How Literacy Partners of NYC, a two-generation family literacy program, is moving classes online

Hello Integrating Technology and Program Management colleagues,

I plan to have a series of interviews with adult basic skills (including ESOL/ESL) programs and schools that are moving, or have moved, their classes online. If your program is interested in being featured, please email me at djrosen123@gmail.com. The CEO of the first program in the series will join us this Tuesday.

It is my pleasure to announce that we will have as a guest this Tuesday, March 24th, Anthony Tassi, CEO of Literacy Partners in New York City, a two-generation or family literacy program. As with some of you who are program administrators, teachers/instructors or tutors, with little notice the doors of Literacy Partners’ in-person classes have had to close. Also, perhaps like you, he and his team are working from home, where they have some of the challenges that you may have. Anthony, and perhaps some of his staff members, have been gracious to agree to spend a day with us to share how they are addressing the challenges of moving in-person-classes online.  He and his team do not necessarily regard themselves as experts in this area, but rather, perhaps like you, are focusing on helping their students stay connected, and providing them with continued learning during the pandemic until they can return to in-person classes. Anthony is looking forward to our questions, and to the opportunity to meet you online, and hear about ways that you are finding or have found to help students learn online.

Here is a little about Anthony

Anthony Tassi is the CEO of Literacy Partners in New York City.  Literacy Partners provided in-person adult and family literacy programming for 45+ years until last weekend... when it became an online education program.  The program focuses on parents -- helping to build their literacy and language skills while backing them to promote their children's early learning, social emotional growth, and school readiness.  Anthony is an Emmy Award winning creator, producer and writer of educational television shows.  Because 12-hour days in family literacy were not enough, he was recently appointed acting principal, dean of student affairs, and head custodian of a new home-schooling academy in Brooklyn NY attended by his 11-year old daughter and their dog.

I would add that, among the television shows that Anthony has created or produced, are We Are New York and We Speak New York, used by English language teachers and learners in New York City and in many other parts of the country. In addition to asking Anthony about what Literacy Partners is now doing online with students, you are welcome to ask about these programs broadcast in New York, and also available free online. Some or all of these episodes might be useful for your own online learning for your English language students.

Please reply to this post (by selecting  "+ Add new comment" below)  with your questions for Anthony now, and  join us on Tuesday

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program management groups

Comments

Hello Everybody! 

I hope that you are coping with the pandemic and finding ways to thrive in the midst of everything that is happening.

I am very pleased to be with you today to share our experiences and learn from all the great work that you are doing.

I'll be joined by several teachers and our program director who I will introduce as we go forward.

 

Thank you, Anthony and team

I know We Are New York (WANY) and We Speak NYC  think it is a terrific program. I was part of the original advisory board and, anyone who ever attended one of my PD sessions will have heard about it and seen the website and snippets of the videos. Congratulations on a wonderful (free) product that students enjoy. It is also a great jumping off point for further learning both in a classroom and at home working independently

I am with Literacywork International in southern New Mexico but have been working for close to 10 years with OneAmerica, a social justice organization in Seattle https://weareoneamerica.org/ and their English Innovations program. Originally funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

https://weareoneamerica.org/what-we-do/programs/english-innovations/

We are a blended learning model and are now transitioning to an independent learning model, English at Home to support parents whole the schools and other services are shut. We are planning to work with coaches and tutors who will get parents started through one-on-one sessions using phones or tablets (which we provide)

Here are my question:

  1. You mention the WANY Study Materials. Are any of them interactive so that students could complete them online? So far we have been printing them and students take them home to complete and then return to discuss them. We might continue to do so and then leave a binder with the study materials at students’ home and discuss them later via WhatsApp or Zoom.
  2. How do your teachers currently use the materials and what are plans for sharing them remotely?
  3. You mentioned that teachers have a Guide to help them implement the series. Is this Guide for teachers available online? I’d love to share information on how use the videos and print materials

Thank you, and I would love to hear from everyone on how they plan to use these and other videos to their fullest to maximize engagement and support learning

Heide Spruck Wrigley

Dear Heide: 

I remember your sage advice when we were putting the program together!  Your extraordinary work has been a big inspiration for us over the years.  And I love the English Innovations at OneAmerica!  

