Welcome and Introduce Yourself!

Greetings!

Welcome to the Diversity and Literacy group in the LINCS Community!

So glad to see you have found your way to this space where we can meet to discuss, learn, and share with each other. Please post an introduction about yourself in response to this thread and let everyone know what you would like to gain from your experience in our group. Also, feel free to post any questions or discussion topics you'd like to engage in exploring with your colleagues. Remember to check out the redesigned LINCS website resources at http://lincs.ed.gov

Looking forward to the discussions...

Michelle Carson

Comments

Hi,

I am a doctoral student in Social Work at Portland Stae University in Oregon.  I am interested in health literacy and people with mental health and substance disorders.  I've enjoyed reading the posts and am learning much.  I wrote a curriculum a few years ago (which needs to be updated) to teach people with mental health challenges how to talk with their psychiatrists about medication concerns.  I hope to update the curriculum and pilot it for my dissertation. 

I have three cats, an unofficial adopted daughter and unoffically two nieces and a nephew.  I love reading, learning, waterfalls and am getting into gardening. 

 

Hi, I instruct adult education classes in NJ but I have a personal interest in mental health awareness and education. I just wanted to comment and ask you if you have resourced NAMI nationally or locally in your area. NAMI here in our area is actively involved with reaching out to the community with education and health topics. They do workshops with family members and mental health patients on topics such as medicines, health insurance, what to ask your physicians and how to get proper support and treatment. If you are not involved with them, contact them and see if they can help you. They have lots of materials and knowledge. Good luck with your research and disertation.

I am a doctoral student in nursing and teach behavioral health at a University School of Nursing.  I am very interested in your research on teaching clients with mental health how to become more health literate especially with medication concerns.  I would love to hear more about the curriculum you have designed if you would like to share it. 

Hi.  I've also been in the Health Literacy group for a few years, but this group is new to me.  I'm a public health nutritionist in the state WIC (Women Infants and Children) nutrition program in California.  We develop education materials for a great diversity of WIC participants, in a variety of languages.  I'm looking forward to learning from discussions on this group!

Poppy Strode, MS, MPH, RD

I am a state education consultant for CT State Department of Education.  I oversee our family literacy programs which are funded with our AEFLA grant.I hope  this discussion list will provide resources for family literacy that I can pass along to our providers.

P.S. Hi Michelle!

Hi, my name is Michael Villaire. I'm Chief Operating Officer at the Institute for Healthcare Advancment, a healthcare nonprofit in Southern California. Our mission is "To empower people to better health." A major component of our mission effort is in health literacy. Our health literacy efforts:

  • We produce an annual, continuing education health literacy conference in Southern California
  • We write and publish the "What To Do For Health" book series, self-help heath books written at a 3rd to 5th grade reading level
  • We offer a Health Literacy Rewrite / Redesign Service. 

I joined the Diversity and Literacy group because culture and diversity are such integral components in understanding the nuances involved in health literacy, health education and health communication. 

Michael 

I am a medical librarian in a very typical urban community hospital.  I am interested in doing what I can to increase the quality of communication between health care providers and patients by raising awareness of health literacy issues and providing easy-to-read multilingual patient education resources when possible.

I also belong to an international library lending group known as FreeForAll which utilizes the Lonesome Doc system. We are a small set of member librarians who provide medical literature to doctors and other healthcare providers in underserved countries. The HINARI network http://www.who.int/hinari/eligibility/en/ of free resources generously provided by the big name publishers also seeks to provide access to the medical literature. I have patrons in countries such as Egypt and Kenya, but also Mexico which is not a country that qualifies for HINARI. The requests from Mexico come from the Ministry of Health where my patron tells me the resources are not there to support access to needed medical literature.

Hi, I’m Ginny Garrett. I’ve taught for over 35 at Plymouth High School, NC, reading and English, and Sinclair Community College, Dayton OH, developmental reading and English and ESOL. While at Sinclair, I also directed and taught an ABE program which served ESOL students. Now that I am retired, I volunteer as an ESOL tutor with the Craven Literacy Council in NC. I have been an avid reader of the many posts over the years and have continued to learn so much.

My name is Kathy Tracey and I coordinate the i-Pathways project. (http://www.i-pathways.org). I have worked in adult education for close to 16 years -and have had the privledge of instructing students, leading programs,  and now - working with programs as they implement distance learning initiatives. I am looking forward to the sharing and discussion in this community. 

 

Sincerely, 
Kathy 

I'm Sharon Clark, lead instructor at the Dawson County Adult Education Center in Dawsonville, GA.  I'm a former high school English teacher and family-acclaimed "professional grad student."    I've worked in adult ed for seven years now as teacher and administrator in several settings in beautiful,  rural,  Northeast Georgia.  My greatest pleasure is to see adults start their paths toward life-long learning!  

