Hello Members, I just returned from St. Louis where I attended the LINCS Region 3 Professional Development Partnership Meeting last week. It was an amazing gathering of ABE professionals in the Midwest Region and I was struck again by the extraordinary work (volume and quality) that adult educators do with little time and even less money. I was also struck by the fact that there are lots of partnership opportunities between ABE professionals and Correctional Educators that are going unexplored. While many states' ABE professionals where well-informed and well-connected with the Correctional Educators in their state, many were not. What can we do to bridge these gaps and promote cooperation? There is a wealth of good information and experience to be shared within our common fields and it seems a shame to waste free and easily accessible resources. Please feel free to share any ways in which you are connecting with the larger adult ed community in your state, and maybe ways in which you could be partnering more. I'm working to make some of the great resources developed by the group with which I met available to Correctional Educators. What else could be done? Thanks for your thoughts.
Comments
Heather -
You'll be pleased to know what is happening in Colorado. For the past few years, CAEPA (Colorado Adult Education Professional Association) and the Colorado branch of the Correctional Education Association have held a joint annual conference. This includes a lot of professional devleopment/trainings. We learn much from each other! Good ideas for classrooms in schools or community centers may not work in a correctional setting, as you know.
Dorothea Steinke
Hello Dorothea. That is wonderful to hear! The more information I have from Colorado, the more I understand what good, innovative work your state is doing. It's so difficult to keep track of all the different ways in which state agencies, non-profit agency providers and school districts/community colleges work together sometimes...I definitely see large benefits resulting from good collaboration. Thanks!