From my program director, Adriane Lee, comes the following answers to your specific questions:

1.  Are there interactive materials online?

As far as interactive materials online go, there are a few “quizzes” that students can answer on the We Speak NYC website for each episode. See an example here for the episode “Welcome Parents”: https://wespeaknyc.cityofnewyork.us/courses/welcome-parents/

In addition, all of the class materials and self-study materials are available to view online for each episode. See an example here for the episode “Welcome Parents” (scroll down and look for where it says “Downloads”:

https://wespeaknyc.cityofnewyork.us/episodes/welcome-parents/

2.  How Facilitators Currently Use Them

For our conversation classes, volunteer facilitators use the materials in a bit more limited way (compared to our more intensive ESOL programs) since they only meet for 2 hours a week right now, and we cover one episode each week in those two hours. I’ve included a basic breakdown below, but the facilitator guide has a great general 2-hr lesson plan that our facilitators use as a skeleton to start from and adapt from there if they wish. Click on the link below and scroll to pages 19-32 for the lesson. 

http://wespeaknyc.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/WSNYC19-FG-ConversationClassGuide-F-web-single.pdf 

With classes now being remote, facilitators are still able to do this using the Zoom app with students and the “share screen” tool on Zoom. By sharing their screen, facilitators can share the images and words in real time with the whole group to keep everyone on track with the same content and to share ideas. By using Zoom’s break-out room feature, the facilitator can create space for small-group or pair discussion before a quick report-back with the whole group. 

  • Facilitators usually like to break up the episode between a few key scenes and have smaller discussion after each of those key scenes.They usually ask students to talk in small groups about what they saw, what problems they noticed, what they think about the characters’ decisions, and what they think will happen next. 

As mentioned above, Zoom’s features of screen-share and break-out rooms let facilitators continue to use these discussion prompts in a remote learning situation.

  • After the group finishes the episode, facilitators often ask a few questions from a tried and true list of conversation questions for WSNYC episodes (see page 30 in the facilitator guide), and have students discuss in small groups or pairs. 

For more intensive ESOL programs, there is a lower-level curriculum and a teacher handbook of supplementary activities for mid- and upper level classes, both developed by CUNY educators, that allow for teachers and students to really dig into the themes, language items, and resources. 

3.  Guide for Teachers?

Yes! See the link below or you can find it on the We Speak NYC website (click “Teacher Resources”, then click on “Teacher Handbooks and Curricula”, then click on “WSNYC Facilitator Guide”).

http://wespeaknyc.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/WSNYC19-FG-ConversationClassGuide-F-web-single.pdf

David Hellman and colleagues at the City University of New York have led the creation of all of these materials.  The NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs funded and runs the website.  We are working with them to launch a new push in the fully remote era we are in now.   We'd love to hear how others are using these materials and what you'd like to see next.

Hello all 

I want to thank you Anthony for the kind words, but most of all for all the valuable information you posted re  the video series (We Speak NYC)  and the work of Literacy Partners of New York City. Your dual language two generation program (.. De Creer) is such an inspiration. I am hoping that across the US (ok, the world) the importance of offering bilingual programs or at least home language support is not getting lost as we move toward creating online learning opportunities.

Special thanks also to your teachers and especially Adrienne Lee your program director for taking the time to post and list all the links that take us to tools for supporting designers, coaches, and volunteer tutors.  The materials might be tailored to We Speak NYC, but the underlying concepts can be adapted to different contexts.

You had asked about how others are using the video series.  At English Innovations, we have been using the videos and the Study Guides extensively and are now looking at ways to expand independent learning.

Example: Just one small idea that we started as part of the digital literacy component: We use the We Speak NYC website to foster web navigation skills-

We set up a short scenario (Maria wants to improve her English with We Speak NYC but doesn’t know where to start). Students explore the website and make suggestion on where Maria might click to find out what’s on the site, focusing on the menu bar and the drop down menus. As a group, they then pick a video, and we work together to develop a process for taking full advantage of what the program offers

By the way, I was thrilled to find out that some of the skills practice is now interactive

Onward toward discussions  of fostering community remotely

Heide

Heide Spruck Wrigley

Literacywork International, Mesilla NM

Hello Anthony,

Thank you and, we hope, some of your team members for joining us today to reply to questions about how Literacy Partners in New York City is moving its classes online, and also perhaps about how you created and are using We Speak NYC, a free broadcast and archived English language learning program used not only in New York City but also now across the U.S.

Below I have a couple of questions to begin the discussion. I have more, of course, but I hope we hear from some of our Integrating Technology and Program Management members with their questions, comments, and thoughts about the ways they are moving, or have moved, their own classes online.

Everyone, Anthony wants to make it clear that he and his Literacy Partners team do not regard themselves as experts in remote, online, or distance teaching and learning. Nevertheless, they have put their oars in the water and are rowing in that direction. Adult basic skills programs and schools that have not done that yet, who are just beginning to do that, or may have been doing that for years are welcome to chime in with their questions and suggestions. This is a Community of Practice discussion, where we share our experiences and learn from each other.

My questions for Anthony:

1. Tell us about Literacy Partners, in New York City. What kind of organization is it? Whom do you serve? What kinds of programs, courses, and levels of instruction have you offered? How many adult learners do you serve a year? How is your program funded? What else would you like us to know about Literacy Partners?

2. Has Literacy Partners had an online teaching and learning presence before now and, if so, what have you offered online? Has this been a distance learning program, a hybrid or blended combination of in-person and online, or a supplement for students doing in-person instruction?