Hello

I am Federico Salas-Isnardi, of Houston.  I work for the Texas Center for the Advancement of Literacy and Learning (TCALL) at Texas A&M University where I am the adult literacy specialist.  I have been in the field of adult education and adult ESL for 25 years teaching, doing professional development, working as an administrator at the local and state levels, and co-authoring/consulting for the adult ESL series Future: English for Results and Future US Citizens.  I am interested in the adult classroom in the 21st century; social justice and diversity with emphasis on issues of sexual diversity, religious tolerance, and xenophobia as they affect the classroom; immigration issues and reform, and citizenship education.  I am on the last semester of coursework toward my PhD in Adult Education at Texas A&M where my dissertation research will be on adult educator PD.  I am currently the chair of the Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers (AALPD.)

Hopeful and cautious about this new format for our discussion.

Peace,

federico

Hello Diversity List Members!! 

My name is Ryan Hall, and I am excited to be the new Subject Matter Expert (SME) for this group.  You can find out a little about me on my profile at https://community.lincs.ed.gov/user/339/about

I was an active member of the Diversity & Literacy discussion list and I always appreciated the open, honest manner in which members discussed the sensitive, and sometimes difficult, topics related to diversity in the literacy classroom.  I am really looking forward to similar discussions here.  I believe this online group will serve as a safe space where people feel comfortable asking their questions, offering their advice and opinions, and/or sharing their experiences about diversity issues.

We currently have 965 members (WOW!).  So, as a first step in building our community, please take a few minutes to introduce yourself to us.  It would be great to know why you joined this group and what you hope to learn from our discussions.

I am looking forward to "meeting" all of you!!!

Ryan Hall
Diversity & Literacy SME
 

Hi,

I am fairly new to this field. I recently started working on issues of health disparities and health literacy is an important part of my work. I look forward to learning what others in the field are doing and hopefully share my experience as well.

Thank you,

--Lensa

 

Dr Valerie Yule,  M.A., Ph.D, Dip.Ed., M.B.Ps.S.   Academic positions at Melbourne, Monash and Aberdeen Universities in departments of Psychology and Education; Teacher at all levels, from preschool to adult and migrant literacy; Clinical child psychologist at the Royal Children’s Hospitals, Melbourne and Aberdeen; Schools psychologist chiefly but not only in disadvantaged schools, Present research on imagination and literacy.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/

Hi all. I recently started work as a literacy instructor at Literacy Action in downtown Atlanta. It's a community-based adult education organization that works with students who want to improve basic skills and/or obtain their GED. I graduated in December with my Master's in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education from Indiana University where I conducted research on literacy instruction and practices at the local jail. I'm particularly interested in community literacy, literacy education in correctional facilities, practitioner inquiry, and instructional practices that acknowledge (and seek to engage with) the contextualized nature of literacy and literacy learning. I look forward to exploring diversity and literacy issues with you all!

My name is Velva Hampson, and I am the Senior Librarian at a men's prison in Corcoran, California. I was guided to this resource by Heather Irwin. I (along with one of our Voluntary Education Program teachers) am working with her to bring the COEP (eGranary) tool to our college and high school classrooms as well as to the libraries at our institution. We want to teach research skills and information literacy to our college and high school students. I look forward to participating in the discussions you have here.

Velva Hampson

Senior Librarian

CSATF/SP Corcoran

 

Welcome, Velva!

I am not familiar with eGranary.  Do you mind explaining it to the group?

Thanks!

Ryan

eGranary is a project designed to provide networked information resources to those who do not have the ability to access the Internet. It was originally developed for use in third world countries. The project that we are piloting at our institution is the Correctional Offline Education Program (COEP). You can learn more about it at http://www.widernet.org/coep.

We are still in the ordering process (the joys of goverment processes), however we are very excited about the opportunity to use this tool to teach information literacy to incarcerated students.

Velva

Hello. I am  an adult education teacher in MS. I have taught adult literacy for 7 yrs. and in the mental health field for10 yrs. I taught 21 yrs in MS ic schools before that. I have a g interest in helping adults  heir lives h ng literate.

Hi there,

I am a new teacher (with only three semesters under my belt) working in an Adult Education program.  My students are all Spanish speakers from Mexico.  The students are great.  Almost all of them work and have families.  How they do all of that and stay awake in my class is a minor miracle.  They do it because they know that education is the only way out of the minumum wage jobs available here--working in the chile packing plant, Wal-Mart, MacDonalds etc. 

One of my main challenges is teaching multi-level classes with beginning-beginers mixed with more advanced students.  Another is trying to change the mindset of my students.  Many arrive with the idea that they will learn English just by attending class.  They seem to believe in the old concept that students are empty vessels that the teacher must fill with knowledge.  Most of them work hard but often only in class.  I repeatedly impress upon them the need to use all resources available to them--the public library with books and internet access, television (some students say that closed captions help), radio, and since we are in the US, all of the English speakers that surround them who can help them learn every day.  It is difficult to break the timidity that seems to be inherhent in the culture.  It is a challenge to convince them to contribute to the learning process by giving me feedback about what they need or suggestions to improve the instruction I provide.  I will appreciate any suggestions other teachers may have.

Thanks! Trensa