STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

  1. Hand out the prepared picture of an adult, or post it on the wall.
  2. Ask tutors to imagine what type of life experiences this adult might have had. Have tutors write a few of their ideas on sticky notes and post the sticky notes around the picture.
  3. Have tutors read over the sticky notes. Note that, as adults, we have backgrounds and experiences that are both shared with and different from those of the learners with whom we are working.
  4. Share with tutors that over the next while, they will be learning how to tutor and therefore they will be learners.

Activity B

Characteristics of adult learners

Facilitation tip

Understanding the people with whom we are working is critical. It is important to recognize that we are observers and we make assumptions about others based on our experience. We have the chance to check out those assumptions by inviting others to tell us about their lives through stories, using a variety of ways of tapping into “whole person” expression.

In the facilitator’s guide of the Nova Scotia Tutor and Instructor Training and Certification Program manual, Catherine Baker challenges us to rethink the way we characterize adults with literacy problems. Her article is reproduced in full below, with permission from the Nova Scotia Department of Education.

Plain Talk – On Stereotypes

A member of a local literacy council recently published a letter-to-the-editor in the newspaper in which she described her student Joe.

According to her letter, Joe suffers the cliché disasters: he gets a ticket because he can’t read the no-parking sign; he can’t read his own lease; it is implied he might give his child the wrong dose of medicine.

Joe used the illiterate’s cliché strategies; he claims he lost his glasses; he pretends to read the paper; he lets others make decisions. Joe pulls off the cliché tricks. He’s a cook and can’t read the menu; he got married and couldn’t read his own wedding invitation; he graduated from high school and can’t read “despite the efforts of the school system.”

And Joe is ashamed. Before he began his confidence-building reading program, his tutor writes, “He was slouching by the library front door; he moved his eyes from side to side, hoping to spot me in the crowded library without drawing attention to himself by acting confused.”

Think about this description of poor Joe and how it might fit your literate self. Have you ever been uncomfortable in a strange environment? Ever gotten a parking ticket? Ever tried to do a job without reading the manual – and done it? Ever conned anybody?

I see contradictions in the way that, when we talk about illiteracy, we refer to people who happen to not read so well. To the media, to volunteers and even prospective students, we tend to typecast the marginally literate or nonliterate person as, by turns, a pathetic incompetent and an adept coper.

We focus with voyeuristic fascination on their shame, and by doing so we imply that there is something shameful about the condition of illiteracy. Then we want – expect! – such people to admit their identities and come forward for help.