Everyone, post your questions to Anthony now and throughout today.

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Progarm Management groups

 

 

1.  Overview of Literacy Partners

We are a 45-year old non-profit adult literacy program focusing our resources on parents of young children.  We started as a volunteer tutoring program in the early 1970s as an off-shoot of Ruth Colvin’s revolutionary work.  Over the years, we added writing and math, ESOL, and eventually pre-GED and GED. By the 2000s, we were offering all levels of ABE and ESOL and family literacy funded with large state grants (WIA, the precursor to WIOA) and lots of private fundraising.  We enrolled as many as 2,000 students a year in a mix of volunteer tutoring and instructor-led classes.

Most of our government funding ended about 7 years ago and we made the decision to not pursue government funding so that we could have the freedom to create the kind of program we really wanted to run with the kind of outcomes that we thought mattered most to the families we enroll… and to have the flexibility to focus on quality over quantity (whatever that might mean).  Today, we are entirely privately funded (from an annual gala, foundations, individuals, etc.).  

We call ourselves a two-generation adult literacy program.  Our basic model is to partner with Head Start, pre-K, and other programs serving low-income and immigrant children to offer classes and workshops for their parents.  Our “signature” programs are designed for low-income immigrants parents, but we also serve non-parents as well.

Here is a one-minute video that makes the case for working with parents.

And here and here are clips from our annual dinner over the past two years of students telling their own stories, making the case for family literacy better than I could ever do. 

Here is our enrollment from last year in each of the classes we offer:

  • English for Parents Classes: 139

  • High School Equivalency & College Transition Seminars for Young Adult Parents: 29

  • Basic Reading (Phonics) Tutoring for Adults: 13

  • English Conversation Classes for Adults (“We Speak NYC”): 420

  • Family Literacy Reading Promotion Workshops: 152

  • Spanish Family Literacy Workshops (“La Fuerza de Creer”): 51

  • Total = 804

Thanks Anthony. These short videos are terrific:  very moving and very well-made. I recommend to everybody that they watch all three of them. They are inspiring!

I have two questions about "La Fuerza de Creer". How do you translate this in English, "The power to believe" ? I also wonder if this is purely Spanish literacy, or to some extent uses a bi-literacy approach with English, or if adult learners working on Spanish literacy and, at the same time or after this course, also work on English literacy. 

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management groups

Thanks, David.  

The goal of La Fuerza de Creer (“The Power of Believing”) workshops is to help parents and caregivers to promote their young children’s early learning, social emotional development, and ultimately school readiness.  The show models a number of ways that caregivers can interact with children in developmentally beneficial ways -- e.g., responsive parenting; following the lead of the child; talking, reading, singing, and playing with children -- all within an authentic novela storyline that engages audiences.  In this case, we want parents and caregivers to believe in themselves.

La Fuerza de Creer has a strong storyline about bilingualism: a grandfather only speaks Spanish and feels bad about his lack of communication with his grandson who only speaks English.  This storyline resonates deeply with our community of learners.

In addition, the grandfather is “illiterate” and is emotionally closed down and not affectionate with his grandson.  This also resonates with our learners.

So, the discussion right from the start is about bilingualism and in a very authentic, relatable context.  In discussions, we get to reinforce the science that interacting with your child in your native language when they are very young is best for their cognitive and emotional development because you can be closer to them in your native language, you have a better vocabulary and can convey more complex ideas and richer emotions, etc.  We also contradict the misinformation that English is better than Spanish or their native language and the urgency that parents have for their children to learn English for their survival.

We also provide our in-person workshop participants with a book at each of the eight sessions for them to take home and use to activate their good intentions around interacting with their children to promote their early learning and social emotional growth.  We call it creating “moments of connection” and the books provide the opportunity and some content -- but it is the human connection, love, affection, and responsive attention that we know makes the actual difference.  The books are almost all bilingual (Spanish-English).  So, in the guise of promoting their children’s early learning, caregivers end up reading more in Spanish and learning more English for themselves as well.  In the on-line environment, we are looking for suitable online children's books to link to for our participants.

Bi- and multi-lingual families are the norm where we are working, so if you just provide the opportunity, the participants will make it a rich learning experience in multiple languages organically.

2.  Online Presence and Distance Learning

I think we have a unique perspective on “distance learning” and related approaches.

Over the years, we tried various things in the online and distance learning arenas.  I remember in our library, we had shelves full of those old VHS tapes, CD-ROMs, and a binder full of materials that we used to mail out to students and our teachers would correct their work and send the next lesson by mail.   I think they would talk over the phone, too. We also did GED online using McGraw Hill, I think. That was 5 to 10 years ago and more!

Our more recent thinking is three-pronged:

  1. offer “evidence-based” in-person classes or workshops that are of enough intensity and duration to make a profound difference in people’s lives;

  2. create content for television and streaming online to reach a very audience with opportunities to learn through storytelling;

  3. bring people together in groups to watch the TV shows in #2 and discuss them with a trained facilitator.

