by Deborah Schwartz, the Adult Literacy Resource Institute, Boston
 

SUMMARY

As an adult educator coordinating a staff development project with fifteen of my peers, I hoped to create conditions in which teachers could reflect and experiment with their teaching, as well as have access to the many homebuying readiness lessons and resources available to them.

The following five lessons - The Theme of Home in Literature and Writing, How Much Money Will It Cost?, Neighborhood Criteria for Beginning ESOL Learners, Neighborhood Criteria for Advanced ESOL Learners, and an Introduction to Homebuying on the World Wide Web were developed as a way to "model" various kinds of homebuying readiness lesson plans and teaching strategies. But really, these lessons are the product of a staff development process that involved teacher sharing, discussion, reflection and collaboration.

THE THEME OF HOME IN LITERATURE AND WRITING: a lesson on reading literature and writing creatively

This lesson first grew out of a series of in-class discussions and writing activities that I facilitated in my role as ABE teacher at the Archdale Family Literacy Project (AFLP) in the Spring of 1998. Throughout the course of the lessons, my adult students offered feedback on what and how they were learning. They were hooked into the lessons that expressive writing and literature offered them and they wanted a say about things. At the end of the unit, the class revised the lesson plans and looked for a new group of students to try it out on. At the community center where the family literacy program was held, we found some teenagers who were willing.

One evening after the Archdale Family Literacy Project's regular hours of operation, the adult students and I tried out the new version of lessons with a small group of youth aged 14-18 who in their words were "looking for something to do." Now, after participating in conversations with this year's homebuying readiness project teachers, conversations where we would speak about the valuable and surprising ways in which literature and creative writing had crept into the homebuying readiness lessons, I went back to the original AFLP lessons, and revised again.

 The writing, reading and revising activities are meant to introduce students to the topic of homebuying. The lessons are also meant to jar students' memory, encourage students' to experiment with and deepen their use of metaphor, rhythm and story, invite students to study how other writers use these tools of the trade and demonstrate to students how to practice applying some of what they've learned to their own work.
 

Session One: A Three Part Writing Activity (Finding Voice through Memory):

REVISITING YOUR FIRST HOME: a pre-writing activity to be done without pen or paper. Adapted from a writing exercise designed by Mark Doty

Ask your students to close their eyes and picture walking through the first house they ever lived in.

Tell them this, or something like this: "If you cannot remember the first house you ever lived in, be content to imagine the first house you do remember. Or perhaps, the house you live in now is the only house you ever lived in. What ever the circumstances, you are going to imagine slowly walking through each room and looking carefully at each detail in that room."

"First enter the front or side or back door. Do you have a key? Is the door open? Are there smells of cooking or food coming from the kitchen? The sound of a t.v. or radio? What or who greets you as you walk through the front door. And where do you end up once you've walked through the door? In a hallway? A room?"

"In the next few minutes you will walk your way through the house, trying to remember as much detail as possible. What colors are the walls? Are there pictures on them or photographs? What kind of furniture sits in each room? As you slowly walk through the house, remember as much as you can about each room. You can pan the room or scan from the bottom of the floor to the top of the ceiling. You can also look out windows, under the cushions of sofas or through magazine racks. Or you can just enter the room and see what strikes you about it- see what first comes barreling through the filter of your memory. "

"The point is to go as slowly as possible and to observe what you see as if you are actually visiting the house. You will have at least ten minutes of undisturbed time to do this exercise. You will not have to report back what you've found. You will walk through the house slowly and take as much time as you like in each room."

"OK, open your front, side or back door and enter the house."

Possible Modifications: As a class, brainstorm possible questions to help draw out details about each room. Do this before you begin the visualization.

Ask the student-writer to walk through the house at various ages and times of his/her life, for instance, as an eight year old coming home from school or on a rainy day.

Hints To the Teacher: If a student is having a hard time visualizing the house, you can work individually, asking him or her to describe the rooms in the house to you while you record. Or you can prompt their memory with questions that ask for a detailed and a specific kind of recall, i.e.: What room are you in right now? Are you standing or walking on a hardwood floor? A carpet, linoleum? What do you see when you stand in the center of the room and look straight ahead? Does the room smell a particular way? Are there windows? Are they open? What's the temperature like in the house?

You can also ask students to work in pairs, taking turns recording and narrating.

 B. Refining Memory in Preparation for Writing; part two of the pre-writing activity (involving drawing and graphing)

Materials: graph and unlined paper, pencil or pen

 Ask student-writers to draw a floor plan of their remembered house. If the house is multi-level have the student chose only one floor to draw.

When students are done drawing the floor plan, ask them to place an object of significance in each of the rooms. Most likely, the memory of the objects will come from the previous visualization activity, but if not, that's fine too.

C. Timed, Focused Free-Writing Exercises (the actual writing)

Ask students to choose three objects that they placed in their house.

Ask students to write about the objects spending five to seven minutes on each one.

Materials: writing journal or paper, pens, pencils or markers, floor plan of student-writer's house.

