[Earlier this fall I sent a letter to a large number of people who I knew had been working in the field of adult basic education in the Boston area for at least ten years, inviting them to write a couple of paragraphs about how they thought the field in general and/or their jobs in specific had (or hadn't) changed during this time. Here are the responses we received, from Richard Goldberg, Jo Hartel, Ellen Koretz, and Deborah Marquardt. My thanks to these contributors.--Steve Reuys]
In the fall of 1990, when I walked into the Learning Center at North Shore Community College's Beverly Campus to be a volunteer tutor, I had no idea where this path might take me. Ten years later I am coordinating an ABE program that will spend almost three quarters of a million dollars from now until 2005. My first ten years in the field of adult education have been spent in the trenches, beginning with tutoring at NSCC and then at a workplace education program in Boston. That was followed by my first paid teaching job, a half-time ABE/ESOL position at a worker assistance center, and then a full-time, temporary ABE teaching job, which lasted only three months. In December, 1992, I was hired by the Asian American Civic Association, and I have been there ever since. I was fortunate to begin working in an ABE transitional program as it was being built to bridge the gap between ESOL and higher education, job training, and alternative high school diploma programs. For the next two years, in addition to teaching one of two levels of the program, I was coordinating our agency's segment of a community partnership, which basically meant coordinating myself. In 1996, due to increases in state funding, we added a third level along with a half-time teacher. A fourth level was added in 1998, along with another full-time teaching position, so our program has doubled in size. I now supervise a full-time teacher and a half-time counselor.
Along with the increase in program size has been an increase in my pay check. My salary has increased 34% since 1992, but 34% on top of something pitifully small doesn't amount to very much. Along with the monetary rewards have come many more responsibilities, including grant writing (curriculum frameworks proposals as well as the major narrative portion of the most recent DOE five-year ABE grant), staff development, program development, the SMARTT system, and community planning. In spite of all this, I remain a full-time teacher, teaching two two-hour classes a day, four days a week, year round.
One of the most gratifying things about being in this field for the past ten years is seeing that so many of the same people whose brains I picked in informational interviews in 1990 are still around, at those required DOE meetings, or presenting at MATSOL and MCAE conferences, keeping all of us honest and fighting the good fights. Now, as then, there continues to be a reservoir of brain power in the adult education field in this state. But even with the growth of so many programs and the funding increases, one thing really hasn't changed--closing the door of your classroom, watching the occasional magic happen, and maybe being responsible for creating some of it.
--Richard Goldberg, Asian American Civic Association
It's hard to separate out changes over the last ten years, or in my case over the last 20 years, but here are some of my colleague Betsy Lowry's and my thoughts. It seems to us that one characteristic of ABE practitioners has remained the same, and that is the dedication of the people who work in this field. We do this work because we love it even if pay is low and working conditions are poor. Other things that have stayed the same might not have as much of a positive cast.
We're still complaining about red tape getting in the way as we try to do our jobs. The relationship between funders and providers continues to be adversarial. In order to get funding, we are told we have to conform to certain requirements even though we may not understand the rationale behind them. This has always been so. However, over the past 20 years, there has been a change for the positive. We now have many more opportunities to influence policies. MCAE comes to mind immediately as an example. The current push for accountability and standardization, for example, is an intensification of something funders have always asked for. The big difference is that now the service providers are being asked directly for their input in figuring out what works best.
When I started teaching there were very few ESOL and ABE teachers with training. Many of those that did have training were former Peace Corps volunteers. There has definitely been an emphasis on professionalization of ABE with more opportunities for teacher training and certification. We now think of ourselves as professionals. Unfortunately, salary increases and benefits have not followed along in the same way, so trained, experienced ABE teachers are becoming scarcer and scarcer. There have also been changes in the student population we serve. Although I don't have statistical proof, it seems to me that the number of students needing ESOL and ABE is still big, but there's a bigger spread now in skill levels. ESOL students, at least, come with either a low level of literacy or a fairly strong school background. There aren't so many in the middle.
--Jo Anne Hartel, Community Learning Center
For seventeen years I have been an ABE teacher at the Charlestown Community Center. For the past five years I have also been one of the two mentor teachers for the Boston Region YALD Reading Theory and Practicum course given at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge. In general I feel there has been a movement toward more direct instruction of academic subjects and a push toward greater accountability for academic gains. Some specific changes that I perceive are as follows:
1) Trained (maybe even certified) teachers are more often present in the classes. Ten years ago I believe there were programs that had their own GED graduates teaching classes. 2) Standardized academic skills assessments are more often administered in classes. It seems to me that in the past the idea of structured pre- and post-testing was often discouraged for being"too restrictive or intimidating." 3) Individual classes are more often designed by teachers with the students' academic goals in mind. Often the thought in the past seemed to have been that the content of individual classes should be determined only after students discussed and decided together the topics to be studied. 4) Basic skills, reading, writing, and math are more often the focus of classrooms. In the past, I believe that many classes concentrated on self-exploration, discussions of diversity, and artistic projects instead of the basics. 5) Technology offers new opportunities for students to gain information. Computers have become a very useful tool to reinforce teacher lessons. 6) As a reading teacher, it is of particular interest to me that there has finally been a recognition of the very important role of phonics especially (but not only) for learning disabled students. Ten years ago the direct teaching of phonics in isolation was often avoided for fear of being "boring"--even for learning disabled students.
--Ellen Koretz, Charlestown Community Center
I have been working in the adult education field for twenty years, five of those years teaching various writing and ESL courses on the college level, and fifteen in a neighborhood-based adult program in Boston. I don't think I consciously chose to stay in the field, but it just gave me a balance of challenge and flexibility that felt right to me.
In the mid 1980's it did not seem like a field that I could realistically stay in long-term because funding was so precarious and because so many positions were part-time, but I think that adult education has developed more respect in recent years. It now seems like a "real" career field--not just a series of jobs stuck together without much thought or planning. I was fortunate to find a full-time position at WAITT House in 1986 as the External Diploma assessor. When I tell people what I do, the say, "That must be so rewarding. Your students are there because they really want to learn." For the most part, that's all true.
Several times I have seriously considered looking for a new career--figuring that I've been doing this long enough. I haven't been able to come up with something I'd rather do, however. This is because I've had the opportunity to change my job responsibilities as opportunites presented themselves. Besides the EDP, I have also done career counseling, and currently I'm writing and editing grants and coordinating special projects. I think that the adult education field is more varied, more complex today.
--Deborah Marquardt, WAITT House