I think the #3 approach is the sweet spot for impact, cost, and scale.

The first television show we created is We Speak NYC, which is on the City of New York’s television station and lives on a website run by the NYC Mayor’s Office.  The goal of this show is to help adult immigrants improve their English comprehension skills and learn more about City services and resources.  It’s all about the story-telling: each episode features a multi-ethnic 

cast of characters working together to solve common problems and modeling how to use English in different circumstances.

Here is a trailer for season one (which used to be called “We Are New York”) and here is the trailer for season two.  I co-created and co-produced both seasons with Leslee Oppenheim, who recently retired from The City University of New York.  She taught me pretty much everything I know about language acquisition and brought in her colleague, David Hellman, who oversaw the creation of most of the educational materials on the website.  Great team!

I don’t know what the exact ratings were for the broadcast, but it has been on the air (off and on) for 10 years and we think “tens of thousands” watch it each year.  As of a few years ago, the website was getting 5k to 15k visitors per month, I believe. The website has not been promoted very aggressively and getting usage data from the City has not been possible.

But, CUNY and Literacy Partners helped the Mayor’s Office, the public libraries, and others create hundreds of community based conversation groups where people come together to watch an episode and practice speaking in English in response to simple prompts.  Volunteers have been trained to facilitate using a standard guide. This is a great example of that sweet spot of cost, impact, and scale that I mentioned above. Some ESOL programs sponsor these groups alongside their traditional classes to give students an easy way to boost their weekly hours.  There are maybe 200 groups operating this year in NYC. People can also do online exercises on the We Speak NYC website.

The second television show we created is a five-episode Spanish-language telenovela called La Fuerza de Creer (4-minute trailer).  We did this in partnership with Univision and the Clinton Foundation’s Too Small To Fail program.  It tells the story of a community center with a beloved childcare program that is threatened by real estate development.  The community and staff must rally together to save the center! And along the way, we follow 4 families and the lead childcare worker to see the drama of raising children and how they promote their children’s early learning and social emotional health.  It is a family literacy show for Spanish-speaking families but it is also a mainstream telenovela miniseries that was viewed by 1.4 million people (average daily viewers) when Univision broadcast it nationally in 2019.

To hit that sweet spot (#3 above), we created community workshops (eight 2-hour sessions) for parents and caregivers using a Story-Voice-Action popular education approach: watch the story and analyze what you see; tell your story about how these issues affect you and your family; and work in a group to apply the insights to your own family by taking specific actions with your children.  We had just begun rolling out the program in NYC, Miami, Philadelphia, and we were making friends in Dallas. We are training facilitators, working with childcare providers, and especially interested in supporting parent leadership to run these workshops.  Now, we are working to create the digital version of this engagement program.

Here’s the trailer (4 mins) for the community workshops.  

To sum up our thinking about distance, remote, online, etc. prior to Coronavirus: emotionally compelling content is the starting point; storytelling is the approach; and modeling is the key methodology.  With the epidemic, that’s all true, but the urgent question is also how can you do this while creating some kind of community for participants? 

One final point about who Literacy Partners is and how we have thought about the online space, two years ago we created an online reading promotion campaign called Subway Reads that was supported by donated advertising space from our City’s subway system.  This was more of an awareness raising campaign, but we did feature our own student writing and some great content by, for, and about adult learners from World Ed, ProLiteracy, and others.  We never built it out for more educational purposes… but, you could if you want to.

Here’s the trailer (password: literacy) for that campaign.

Anthony, this might be a question that you are mulling over now. In any case, please share your thoughts.  Others who are following this discussion, please make suggestions to Anthony and his team to consider:

What would be a good online equivalent of the face-to-face community-based conversation groups where people come together to watch an episode of We Are New York or We Speak NYC,  and practice speaking in English in response to simple prompts? 

My suggestion: It would seem that you would want to do this in real time, perhaps in two or more time slots during the day, using a webinar or web-conferencing platform like Zoom, GotoMeeting WebEx, or another. The free version of Zoom, for some education programs and schools, during the pandemic, is unlimited in minutes. In addition to the "gallery" feature in which all the learners can choose (or not) to show their picture or a live video of themselves, and a "chat" feature in which participants can communicate in writing, the facilitator can -- one-at a time-- un-mute a learner's mic and the learner can respond orally. Zoom also offers a "raise hand" feature, "breakout rooms" and more. (Added advantage: The learners, with experience using this platform could, if they wished, each then choose to get a free (40 minute limit) Zoom account that they could use for social purposes such as family or friends events, watching sporting events, religious group online meetings or services, etc.)

