Appendix I:    An outline of the way in which
I developed curriculum for our woman-positive activity

I first introduced the idea of a women's group to the whole class by telling them that our program had been accepted as a potential group for the CCLOW project. I explained what CCLOW was all about. The women responded very positively. They thought it would be wonderful to have a group of just women. They didn't know exactly what we would be doing, just having a group of only women was enough to capture their attention. The men didn't pay too much attention to it. This was something for the women and they never said anything.

Current practice in adult education emphasizes finding out where the student's interests lie and developing lessons from this interest base. Following, that practice, the women chose a topic from a list they had brainstormed. The group decided they wanted to talk about abuse, although they didn't have any specific ideas of exactly how to do this. Then one of the women brought in a brochure from a local Adults Molested as Children (AMAC) chapter. She had made an attempt to access their services, but didn't pursue it because she couldn't read their brochure. We decided to rewrite it.

Had the group asked for experts to come into the class to talk to them, our CCLOW project would have consisted of meetings once a week for an hour or two. However, they chose to do something that can readily be turned into curriculum. I saw this as an excellent opportunity for the women to do some group writing on a topic that they had chosen.

The first thing that I did was talk to them about plain language. We discussed what made the brochure difficult to read and then talked about ways to make it easier. I then suggested it might be a good idea if we had someone come to the group and give us a workshop on writing in plain language.

I chose to have the Literacy Office give the workshop because I felt that if I talked to them about the process, it would be the teacher giving more lessons on writing. In this instance, I did not want them to expect me to provide answers for them. I wanted them to see themselves as being as knowledgeable about the topic as I am. By participating in the workshop as an equal, I hoped the group would see me more as a member than as the leader. Also, since the practitioners in the area receive many workshops from the Literacy Office and the students have always seen this as something professional people do, I hoped that the workshop would give them the feeling that they were important people with something important to do.

The workshop leader started by having the group brainstorm what they thought plain language is. The following is an example of what the women thought plain language might be.

1. You can understand it.
2. Shorter words instead of long ones.
3. Complete sentences.
4. Shorter sentences.
5. Common words.