Posted on behalf of Thomas Sticht, retired International Consultant in Adult Education and longtime supporter of adult learners all over the world
Colleagues: It is early in August and time to start planning next month’s celebrations of International Literacy Day on September 8th and Adult Education and Family Literacy Week (AEFLW) September 22-28. Some of you may be interested in using an article entitled “ABC’S of Investing in Adult Literacy Education” as part of your advocacy for adult literacy education during September. In it I wrote a brief note for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet advocating for adult basic skills education. Over the years the piece has been reproduced by several groups, including:
- https://zitac21.blogspot.com/2010/06/abc-of-investing-in-adult-literacy.html
- [http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/2010/06/abcs-of-investing-in-adult-literacy.html)]
- http://library.copian.ca/item/5625
Tweets. In 2015, at the request of Sharon Bonney, CEO of the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE), I converted my prose notes for each alphabet letter into 140 character tweets for each of the 26 alphabet letters and COABE tweeted one letter per day during September 1-26 (which included AEFLW) to help raise awareness of adult literacy education.
Pictures in Tweets. In 2018, Branka Marceta of the Capital Adult Education Regional Consortium (CAERC), Greater Sacramento Region, took the original prose version of the notes for each letter of the alphabet and embedded them in beautiful illustrations and tweeted one a week starting with the letter A on Wednesday, October 24, 2018 and ending with the letter Z on April 30, 2019.
If you would like to use any of this information in celebrating AEFLW this year I have included them together in a single source report entitled, “ABC’s of Investing in Adult Literacy Education in Prose, Tweets, and Pictures” available for free downloading online at:
For information about using high definition versions of the pictures for the CAERC tweets contact Branka Marceta at bmarceta@scoe.net.
The struggle for adult literacy goes on! See:
Sticht, T. (2017). The Struggle for Adult Literacy Education in America A Trilogy Of Notes on History, Research, Policy, & Practice in Adult Literacy Education. Free downloading online at:
Sticht, T. (2018). Mainstreaming Marginalized Adults: The Transformation of Adult Basic Education in the United States. Free downloading online at:
Tom Sticht
Comments
Thank you, Leecy, for sharing this! I love the “ABC’S of Investing in Adult Literacy Education.” If we begin in the week of August 19th we can get through all 26 letters by Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. There is also a free NAEFL Toolkit available with information and activities focused on adult literacy. As we are beginning new classes this fall this is a great opportunity to highlight adult literacy and to involve our students in celebrating the importance of literacy. I would love to hear what programs and/or instructors are planning for NAEFL week.
Please share your thoughts so we can all participate in this celebration!
Jeri