If you do something like this, Anthony, you are doing what is now often referred to as a "learning circle," something done all over the country in public libraries, such as the Queens Public Library in NYC, and by adult English language learning programs, for example through the English Now! programs sponsored by World Education. A learning circle is usually described as a blended or hybrid learning model that has an online course or other online learning resource accompanied by a (generally once a week) face-to-face (often with a trained volunteer-facilitating) 90-minute to two-hour meeting. I believe that some learning circles could be done with the face-to-face meeting facilitated in real-time online, but haven't heard of any yet.

Anyone else have suggestions for an online, real-time equivalent of the face-to-face community based conversation groups Anthony described?

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management groups

Hi Anthony,

I'd be interested to know if any of your instructors have tried to teach digital literacy remotely (using the phone or another app)? We have learners who have low computer literacy skills, or have trouble navigating new apps on their smartphones. I was wondering how other programs are working through these issues with their learners both in terms of proactive digital literacy instruction and tech support.

Hi Claire:

We haven’t really tried to teach digital literacy skills remotely.  For our literacy students, we had so many issues when we used to do in-person computer-based instruction.  It was available online, but the students struggled so much with the user interface (e.g., the computers used to freeze; they’d click and nothing would happen; their spelling wasn’t compatible with online platforms looking for the right answer, etc.) that we ended up spending more time on tech support than we did on direct instruction.  

 

We were never that strong on digital literacy -- we did email addresses, web browsing, filling out forms, etc. -- but it was all in-person.  I’d love to hear what others have figured out.

 

During our first week of online English classes last week using the Zoom platform, our teachers spent nearly a full class showing our students how to use the platform during the classes. For students who had difficulty accessing the class through Zoom, one of our more technical minded program directors (David Rothenberg) was on hand to help walk students through the process of getting into the online classes, primarily using WhatsApp to communicate instructions for the students by giving written instructions combined with screenshots to help our students follow along. 

 

Both our teachers and students had a number of technical issues during the first 2 to 3 days of online classes, but as our teachers and students have become more comfortable using the Zoom platform for online classes the technical issues have decreased significantly.

 

We are a family and adult literacy organization in Canada. We are looking at platforms to help us deliver our programs online and allow for interaction. I'm curious what you are using for your two-generation programs and whether or not you typically involve parents and children at the same time. We do have the parents with their children in most of our programs and especially now that schools are closed here. That means it will be busy on the family side of the platforms which can cause some interesting challenges of sound feedback, etc. We are testing out some platforms today to see how it will go, but if you've had good outcomes with something already (that's free or cheap and easy for the learners to understand how to use), I would love to hear about it!

 

 

 

Over the past couple years, our teachers have been creating WhatsApp chat groups for each of their classes, where information about our programs and events can easily be shared with the students, and we have been fortunate enough to have nearly 100% participation from each of our classes. Having that set up in advance has helped us to stay in contact with our students and to share important news, information about accessible services, and the links for the classes we are hosting using the Zoom platform.

 

We originally chose to use the Zoom platform at the suggestion of one of our ESOL instructors who was already familiar with using the platform for private tutoring and was able to give us a good overview of how the system works. Zoom has a lot of functionality that helps us to host our classes and keep our students engaged. Our teachers have been using Google Slides to prepare their lesson plans and use the screen share function to share the lessons with the students. We have also been using the breakout rooms quite frequently to give our students the opportunity to practice speaking English in pairs or small groups, with the teachers popping into the rooms to provide support and answer questions. I would say about 90% of our students have been able to transition from in-person to online classes with very few issues, but the other 10% have need some level of technical assistance to either access the classes or with using the Zoom platform, and we have been able to overcome most of the tech issues during the first week of our online classes.

Hello Anthony,

Four more questions

3. Tell us about now.  What are you doing to offer online learning your students and teachers or tutors since New York and the world have been experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic?

4. How are you “onboarding” students who have not been participating in online learning to your online offerings?

5. How do your students access your online learning? Do they have Internet-accessible computers at home? Do they use smartphones?

6. Does New York City offer free wifi access in some of the boroughs and neighborhoods where your students live?

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management groups

3.  Right Now.

When we made the decision to suspend our in-person programing on Tuesday, March 10th, we decided to try using the Zoom platform to bring our English for Parents (ESOL) program online, as one of our teachers was already familiar with the platform. Over the next 5 days, we spent time watching videos, participating in Zoom training, and doing practice calls to help get our team comfortable with the platform.  We launched on Monday, March 16th. 

Our key goal was to move quickly and maintain community.  Communicative English practice and supporting parents connections with children were the top pedagogical goals for the short-term.  Zoom has worked for us. We are exploring other options for tools that have more robust educational features, but for now, with all the chaos in everyone’s lives, this felt like enough.

In the week before we closed, only a few other of our basic literacy students expressed interest in trying something online.  We have a few tutors who are reading over the phone with their students and we are just now trying to get a few students to pilot remote tutoring using Zoom.  We’ve been using Zoom because it is really easy to use and some of our key team members were already comfortable with it. And, again, we were trying to migrate something from a classroom online.  We are also all working remotely using Zoom a hundred times a day to meet with each other and external colleagues. 

