What's the Problem?

For Arts of Communication class, Kennedy School of Government.  Assignment: Deliver a speech stating a problem and proposing solutions.  NB: Constrained by a four-minute max, there's a lot I couldn't get to.  And the story's true--but the name Maria Gomez isn't.

A year and a half ago, Maria Gomez, a woman in her mid-thirties who had immigrated from Peru about a year before, stepped to the microphone in the event room in a small human-services agency in Roxbury.  She stood upright, her black hair pulled back over a pressed white blouse.  She was one of a group of adults graduating from a 5-month, twelve hour a week, English as a Second Language class.  She looked out at the crowd, and said, “When I went to the doctor’s for an appointment with my children, before, I had problems.  Now when I go to the doctor’s, I say, I don’t need a translator.”  In a place more accustomed to the artful speeches of Nanci Pelosi or David Brooks, it might seem curious to highlight the testimonial of a low-income immigrant parent.  Around here, it’s easy to overlook the adults in our community who lack basic skills.  Rather than overlook these folks, though, let’s give them a closer look.  The Roxbury program Maria graduated from was one I started and ran for two years; my adult education experience has taken me into consulting and teacher-training.  So today, I’d like to describe the problem of immigrant literacy—and recommend some solutions.

Maria is not alone.  2 million immigrants enter the US annually; half of them either have low literacy or don’t speak English.  There are many consequences: let me focus on two: our economy—and our next generation.  First, all the research shows, if we’re going to maintain America’s global competitiveness, our workers must get better skills.  To this, some would say, why focus on helping immigrants make a big leap in their skills?  Why not focus on workers who already speak English and have some skills, helping them make the small steps to move up in the economy?  The answer brings me to our second consequence: the next generation.  More and more, our K-12 students are the children of immigrants.  And a parent with low literacy is less likely to pay attention to their kids’ homework or pick up the phone and call their teacher.  The struggle for adult literacy is a struggle for the economy and for our children.  And Maria is a great example of what’s possible: after my class, she kept studying English, got her citizenship, and started a Home Health Aide training program. 

Maria's an example of someone with low skills who found a solution.  The bigger problem is, we’re not serving enough people like Maria, and we’re not serving them well enough.  That’s a two-fold problem: capacity and quality.  First, capacity: Right here in Cambridge, go down Mass Ave about a mile to the Community Learning Center.  Their waitlist is 434 people long.  Statewide, a study in the 90s verified there were 15,000 people on waitlists for ESL.  That means months or years waiting for a seat.  Second, quality.  According to a national evaluation, a third of all adult ESL students leave class within the first two months.  Why does somebody drop out?  He doesn’t feel like he’s making much progress.  Or programs hold classes during the day—and that’s when his job is.

Let me move to solutions.  The adult literacy field needs something like what the Celtics have needed for two years: to get bigger, and get better.  First, the bigger part.  Proposing more funding for anything is a tough sell these days.  But an investment in education is a down payment for our economy and our kids.  That argument may not carry the day everywhere, but it sure does in some places.  Indeed, right here, in his recent State of the Commonwealth speech, Governor Patrick proposed building workers’ skills, in part through increased funding for community colleges—which happen to be a key bridge to higher skills for many immigrants.  That wisdom for investing in the future should be extended to adult ESL.  But an alternative to government support are public-private partnerships.  In Chinatown, the Asian American Civic Association goes into Tufts Medical Center, and offers three levels of ESL for hospital employees.  It’s good for everyone, and Tufts picks up the tab. 

           

           Some will ask: why make a system bigger when it hasn’t proven its effectiveness at current scale?  To address that serious concern brings me to my second solution: Should adult-education get bigger, it must get much, much better.  That third of students who drop out?  We need to get them to where Maria got.  The best solutions will probably come from the dedicated teachers who understand how to work with adults.  But here are a few of my ideas: locate ESL programs in K-12 schools, and provide daycare.  Increase professional development for teachers to provide an engaging curriculum that students like and learn from.  And make sure students are in the right classroom in the first place.  Increase assessment when students start class—what does Maria already know?  What does she struggle with?—and get students in a class with others at similar levels, so they aren’t lost, or bored.  Those are a few ideas: there are many more. 

