visit my class to talk about next steps. He'd talk about "confidence," answer students' many questions (in English!), and recommend programs to look at. Students already have an intrinsic drive for next steps, but this exposes them to another voice to reinforce the message and motivate them. And, it provides them with a connection to a program. I used Tim's visit as a placeholder the rest of my course to connect back to the next steps concept.
Find Programs: I provide students with directories of local English classes, divided by neighborhood. Sometimes this means packets printed from the state Department of Education Web site, or Boston's English for New Bostonians Web site. Sometimes this means directing students to those Web sites, with guidance on how to navigate the search functions. Students fill out a preset worksheet with contact information for four to six programs.
Call Programs: A nice weekend homework assignment: between Friday and Tuesday, call two programs, ask the questions you brainstormed earlier, and write down the answers. Now, some programs' outreach officers speak languages common to Boston immigrants, like Spanish or Haitian Creole. But not always. And few programs have staff who speak languages like Mai Mai or Somalian that other students of mine have spoken. So while students may find they can simply speak their native language when calling certain programs, they'll have to ask the questions in English sometimes.
Share Back: After the first homework assignment, I have students share with each other the information they've heard from other programs. If one student calls a program in Jamaica Plain and there are no intermediate classes, another student can cross that program off her list, and add in a different program that might make more sense. We also discuss how it's going: Are there other questions students should be asking? Did somebody's aunt just get in a program nobody knew about? Do they have more spaces? Often this informal networking is just as important to getting students in continuing education.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: The next week or weekend's homework is to call three or four more programs.
Celebrate Successes: One morning last spring, a student came into my class early: "I have news," she said, "I have a class for August!" Chances were, she had already told classmates the good tidings, but I asked her if I could put her on the agenda to make sure everyone heard, and celebrated, her news.
Hit the Pavement: I take my students to visit one other program, which in the past has been a well-respected site, located downtown off several bus or train lines, with multiple ESOL levels. Such a visit, at which the program's outreach coordinator presented the course offerings and registration process, gave the concept of "next steps" yet another friendly face, provided a practical option for many students, and gave them practice getting there on public transit. A visit to a local literacy center got at the issue from the other end: most public libraries are hubs for education and job-placement resources.
Discuss Plan B: After a few weeks of this process, I often raise the qustion: what happens if you're put on waitlists everywhere you call? We brainstorm steps: read books, go to the literacy center, take a lighter-level conversation class at the library; call me for more ideas. I make sure everyone has my cell phone number (though not every teacher would be comfortable with this) and office number to call me for more support should they still be exploring classes after graduating my course.
Follow Up Individually: Over the last few weeks of class, in one-on-one conferences with students, I check in with students about their progress finding classes. As important as whole-class activities are to investigate next steps, individual check-ins can uncover particular difficulties or be a space to comfortably suggest new pathways or ideas.
Connect to Curriculum: I haven't done this in every class, but in one course our next steps explorations coincided with a unit on Following Directions (turn left, turn right, where's the restaurant? and so on). I created mock conversation between a student and program staff involving directions from the train to a downtown program. I built it into a Jazz Chant, which students practiced over multiple classes, both to reinforce in a high-energy way what they were learning grammatically as well as to suggest language useful for phone calls. Ultimately, we turned it into a role-play, again with cell phones.
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As I look at these activities, carried out in this fashion, a few things stand out. First, it takes a lot of time and effort. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's striking how prominent a role this has played in my classroom. Second, there are obvious connections to students' self-advocacy for other resources. The most obvious parallel is to securing free or affordable childcare, a common issue for so many of my past students: just as with ESOL programs, there are eligibility requirements, many suppliers, a variety of ways in which the service is offered, and variation in quality. It might make sense to frame "searching for English classes" more explicitly as "searching for resources in general." Third, the process assumes the need for next steps is universal, and lays out the activities accordingly. In my experience, the need has been universal, but what about when several students have already discovered their next class. Does it make sense to continue to use everyone's classroom time to address the remaining needs of a few students? What would it look like to do some next-steps activities on a voluntary, out-of-class-time basis?
My dear Blog Visitors--what stands out to you? What sounds good? What's missing here? What could be done differently?
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