Finally, we are brainstorming and prototyping a Zoom workshop for La Fuerza de Creer Spanish family literacy and another digital product that people can access on their own anytime.  We really favor bringing people together virtually during the quarantine, but there are severe limitations on the number of people you can serve this way and there appears to be a larger demand for content and engagement that we will try to meet in the coming weeks.

It has been inspiring to see what all of you have been doing!  Keep us in the loop so we can figure out our next steps too.

 

4.  Onboarding Students

On the first day of online programing, our teachers spent a majority of the class time helping our students get connected to the Zoom platform and gave them an overview of the key features of the software that the students would need to be familiar with in order to participate in the class. We had to help our students learn how to join the video call, connect to the audio, mute and unmute their microphones, and how to use the chat feature. In addition, the program director and some teaching assistants were on hand to help students with technical assistance throughout the first week.

Teachers contact students who have not participated to connect with them and to find out what prevented them from participating.

A key priority for us is being in touch with our students and letting them know we are here for them.

 

5.  Student Access

Across all of our efforts right now, we find the digital divide is a continuing source of inequity.  Our native-born US students who are older are severely disadvantaged right now with their lack of digital literacy, lack of tech equipment, and lack of connectivity.

Mobile phones have made a big and meaningful difference on these issues, but 10-20 percent of our students are still left behind.  We are trying to help those students right now.

Among our immigrant parent students (who are more “working class” and less “poor”), the majority are either using smartphones or tablets on their home wifi networks to join our classes. In every class, we have issues with students freezing or not being able to understand what they are saying due to unstable home wifi connections, but most of the time and for most of the students, they can persevere.  It is a much bigger challenge for our lower level English language learners.  The teacher tells me she has to lower her expectations pretty dramatically for how much ground she can cover.  But, the students are very grateful for whatever we can get accomplished each meeting.

My sense is that for participating in a virtual group, the laptop is the best choice, tablet is second, and phone is third choice -- primarily because the larger screen size makes it possible for you to see all your classmates.

It’s a bit tricky for the teacher to provide tech support to all her students if they are using multiple devices since Zoom for laptop is laid out much differently than Zoom for phone.  Trying to tell people to click or swipe, etc. is a challenge.  

It is also tricky now with children all doing online school -- the competition for devices within households is fierce!  And the parents are no longer available to the same extent during their children’s school hours because many want to supervise their children’s participation.

 

6. WIFI Access

City-sponsored free WIFI is pretty extensive, but primarily in public places.  It doesn’t generally extend within people’s homes.

The City’s Department of Education moved quickly to reach a deal with one of the main internet service providers to offer free internet with WIFI for any family with children in the K-12 system.  I don’t know how well the roll out of this program is going.

Most companies have removed their data caps during this time, so most of our students seem to have adequate service.

(NB, You can really see how ill-conceived the federal and state legislative efforts have been over the past years to bar municipal ownership/sponsorship of internet service.)

 

Hello Colleagues,

Good news! Anthony Tassi has agreed to extend our discussion for a second  day. Post your questions or comments no later than 9:00 A.M. EDT/12 Noon PDT  tomorrow, Wednesday, March 25th, and he will try to respond. Of course, this whole discussion will remain here beyond then for our reference as needed.

And now for three more questions:

7. Do your teachers or tutors need help in learning about online teaching and learning, how to do it well? If so, how are you or how will you be providing this?

8. What benefits are your students seeing in participating in online learning? In addition to continuing their learning, are there also social or other benefits? For example, do  they or you and your team see this as a way they can develop or strengthen their digital literacy skills, learn about and take advantage of government benefits for which they may be eligible, learn about their legal rights and what to do about them as in the case of wage theft or other kinds of employer exploitation, or learn new ways to stay in touch with family and friends online?

9. What do you see as some of the biggest challenges in offering all your teaching and learning online?

 

David J, Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management Groups

Hi all-

I have been so proud of my staff the last two weeks.  Our program is primarily one on one tutoring that had to be completely stopped because of the virus.  We scrambled and now are encouraging all our tutors to move to Zoom and Burlington English.  We had 70 tutors participate in Zoom training last week and another 45 participated in a Burlington English training.  We have posted some of our resources, including health-related lesson plans at http://www.oaklandliteracy.com/lesson-plans-for-remote-learning/.  I hope these resources are helpful to you.  Stay safe.

7.  Teachers and Tutors Need Help

The short answer is yes!

Sari Barocas, an amazing English for Parents teacher says: “Learning to teach online is a process of learning how to transition from using nonverbal cues from students and having highly interactive, experiential classes, to classes that, by virtue of the technology, limit those elements. By building on the relationships that have developed among students and between the teacher and students, teachers (speaking for myself) engage in trial-and-error learning, seeing what works, and then moving to do more of what works. Student feedback, in multiple forms, continues to drive the direction and content of teaching, providing us with the input we need to make changes that meet students’ needs.”