Hint to the Teacher; a note about focused free-writing exercises:

Much has been written about timed, or focused, free-writing. It's the kinesthetic practice of writing that treats the mind like an active body part. Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones & Wild Mind) and Peter Elbow (Writing Without Teachers) are among its gurus. But even without guidance or prompt, you and your students can practice free writing easily: 1. Choose a topic, poem, image, feeling, phrase, shopping list or memory to write about for a short, timed period. 2. Keep your hand moving across the page, or if the case may be, punching the keyboard. Do it for the whole period of time. 3. If you can't think of what to write, write that: "I have nothing to say." But keep your hand moving no matter what. 4. Share your work afterwards without asking for feedback or judgment, keep it for posterity, or as the case may be, save it for revision. 5. Practice this form of expression like one practices lifting weights adding more or different weights as one grows stronger.
 

Session Two: Exploring Literature of Home (Hearing 0thers) The writings I used with students:

Poetry: to explore poetry on-line try: about.com 

Clifton, Lucille. "in the inner city" in good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980.

Doty, Mark. "Demolition" & "No" in My Alexandria.

Gallagher, Tess. "Willingly" in Amplitude.

Hughes Langston. "I, Too" in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.

Oliver, Mary. "The House" in New and Selected Poems.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. "Autumn Day" in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke(trans.Stephen Mitchell).

Rukeyser, Muriel. "Song" in A Muriel Rukeyser Reader (ed. Jan Heller Levi)

Shikibu, Izumi. "When the netted fence of spiderwebs…" in The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Kamachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan(trans. Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani.
 

Fiction

Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved.
 

MAKING MEANING OF THE LITERATURE:

What did the writing remind you of - a person you know, something that you remember happening to you, a song?

What did the literature make you feel? Sad, happy, excited, scared? Maybe it didn't move you at all which often happens when you first look at or read something, if so don't worry about it and move on to another piece of writing in the packet.

If you did think some thought about the piece or feel some feeling about it or have a question you might want to ask the writer, do at least one of the following exercises to learn more about your reaction to the poem or story.

Assign the poem or story a color. Find that color in things, places and people and make a list of where that color can be found.

Sing the poem or imagine who would ask sing it and how. Write about that.

Draw a house that looks like the poem? How big or small is the house? Is the house in good condition? Who lives there? Draw or tell a story about the house you've drawn.

Write a poem or story or cartoon strip or rap or song or drawing or doodle back to the author.
 

EXPLICATING LINES, IMAGES AND METAPHORS:

Choose one line. Copy it on a piece of paper and do a free write.

Choose one image or metaphor, draw it.

 Find one metaphor or simile, change it. Compete with it, seeing how many different metaphors or similes you can generate from this one original.
 
 

Session Three: Revising (Refining Voice)

A NOTE ABOUT REVISION:

Because revision is the willingness to experiment until you get something right, and because, as the poet Edward Hirsh tells us: "A poem has its own meaning encoded in it, the key to unlocking it's meaning is found only in each individual poem," revising poetry is allowing the poem to become what it is supposed to be. Therefore you will have to try many things to make the poem become itself. For that reason keep every draft or change to your work so that nothing is lost and so that, if you want to, after experimenting, you can still, always, come back to your original.

REVISION EXERCISES (Choose one of the following approaches or try them all)

1. Cut up your favorite lines in your own writing, Don't worry about story, chronology or even making sense. Place those lines or phrases on a big piece of paper, moving them around till they pose a problem or ask a question or just look good together. You are the editor now and you are looking for original thoughts and images, descriptions and word sounds. Remember to be sure to save an original copy of your unhampered writing. Play with the order of these favorite phrases, sentences or passages. Are some of them asking for more information or imagery or description. Open up those passages by creating room on your page and adding what needs to be added. Play with order again. What are the images you've created teaching you about where the poem is supposed to go? Do you like the rhythm of the whole thing? Are you interested in the writing like you were interested in the other writing we looked at? After each revision ask yourself if you like where the writing is going? There will be times where you won't. Produce three to four drafts. As a class we will vote on these drafts and possibly ask you for clarification of certain passages.

2. Ask your classmates to explain why they voted on it as their favorite. Is your favorite the same as the class's? If not, tell them which draft is your favorite and why. Because you are the writer, the author (which is the root word in authority) you are welcome to take their advice or leave it. Put the poem away for a whole week. Do you still like it as it is? Or is there more work to do on it? If you revise it some more, be sure to keep each draft.

3. Tap out or drum the rhythm of a stanza of a poem or paragraph of a story from the packet. Teach that rhythm to another student. That rhythm may remind you of something else- sweeping the kitchen floor, or the engine of the school bus or the talk of your friends. You can name the rhythm or not. But either way, look back at a section of your own work listening to that rhythm and change words or phrases in your own work that exaggerates that rhythm.

4. Choose one line from the poem or story in the packet that you love. Incorporate it into your own writing either explicitly (stick it in there) or implicitly (let the image, word choice, or idea slip into your own words).

