We have divided Creating Learning Partners: A Facilitator’s Guide for Training Effective Adult Literacy Tutors into units. Each of them covers a major topic. In turn, we divided the units into sections that focus on a main concept within the major topic. Each section is comprised of a number of activities that help tutors expand their knowledge, and prepare them to work with adults in a one-to-one learning situation.
A chart at the beginning of each unit serves as a table of contents. It lists all the activities in the unit, what they involve, the time they’re expected to take and whether the activities are core or optional.
Core activities introduce core material. As the name implies, that material is necessary to understand the concepts in the unit. Therefore, in your tutor training, it is important to teach all the material introduced through the core activities.
Optional activities, on the other hand, will enhance your tutor training, but the training does not depend on them. In addition to being named in the table of contents, optional activities have a special icon next to them in the sidebar.
Throughout each unit, also in the sidebars, you will find variations on the activities – ideas for other ways you might want to present the same material. Our intention is that you feel comfortable using this manual in the way that works best for you. Use our activities and their variations or activities you have designed yourself. The important thing is that, over a period of time, all the core material be introduced to tutors.
The sidebars also contain coordinator, facilitation and program tips – points that we thought could be helpful to your practice.
The handouts and overheads that accompany the activities in a unit are located on the CD that is included with this binder.
This manual follows the participatory approach to learning. As the facilitator using this approach, you are guiding your tutors from the known to the unknown. We therefore designed the activities to begin by drawing on the experience and knowledge tutors bring with them. Once tutors have reflected on what they already know, you will provide new information and give them the opportunity to turn it into knowledge by applying and practising it.
If your first role as facilitator is to act as a guide, your second role is to act as a model. The way you facilitate the training sessions, the way you guide tutors through the activities, will be a model of how they can best work with their learners. Be aware of this as you facilitate and, every now and then, point it out to tutors.
We designed this manual to be flexible, so that it can work for you, in your particular situation, over time. You can use it whether you are new to being a literacy coordinator or highly experienced. You can use it to offer introductory training to your volunteers or more advanced in-service workshops.