We are all kind of learning by doing.  Experimenting a good deal and asking our peers for help.  But, like all previous instructional challenges, our program director and I observe class sessions and give the instructors feedback, help them problem solve, etc. and very often, just listen to them talk through the issue until they come up with the solution.  David Rosen’s moderating of this discussion group has also yielded some of the best advice and insight.

One issue in all of this is just focusing -- thinking about what we can do well under the circumstances and just trying to focus on doing that.  In the digital realm, there are many different goals you can have for your students and many different ways of trying to achieve each goal. For us, it has been helpful to focus on just a few things we are trying to accomplish and let the instructors develop mastery of them without overloading them with many new challenges all at once.

Our program director (David Rothenberg) is really comfortable taking on challenges and learning new things online, watching YouTube, etc.  That helps set a good “can-do” tone.

But, we have other literacy and language tutors who are totally stumped right now and we haven't developed a large-scale training to roll-out a broader program.  The epidemic related grief and fear create a climate that makes it hard for people to learn new things.  Myself included.  

But, through all of this, we get a chance to see what it is really like for many of our adult learners who we ask to jump over all their feelings to learn something completely new when they don’t think they can.

Thanks, Anthony and David (and all others who've posted here -- and to LINCS) for sharing these ideas.   A few comments and questions:

(1) Anthony described how not relying on government funding has allowed them to be innovative in multiple ways.  That reinforces the observation that so many adult educators have made about the unhelpful constraints they feel they need to work within in terms of whom to serve, what to teach, how to teach it, etc.

(2) This discussion points  to the need to recruit, train, and support staff (paid and volunteer) who can support on-line learning.  Might the federal Corporation for National and Community Service create something like a "Literacy Corps" or "English Corps"  or "Tech Corps" (borrowing from the AmeriCorps and Senior Corps that it already funds) to provide modest salaries and benefits for the many tech-savvy people in the US (including the 7000-plus Peace Corps Volunteers who were just evacuated back to the US and are looking for meaningful work)?  They might be matched with organizations like Literacy Partners and others mentioned here (and to public libraries) who are trying to blend on-line with face-to-face services for learners.

(3) Given that many school-age children are now being given laptops to do on-line learning (which was going on before COVID-19), might there be a more systematic effort to help parents and other adult family members also use those laptops for on-line learning?  

Paul Jurmo

(www.pauljurmo.info)

 

 

8.  Benefits to Students

One of our brilliant English for Parents teachers, Michael Kengmana, says:

“I think during this time of extreme uncertainty and lack of social proximity the online classes have offered my students a chance to maintain the bonds they have forged throughout this year. They all are quite open about their struggles and worries during this time and having other people who are going through a similar experience to talk to and listen to them is paramount to them maintaining the mental health necessary to get their families through these difficult times. 

Even before everyone was forced to stay home, Literacy Partners English classes were the place where our students had a chance to unload their daily stresses, connect with other people of their age group, and have fun. As immigrant women the students have to contend with the pressures of their own cultures as well as the structures of American society that disempower immigrants and women. Being at this intersection can be extremely isolating. Our classes offer a unique way for our students to feel they are not stuck and by offering them online we are able to continue to offer that important sentiment during these troubling times.”

I definitely see that switching to online learning for parents and for children is helping to boost the digital literacy skills of our students.  The amazing English for Parents teacher, Sari Barocas, says:

“All the students are mothers and right now they’re faced with the same challenge of helping their children with online learning. It seems to be a problem for all of the mothers. They express their frustration in our What’sApp group, and I think that helps them feel less alone.

I have a student whose child is using Class DoJo. She doesn’t know how to use it, so she’s been unable to help her child. In one of our Zoom sessions, one of her classmates said that she has used it, and she volunteered to help her.”

So, we create the conditions for this kind of peer support and peer learning to flourish.  And as a program that serves mothers in particular, we have to pay attention to domestic violence, which is likely to increase as the quarantine continues and the economic situation worsens.  That is a very real concern of mine and we have referral arrangements in place for screening, counseling and services. But, all of that is much harder now.

And so, I think the first important step is to provide safe spaces on Zoom and on WhatsApp for these women to continue gathering together.

 

Hello colleagues,

Anthony Tassi has described how students at Literacy Partners in New York City have been responding to having online classes. Please tell us how your students may be responding:

1.  Are they challenged by the technology - the hardware or software -- in doing online learning?

2.  Are they glad to be reconnected, online, with other learners? As Literacy Partners English for Parents teacher Michael Kengmana says, for your students is this "a chance to maintain the bonds they have forged throughout this year"?

