By Deborah Marquardt, W.A.I.T.T. House, External Diploma Program, Roxbury
 

Summary

Most of my teaching responsibilities at W.A.I.T.T. House are connected to Boston's External Diploma Program (EDP). However, I also teach a Career Awareness Lifeskills class to ABE participants who are preparing to take the diagnostic tests necessary to enter EDP.

 The class usually meets for three 50-minute periods each week; and the curriculum is varied, serving as an introduction to the lifeskills topics that make up the EDP tasks. For instance, trips to area colleges, presentations from training program staff, and an examination of the job finding process and employment opportunities prepare participants for the future EDP Career Awareness task assignments. Particular attention is paid to writing skills in this class so that participants are oriented to the challenging writing standards necessary for EDP success.

W.A.I.T.T. House is also committed to making sure participants have access to community resources which can improve the quality of their lives. Workshops which focus on various areas such as health, government resources, consumer awareness, and legal rights are offered on a regular basis.

I think that the FannieMae Foundation's homebuying curriculum was an excellent addition to W.A.I.T.T. House's Career Awareness/Lifeskills class. I adapted the curriculum to focus on skills which are required for the EDP and to support information from scheduled workshops on homebuying, personal finance, and lead and asthma risks in the home.

For the homebuying readiness unit, there were thirteen participants from various cultural backgrounds and of various ages.

Lesson One: A Homebuying Workshop

As an introduction to the unit, Herbert Riggs, the Homebuying Consultant from the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) presented his Homebuying Workshop to the class. The class started out a little hesitantly, with participants resisting Mr. Riggs' assertions that homeowning is a goal within their reach. Questions like "What if you get fired?" were voiced early on. As Mr. Riggs took the class through a financial scenario of a family of modest finances who reaches their goal of homebuying, participants slowly relaxed and started to absorb the information. Mr. Riggs explained some of the financial programs available, such as the City of Boston's "soft second" loan programs. He broke down the actual costs of buying and maintaining a house on the blackboard with the help of the participants. Participants began to smile and nod as they learned that home owning costs were comparable and in some cases, more reasonable than renting costs in the current Boston housing market.

At this point, students began to volunteer other advantages to home ownership, such as the good feeling of having your home be "yours" and being able to fix your home up the way you want it without having to worry about the landlord. The students were at their most enthusiastic when Mr. Riggs stated, "When you own property, it gives you power."

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, in partnership with the City of Boston's Department of Community and Neighborhood Development continually offers a five-week homebuying class in the community. When Mr. Riggs invited students to register for one such class, students asked for information regarding the times and dates!

Lesson Two: Advantages and Disadvantages of Home Ownership

Following the first-time homebuying mini-workshop, I wanted to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of home ownership with the class as a way to sum up the information presented by Mr. Riggs. I also wanted to answer any questions participants might have had as a result of the workshop.

The class read page seven of the FannieMae Foundation's ABE curriculum How to Buy Your Own Home. Its heading is "Advantages and disadvantages of home ownership." We compiled a list of pros and cons on the board, and took the time to discuss each item in detail. This worked out well because much of the terminology was new to the students.

As the discussion developed, I discovered that four of the participants already own their homes. They were able to lend their personal experience to the group. One participant owns a two-family house and rents one of the apartments. She told of some trouble that she has had with tenants, but she also explained that the rent she collects can pay her mortgage.

Through the whole conversation students were very engaged and asked some very interesting questions. For instance, during a discussion of the houses that the City of Boston sells to people for very low prices, one woman wanted to know what would happen if you paid your mortgage but not your property taxes. I explained that the city and the banks have that one figured out; by combining both bills into one payment, home and property owners could not get away with paying for one without the other. Then the woman with the rental apartment wondered whether it would save her money in the long run to pay extra principle each month. I explained that if she indeed paid more on her principle, that she would pay her mortgage off earlier and would save money on the accrued interest.