5. Ask yourself if you have learned anything new from your own writing. Go back and revise again
 
 

Session Four: Performing

 Finish with an in-class reading, a program-wide poetry slam, or a celebration with performance, mask making, music playing and lots of food!

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HOW MUCH MONEY WILL IT COST SHAWNDA AND HER FAMILY TO BUY A TRIPLE DECKER?

(A FINANCIAL LITERACY/HOMEBUYING ACTIVITY FOR UPPER LEVEL ESOL & ABE STUDENTS)

This lesson asks students to review the A.L.R.I.'s and FannieMae Foundation's homebuying readiness materials in order to gain an understanding of the costs of buying and keeping a home. It can be used as a class project or as an assessment tool to evaluate how students research, ask questions and answer them. The teacher can provide an amortization chart that calculates interest rates paid on a specific amount of money over a period of time. These charts can be found in amortization handbooks at the public library or by speaking directly to a mortgage originator at a bank.

Shawnda Williams lives in Lynn, MA. She is tired of paying rent for an apartment that she doesn't have any control over. Together with her sister Michelle, who has two children, their mother and their grandmother, they have decided to look for a house to buy for the whole family. They have spoken many times about what they would like in a house.

Michelle wants a unit with at least two bedrooms and a smaller alcove that can be used for her youngest daughter's bedroom. Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Foote want to stay in the neighborhood they have lived in most of their life as it's close to the bus, train, their friends, church and the clinic where they trust the doctors and nurses. Shawnda wants a big yard for the kids. She dreams of setting up a hammock and reading her favorite books during her week of vacation in August.

Shawnda feels optimistic after visiting the mortgage broker at her bank. With her mother's and grandmother's bit of savings, alongside Michelle's and Shawnda's work history as employed nurses, they might just be able to pull this off. She's so excited that she has signed up for a first-time homebuying class at a local community center, and for the past nine Sunday mornings, after everyone else has left for church, she looks at the real estate section of the paper to see what kinds of houses are on the market. Last Sunday she read about a triple-decker in good condition, that was selling for $225,000. The next day after work, she stayed on the bus for a few more stops and strolled down the street to look at the house.

First of all, the house would need a paint job. The lawn was so overgrown that it looked like a forest. But then Shawnda noticed a fruit tree alongside the dilapidated fence; she swore there were small pears growing from it- egg-like and golden, and she could imagine living there, cutting back the weeds to let the tree get plenty of sun.

If the Williams/Foote family qualifies for a 5% MHFA down payment program, how much money will they need to have in order to cover the costs of the down payment, home inspection, mortgage application, lawyer fees and closing fees?

If they don't qualify for the MHFA program, how much money will they need for the above costs?

If they need to borrow only the money for the mortgage payments (since they have been able to save the money for the down payment), and they are approved for a 30-year fixed mortgage at a 7.0% interest rate, what will be total costs of their monthly payments?

Because Shawnda is only paying 1/3 of the mortgage, what will her monthly payments be?
 
 

THE NEIGHBORHOOD AS ONE CRITERIA FOR HOMEBUYING: A LESSON FOR MID-LEVEL ESOL STUDENTS

Rosa and Manuel have begun their search for a house. Rosa knows that she wants to live somewhere she feels safe and that it is also important that their new neighborhood have good schools and Spanish markets. Even though Manuel is a little worried about what they can afford, he knows that he wants to live close to the train or bus so that he doesn't have to rely on a car to get to work.

 What do Rosa and Manuel want in a neighborhood?

What are their neighborhood standards or criteria?
 
 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

________________________________________________________________________

Interview a classmate:
 
 

What’s in your neighborhood?
 
 

What isn't?
 
 

Examples:

It's quiet in my neighborhood.

I know the people in my neighborhood and can rely on them.

There is a good school and a church in my neighborhood.

________________________________________________________________________

 As a pair, agree on the top three neighborhood criteria.
 
 

Try to convince the pair next to you.
 
 

Try to reach consensus as a class about the top three neighborhood criteria.
 
 

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NEIGHBORHOOD CRITERIA FOR HOMEBUYING: A LESSON FOR BEGINNING-LEVEL ESOL STUDENTS
 
 

TEACHER: Post (an) enlarged map(s) of the neighborhood where the students live and where the school is located.

If students live in the same neighborhood as the school, pass out photocopied maps of the school-neighborhood to each student.

If students live in different neighborhoods, pass out maps that correspond to each student's neighborhood.
 
 

STUDENTS:

1. Find where you live on the map.

2. Interview the person next to you and find where they live.

3. Give each other directions from class to your homes and share this with whole class.

4. As a class, brainstorm a list of things that are in your neighborhood. Begin with what is next to you, on your block, across the street, or near by.

1. Group students together from the same neighborhood or block

2. Pass out three blank note cards to each pair of students.
 
 

 STUDENTS:

1. As a team, choose three important people, places or things from your neighborhood.

2. Draw and label one per note card.

3. Post each note card on </