3.  How are they benefiting from their online community? In addition to continuing to develop their knowledge and skills, is this a way to express their fears and concerns, or perhaps their relief that none of their loved ones have been touched by the COVID-19 corona virus? Are they, as Michael Kengmana says, "quite open about their struggles and worries during this time"? Is "having other people who are going through a similar experience to talk to and listen to them...paramount to their maintaining the mental health necessary to get their families through these difficult times"?

4.  Are your students working, laid off, or both?  Are some anxious about losing their jobs?

5. Are some struggling with how to educate their children at home, for example how to help their children with their own online learning or hard copy home learning packets?

6.  Are online real-time or asynchronous classes also a way to learn how to keep themselves and their family and friends protected? Is it a way to learn about how to access government benefits such as free (for income-eligible) school children breakfast or lunch pick-up spots, unemployment insurance, housing, rent, tenant rights? What else are your adult learners asking for help with?

7.  Are they asking about the the 2020 Census, how to fill out the online questionnaire that they probably have received a letter about, or what to do if someone knocks on their door about the 2020 Census? Have you developed or found a good online lesson plan for helping English language learners to complete the online census, or to talk with an in-person 2020 Census interviewer?

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and program Management group

9.  Biggest Challenges

Our program director David Rothenberg notes: “For the English classes for parents that we have up and running, the biggest challenges are now around the timing and structure of the classes. As we serve parents with young children in our ESOL program, many of them feel the need to support their children’s online learning, meaning many of our students are currently unable to attend our classes at the regularly scheduled time. We are working with our teachers and students to find alternate times that would work best for our students to attend the online classes in smaller groups with an all-out push to have at least a brief whole-class meeting each day to keep the community together, even if only for a few minutes.”

Our teacher Sari Barocas adds: “Some students have slow wifi.  There can be a lot of background noise in some students’ homes, due to children playing, so it can be noisy for students who are listening. Sometimes children need their parents for a variety of reasons, so students have to step away to take care of their children.”

The challenge is being flexible and highly adaptive to right-sizing the lessons, keep the engagement going throughout the technical glitches that are inevitable, and just meet people where they are at.

More broadly, as an organization, we can’t think about continuing everything we were doing.  Rather, we need to focus on what we can do well in the current environment.  And, of the things we can do well, what is going to be meaningful for our students and their families?  What can they actually engage in right now? That is likely a smaller subset of our previous program than we’d like to see. 

For my organization, we still have not found our way forward on basic literacy instruction. We have started with tutors calling the students to give them one-on-one, step-by-step instructions on how to use their phone in new ways.  Once that is mastered, we are having them do one-on-one sessions in Zoom. All of that effort, just gets us to the starting line!

Our in-person basic literacy program was very structured, intense, and tailored to each student.  The amount of time and effort it will take our team to figure out how to evolve that program to an online format and the small number of students who will benefit is a real dilemma.  So, we are still looking for the right next step and probably have to grieve the loss of this passion project as we transition into something more doable.  This is the dilemma when you throw everything you've got into tailoring a "bespoke" program... nothing else compares and it feels like a real let down to switch gears to something else. 

The bigger picture here is that all of our organizations have been reinvented into remote working programs, which is a real challenge for many of us.  Many of us now have to leave work to make lunch for our children. And we have to get up from time to time to yell at them to get off their screens … um…  I mean, to engage them in age-appropriate, developmentally beneficial parent-child playtime.  

We think we will be in this space until September.  So, we are trying to focus on what we can do well during this time with the team we have … and help our people to connect with all of you and others who have figured out important things that will help us.  All of that while being a supportive workplace attentive to our team’s fears and anxieties. We have to treat our own people well during this time … and that takes some thought and attention. 

 

Colleagues,

I deeply appreciate the time that Anthony Tassi and his team have taken, especially during this coronavirus emergency, and the thoughtfulness of his and his team members' replies to our questions. What comes across so clearly in Anthony's replies is that what is most important to Literacy Partners is meeting students' needs, especially now, during a pandemic that is directly affecting so many of New York City's residents. It is also clear that that an important part of that is to help students who have access to the Internet to re-group online, and to help each other. Anthony has mentioned the particular online tools they use, and some ways his team members use them. That might be useful to other teachers and program managers here, particularly those who work in ESOL/ESL programs. Recently I mentioned to several colleagues that this is a WAITT time, i.e. when We Are All In This Together. Anthony has exemplified that for us. This, for me, is what a Community of Practice is at its best.

Anthony, I hope you will be able to remain a member of the LINCS Integrating Technology and/or Program Management groups, both to benefit from the discussions here, but also to share other insights from what you have been doing at Literacy Partners.

Everyone, this discussion thread will remain open for your additional comments and your review, and the  Preparing for and offering adult basic skills online during the pandemic discussion will also continue. If you haven't had a chance to join in that discussion, please do.

David J. Rosen, Moderator

LINCS CoP Integrating Technology and Program Management groups