Lesson Three: Consumer Advocacy

We began to learn about consumer skills, competencies that students must be familiar with if they are to pass into the External Degree Program (EDP). Beginning with a graph of income ranges of first-time homebuying which we found on page four of the FannieMae Foundation's How to Buy Your Own Home, we reviewed the appropriate math terms and concepts. We also covered page five of the workbook which examined the steps for changing a percent to a decimal, following the book's example with board work practice using the problems from the text. Both of these math skills were new ones for the students, however they are able to follow the procedures and to correctly respond to additional problems presented. Although the math teacher covered percentages and decimals in much more detail later in the cycle, this kind of introduction to such an important math operation was very valuable because the students wanted the actual data in order to make a decision about something of significance in their lives- their housing possibilities.

Another important focus of the EDP's Consumer Awareness task is careful study of consumer contracts, such as credit card applications and rental leases. Unit Four of the FannieMae Foundation's Adult Literacy curriculum, How to Buy Your Own Home includes a section on interpreting product warranties. It served as an excellent introduction to consumer awareness. Students completed the Comprehension Check on page 95, and then together, we discussed the answers. Although there were some incorrect responses, the students who answered correctly took the lead in explaining why those responses were not accurate. We then moved on to preliminary work on the Emergency Phone List at the bottom of the same page. Students filled in the information using the phone book as a resource. Later in the cycle, when their research skills were more developed, students had another chance to revise this assignment.

Lesson Four: Writing Critique Essays

The External Degree Program's (EDP's) Community Awareness task requires participants to attend a live performance and to visit a museum. Those experiences are then described in separate critique essays. These can be difficult assignments for students, who often don't "absorb" the performance or museum fully enough to describe the experiences in adequate detail. Preliminary descriptive writing in the Career Awareness/ Lifeskills class provides an opportunity to work with the rhetorical pattern of critiquing art and literature before facing these challenging EDP essays.

With that in mind, I searched for a short descriptive piece that captured the essence of home. The piece I found is in a book called Home: A Collaboration of Thirty Distinguished Authors and Illustrators of Children's Books to Aid the Homeless, (edited by Michael J. Rosen. Harper Collins. New York. 1992).

I chose the piece called "The Lightwell" by Laurence Yep. Accompanying the writing there is a lovely illustration by Sheila Hamanaka, so I arranged to have the illustration computer-scanned by W.A.I.T.T. House's technology specialist, Anthony Centeio. This enabled me to distribute copies of the text and the illustration as they appeared in the book, enhancing the connection between the words and the visual detail they convey.

I gave the students time to read the piece silently and then I asked them how Mr. Yep was able to capture a time and place so vividly. They first mentioned visual images, all the references to light for instance. Then they caught on to the role that the other senses played in their "reading" of the work, especially the sense of sound. We listed the senses on the board, and students eagerly volunteered phrases from the piece which fit each sense. This lead to a discussion about how without an explained reference to the sense of touch, the more immediate feeling of touch is experienced by the reader through the sound of the word "slap" when wet laundry is being hung in the passage.

After the discussion, students were given a writing assignment: Describe a place that feels like "home" to you. I was very pleased with the results, especially given how early in the cycle it still was. Later in the cycle, I gave the writings back to the students for revision.

Lesson Five: Financial Literacy

Kevin Winn, a community educator/liaison from U.S. Trust, spoke to the class about finance issues. He is a frequent presenter at W.A.I.T.T. House and a particular favorite with the students. In the past, he has been able to make banking seem accessible even to people who express suspicion about the motives of large financial institutions. Upon hearing of the students' interest in homebuying, he offered to explain the loan process from the bank's point of view. He described what criteria the bank deems important when reviewing loan applications, and he offered advice about how to prepare for the loan application process. He also focused on fixing credit problems and how students can obtain their credit reports to begin to do that. As always, his information was clear and practical, and it added another important perspective to the homebuying process.

Reflections

As I stated earlier, the homebuying readiness project and accompanying curriculum, was of great value to the Career Awareness/Lifeskills class that I taught. The homebuying readiness unit provided an opportunity for participants in the class to learn new skills, practice writing, math and consumer awareness as well as to learn about the homebuying process itself. Of equal importance, the unit demonstrated how home ownership could be a future housing option for the students and not just a faraway, unreachable dream.