           As future policymakers, I ask you: when the conversation turns to education, please think of it beyond just K-12.  Think of adults, too.  As citizens, I ask you: when we talk about immigration, let’s move beyond culture or who doesn’t belong.  Let’s move the conversation to the skills everyone needs.  Let’s move the conversation to how to help more people get those skills, and help themselves, their children, and our entire economy.  Thank you. 

Modest Proposals (for Family Engagement)

Adapted from a class activity on engaging families of children aged 0-5.  Assignment: Develop a slogan and talking points to be used by the Secretary of Education to promote literacy and learning development.  What our team came up with, in 25 minutes, minus the snazzy poster:

Get Active: Read!

Books are for babies too!

            Even babies can benefit from regular exposure to shared bookreading.  Reading to your child teaches them how to listen, associate words with meaning and helps their overall language development.

Ask!  Point!  Talk!

            When your child is old enough to talk, ask them questions about what you’ve read.  Point to the words on the page.  This helps your child learn their letters and prepares them for preschool.  Let them help turn the pages of the book.  Talk to your child about what is happening in the story, what the characters are doing and what they think will happen next.  Don’t forget to hold your child on your lap while you read so they learn in a nurturing space.

Libraries: Free and Friendly!

            Where can reading happen?  Your public library provides a completely free, safe space for your child to take a book journey.  Library cards are free and allow you to check out books and take them home.  Your child can also listen to storytellers read books to them with other children in your community.  With thousands of books to explore, your supply will never run out.

Early reading experiences help unlock the gift of lifelong learning for your child!

From Dependence to Independence: Building Community Outside of Class

This past spring, a couple weeks into my adult ESOL class, a couple students came up to me and said, "We'd like to have a Friday Social every week."  "Sure," I said.  By the next week, a half dozen students were delegating who was responsible for napkins or cutlery and who was on salad duty, lugging in huge plates of food, and hobnobbing with fellow classmates they'd only met a scant few weeks before.

On the one hand, what could be better?  We were building a community for folks who often lacked one.  My students came from neighborhoods high in poverty in violence, from which most families try valiantly to shield their kids, if not just get out.  Some of my students lived in shelters--so they were definitely trying to get out of their communities.  Most of my students toiled to raise their families in relative isolation.

Friday Social was a chance to kick back among a newfound group of peers.  At the bare minimum, they could let off some steam between learning the present continuous and setting realistic goals (woo-woo!).  More than that, the social was a space to share what their lives were like, and learn from each other: What do you do for daycare for your daughter?  What's your son's school like?

But I was faced with this dilemma: the student social started running 10 minutes over the 15 minutes which had always been the allotted time, making it tougher to dive into important material after break.  And the social was happening all in Spanish--while most of the students were Latin American, one was from Africa.  To tackle the language use, I introduced the concept of "small talk," modeling questions you could ask your classmate as you munched arepa: How's your family?  Where do you live?  I then had different students prepare questions for each week ahead of time. 

To tackle the time issue, I brokered an agreement: Social could last 20 minutes (more than the usual 15-minute break), so long as 15 of those minutes were spent speaking English.  While I reveled in the organically, student-created nature of Friday Social, I accepted their gracious invitation to eat alongside them, but maintained a low profile.  It was their space.

In my constant mission to move students from dependence to interdependence and independence, Friday Social was, unintentionally, a great example both of how an interdependent, out-of-class culture can crop up among adult learners, and of some of the dilemmas such a cultural gathering poses in practice.

At the end of the day, for folks living in poverty, especially immigrants, the chance to build a support network was incredibly valuable.  When it comes to moving adults toward relying on each other and on themselves, there are many steps to be taken.  But rather than provide my usual list of promising practices, as I have about gaining independence in language acquisition and classroom culture, I wonder what more I could do.

Imagine if students created working groups outside of class to share ideas about public benefits, education programs, and supports for their children? ...


created parent unions for their schools? ...


protested adult-education budget cuts?

These are just the tip of the iceberg.  Things I haven't gotten to yet.

What ideas do you have?

