By Marie Hassett, ABCD LearningWorks, Boston
Summary
I teach English language arts and math in the Adult Basic Education II class at LearningWorks evening program. I often use content-based materials because I believe that literacy and numeracy skills are best learned within a meaningful and relevant context. For this particular unit, I chose to focus on the ideas presented in Unit 2 of the FannieMae Foundation's Adult Basic Education curriculum, "Finding Your Dream Home." I knew at the beginning of the project that most of my students were in what might be characterized as a pre-, pre-homebuying stage. Several of them are currently homeless, recently released from incarceration, or living on Disability Income. For these students, it seemed more appropriate to use this project to help them think about what a home is, and what having a home means in our culture.
The materials for these lessons were selected for their accessibility, relatedness to key concepts, and usefulness as starting points for discussion. Since the primary focus of an ABE II class is developing students' literacy, I chose a variety of genres of reading material to supplement the FannieMae Foundation's curriculum: poetry, fiction, non-fiction narrative, and a newspaper article. The content of the materials allowed us to address topics as various as geography, science math, social studies, and literature. Since a number of my students are immigrants, I wanted to include this perspective in the reading material I chose.
Most of the students enjoyed the homebuying readiness material, and all students participated in class discussion. One student, who was living in a shelter when we began the unit, moved into his own apartment while we were studying these materials in class. His comments about what it meant to have a home were a great contribution to our discussions.
The most sobering lesson we undertook addressed the cost of living issues. All of my students can be classified as low-income, and for many of them, coming up with enough money to meet their expenses presents an ongoing challenge. We figured out a one month budget for a two-earner family with one child, each parent earning slightly more than minimum wage, but less than $10 per hour. Although many of the students are working and living under similar conditions, most of them had not calculated their cost of living in this way before. It was obvious from the exercise that without some sort of assistance, from extended family, private, or public sources, that a family in this situation would be unable to save the money that would allow them to put a down payment on a house, pay for closing costs, or even maintain monthly mortgage payments.
The following self-designed lessons -- What is a Home?, A Poet's View of America as Home, What Makes a Home Right?, The House On Mango Street, and What Does a Home Cost -- comprise the backbone of what we did in class. In that way, I chose to use the unit in the FannieMae Foundation curriculum as a conceptual jumping-off point.
LESSON ONE: WHAT IS A HOME?
Vocabulary:
"I should have called it something you somehow haven't to deserve."
Describe the place that has been most homelike to you.
LESSON TWO: A POET'S VIEW OF AMERICA AS HOME
Vocabulary:
Abelardo Delgado, "Stupid America."
Questions:
Describe a stereotype that affects your life.
LESSON THREE: WHAT MAKES A HOME RIGHT?
Vocabulary:
Contemporary Reader. Volume 1, #5, pp. 54-63.Questions:
Reading:
Sandra Cisneros, "The House on Mango Street"Questions:
Describe the house that you want to live in.
LESSON FIVE: WHAT DOES A HOME COST?
Reading:
Stephanie Ebbert. "Advocates running out of options to shelter homeless." Boston Globe, April 6, 1999.Questions
Figure out what kinds of jobs people can get and how much those jobs will pay if the applicant has a GED/high school diploma or less. Now, figure out a budget for:
Reflections
Although we have left this unit for other topics, we continue to talk about the issues that were raised by the homebuying readiness materials. For the students who are employed and in stable living conditions, this unit provided an impetus to think about their long-term goals and plans relative to housing. As a result of an informal conversation during our class-break one night, several students have enrolled in the Boston Oil Consumers Alliance (BOCA), which will help them to save money on their heating bills. I think that what this unit has done is to help students think about what they have control over in their housing situations, and what it would take to gain greater control. And while this may not lead to homebuying in the short-term, it will empower them in a way that makes the long-term goal of owning a home a more realistic one.
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