In particular, I began to feel a great craving for real intellectual stimulation. Although I certainly used my head in my job (it often ached by the end of the work day), the kind of thinking I did usually felt like a knee-jerk reaction to an immediate demand: "Quick, Alice, what can you do with the class that starts in ten minutes! Quick, Alice, produce a curriculum that will look good for this funding proposal that's due tomorrow!"
I always felt that I had twelve times more to do than I could possibly accomplish. So when opportunities came up (to go to a staff development event, to serve on an advisory board, to be a proposal reader, or to learn how to use the Internet), my first reaction was always, No, I can't and don't want to do anything more. On my worst days I began to wonder: Have I lost my love for teaching adults? Do I need to find another line of work? Fortunately, things happened that gave me a glimpse of another way of being involved in this field.
I was asked by my agency to attend meetings of the Read Boston coalition since the city-wide initiative was relevant to my work with immigrant and refugee parents. Through my participation in these meetings, I got involved in a task force on family literacy led primarily by professors at Boston University. The group was asked to put together a document to guide the Read Boston staff in understanding family literacy and what role it might play in improving the literacy skills of young children. Suddenly, I found myself talking about IDEAS with others who had a real interest in the field of family literacy. What did I really think? What were the qualities and standards of good, effective programs? What did I know and believe based on the rich experience I had had in the field? I shared my thoughts and listened to the ideas of others. I felt both stimulated and appreciated. For the first time in a long time I felt like an EDUCATOR, an educator with many years of experience who had important ideas to contribute to the field. I wanted more.
Based on a series of experiences like this one, I made a decision a year ago last spring to leave my full time position as coordinator of a local program and (as I told anyone who was interested) "jump into the abyss." I've made significant sacrifices in terms of income and stability (neither of which are ever very good in our field) and I know I'm lucky that I was able to manage without a full-time income for awhile. I took on a variety of small consulting jobs (which I've taken to calling my "gigs") that brought in a little income, helped me to make contacts, and kept convincing me that my decision had been right because I was suddenly loving adult education again.
One of the first things I did was to become part of the state-wide working group that was developing Curriculum Frameworks for adult ESOL. We got together and talked about IDEAS! I, who'd had no time (and no patience) for learning to use the Internet in the past, was now regularly working with my colleagues on "Metanet," hashing out our thoughts about Guiding Principles and Learning Standards. It was so exciting and stimulating. This time I wasn't producing ideas in order to secure funding; I was thoughtfully considering what I really believed effective teaching and learning was all about.
Also during the past year, I led a number of staff development activities for the A.L.R.I. A highlight of this work was planning and leading a three-session mini-course at SCALE on "Teaching Reading to ESOL Students." Although I'd taught reading for many years and had lots of ideas about what seemed most effective, not being a reading expert (and knowing that many SCALE staff are themselves very experienced teachers), I felt that I needed to review the literature to make sure that what I was presenting was accepted as best practice by others in the field. So, I began reading research and theory on the teaching of reading to non-native English speakers. As with my experience working with Read Boston and with the Curriculum Frameworks group, I found myself experiencing a kind of joy and excitement about learning that I had almost forgotten about. After years of vacations where I wanted to take a full break from thoughts of work, during my family's vacation this past February, I looked forward to evenings spent reviewing research about the teaching of reading. And when I presented the workshops to SCALE staff, I found that many of these teachers were as excited as I was by having the chance to look at and grapple with both the research and their own practice.
Right before my February vacation, I also took on a new job working in one of the Boston Public Schools, doing family literacy with both Spanish-speaking and native-English-speaking parents. I love the job and love being back in the field again, being able to use my creativity to work directly with adult students. However, I purposely accepted the job only four days a week so that I'd still have time to stay involved in other interesting projects-projects that would stimulate me and that I could make a contribution to.
In April I took on a new mini-position: as Practitioner Leader in Massachusetts, working with the Practitioner Dissemination and Research Network (PDRN) associated with the National Center for Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL). For those of you who don't know, NCSALL is a research center housed at Harvard University and run jointly by Harvard and World Education. One of NCSALL's strong commitments is to ensure that the research they do has strong connections to the field-that is, to us as practitioners. Those of us who are Practitioner Leaders have the job of finding ways to help connect practitioners to research and researchers to practice.
So, now I have a clear reason for making sure that I read each issue of Bright Ideas and Focus on Basics that I receive. I'm reading regularly, thinking about ideas, and talking to others about the work that we do. I'm excited to know what the researchers are doing and what they're beginning to find. I want to be part of that-to learn from it and to give my input. And I want more of us in the field to be involved.
Based on my own experience, I know it can be difficult for adult education practitioners to find the time and space to become engaged in the world of ideas. I would like to work with you to find ways to make this more possible. Over the next year, I will be doing a variety of things to try to connect practitioners with the NCSALL research. In October, we will have a table at Network 98 where you can get more information about NCSALL. At Network, I will also be co-leading two workshops with NCSALL researchers; the purpose of these is to engage practitioners and researchers in dialogue about the methodology and initial results of the studies. One of the workshops will be about a study being done on motivation and retention, while the other will focus on a study of the economic impact of the GED. I hope many of you will join me at these workshops and become part of the dialogue between practitioners and academic researchers.
If you have questions or suggestions about how the Practitioner Dissemination and Research Network (PDRN) might help connect you and your colleagues to the world of research and ideas about adult education, please contact me. I can be reached at home at 617/524-2632 or by e-mail at AliceLevine.Yahoo.com. I look forward to talking to you and seeing you at Network!