Eight Is the Loneliest Number

Every once in a while, a statistic just comes out of nowhere and knocks me down.  The share of GED recipients who actually complete college once they've started (now, there's a conversation for another day).  The Red Sox' abysmal September record (now, there's a conversation for ... oh wait, there might not be another day).

Yesterday's stunner?  A number (from the 90s) showing that only 8 percent of public investment in education is spent on children birth-to-5.   

Everything we know says that kids cognitive, emotional, linguistic development has a huge, lifelong impact.  Why don't we fund 0-5 better?

Now, I understand: the public K-12 system is a 500-billion-dollar gorilla taking up much, much more than 8 percent.  A lot of birth-to-five life happens at home.  The private-public balance for daycare is more on the private end than in K-12.  The "Head Start didn't work" perception is out there--even if it's not entirely true.  But it's still shocking how little our society invests in arguably the most important five years of life.


For society at large, I think it comes to down to this: perception of crisis.  Major foundations like Gates, Broad, and Walton zealously fund all stripes of K-12 school reform.  These initiatives are problematic in many ways, but I think they've caught fire among donors because of the obvious crisis of American high schools.  Open the paper and you read about this-or-that failing school.  Turn on the news and you get a steady diet of "kids these days'" troubles with drugs and gangs.  Employers are finding that young adults can't do the job.  Colleges are finding freshman can't do the classwork.

But there's very much a 0-5 "crisis," as well.  Toddlers with health problems, kids who haven't seen letters or heard enough talking at home, and on and on.  But this crisis is much more silent.  It has to do with complicated genetic-environment interactions beyond the grasp or interest of policymakers.  Further, three-year-olds who are falling behind aren't marauding the streets in gangs ... they're just not getting right kind of attention or discipline from Mom or Dad.  And even if kindergarten teachers can already see the negative outcomes, these outcomes aren't blaring over the news or failing in droves out of Stats 101 at Your Local State College.

So we don't intuitively grasp early-childhood issues the way we do with older kids.  Even if we did, where would the political will be to act?  Kids don't vote.  Parents of poor, at-risk kids don't either.

Just yesterday, I heard a former advocacy worker say: You have to kiss serious politico butt to get lawmakers to give money to early childhood.  I don't want to be mired in pessimism, but how do we change this?

Speaking My Language

Does a parent's low literacy affect their child's language acquisition?

That was the question that came up yesterday in a class I'm taking.  I'm neither a linguist nor a developmental psychologist, but I have plenty of experience helping parents with literacy and language acquisition. In hearing the question, I thought: Absolutely not.  At least, it shouldn't have to be that way.

First, defining terms, "parental low literacy" entails a struggle in one or more of the pillars of reading, e.g. decoding, fluency, phonemic awareness.  (In their own language, I mean; a lot of folks struggle to read English while learning to speak English, and the two are connected, but that's for another day).

Many of my adult clients have had low literacy in their native language, but they were all fluent speakers of their language.  And there's no reason their children can't pick up language well, too.  The parent needs to use a lot of "parentese"--real words, phrases, and sentences tailored to the child.  Lots of back-and-forth with the child, even if it's responding to their babbling with words and questions.  High-pitch, slow cadence, overemphasizing some words.  That's not all you need for language acquisition, but it's the bedrock.

Beyond that, the amount of language and kind of language the child hears has a big impact on their cognitive development.  Lots of words, and not just commands or admonitions, but speech about the past, future, colors, objects, emotions.  Mixed with songs, which are a great way to teach cadence and introduce children to rhyme.  The more of that you get, the better those kids' brains as they head to school!

And at home, it can happen in any language--Somali, Spanish, Mai Mai, you name it.  The development is the key.

We know that kids from tough backgrounds come to school having heard fewer words, and less of a variety.  That affects their learning.  Their parents may tend to have low literacy, but that doesn't mean the latter caused the former.  If your mom's got low literacy, it doesn't doom you to low language acquisition--as long as there's a healthy serving of good, solid "parentese."

A final note: The question for policy-makers and nonprofits is, How do we help parents help their children pick up language?  In a way that's respectful, cost-effective, and reaches the parents most in need of help?  How do we increase the supply of high-quality childcare that's brimming with language enrichment?  Going forward, there's a whole lot I'd like to say about that.