Honors 390
Prof. James McKusick

ADULT LITERACY TUTORING: ISSUES AND METHODS

Course Description:

This service learning course explores the principles and techniques pertaining to adult literacy tutoring. It introduces students to basic tutoring methods, provides background in the cultural, political, and social causes of illiteracy, and serves as a forum for discussion of issues surrounding civic literacy and social responsibility. Students will apply the concepts and skills they develop to actual tutoring experiences. The fieldwork component of this course requires that students spend four hours per week serving as tutors to functionally illiterate adults. Adult literacy tutoring will take place at The Learning Bank in Baltimore City, and individual scheduling of fieldwork will be arranged by the Shriver Center.

Required Textbooks:

Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educational Underclass (Penguin, 1990).

Catherine Dorsey Gaines and Rudine Sims Bishop, Growing Up Literate: Learning from Inner City Families (Heinemann, 1994).
Katherine D. D. Wiesendanger, Strategies for Literacy Education (Pearson Education, 2000).

Students should also purchase a spiral or loose leaf notebook, for use as a Reflection Journal. Each student must complete and submit a Service Learning Reflection Journal to the instructor for initial review on March 17, and again by the last day of classes. The Reflection Journal should have at least one entry per week in which you describe key incidents and experiences and offer reflections on their significance. (See attached guidelines.)

Readings and Assignments:

February 3: Introduction: Adult Literacy Tutoring in theory and practice
February 10: Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary (discussion)
February 17: Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary (continued)
February 24: Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary (continued)
Start reading Katherine D. D. Wiesendanger, Strategies for Literacy Education
March 3: Katherine D. D. Wiesendanger, Strategies for Literacy Education (discussion)
March 10: Katherine D. D. Wiesendanger, Strategies for Literacy Education (continued)
March 17: Discussion: What is working (and what is not working) in our personal experience of adult literacy tutoring.
Service Learning Reflection Journal Due (for first review, to be handed back to you with comments after Spring Break
Spring Break, March 24 28
March 31: Dorsey Gaines and Bishop, Growing Up Literate (discussion)
April 7: Dorsey Gaines and Bishop, Growing Up Literate (continued)
April 14: Dorsey Gaines and Bishop, Growing Up Literate (continued)
April 21: Discussion: The social, political, ethical, and cultural contexts of literacy education
April 28: Student presentations (topics to be assigned)
May 5: Student presentations (continued)
May 12: Conclusion and Retrospect. Service Learning Reflection Journal Due

Grading Policy:

The final grade for HONR 390 will be determined by the course instructor (Dr. James McKusick) and will be based on his qualitative assessment of each student’s performance, taking into account the student’s Reflection Journal, class presentation, and other assignments, together with the adult literacy site supervisor’s final performance evaluation. The instructor may meet individually with the student, or consult with the site supervisor, at any time during the service learning placement.

Excerpted from: Bridget Keegan and James C. McKusick (co authors),
Instructor’s Manual to Literature and Nature: Four Centuries of Nature Writing (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001).

Ideas for Assignments

Questions for discussion, writing, and research for particular authors and texts are provided in detail below. In addition, instructors may wish to provide alternative assignments, depending on the intended purpose and audience of their course. Below we offer brief descriptions of assignments that have had success in our courses. These assignments draw on active and collaborative learning techniques. They work to engage the students at a creative as well as a scholarly level, allowing them to use oral as well as written verbal skills, and to bring their classroom experience out into the community and make it “relevant” to their own lives. Courses on literature and the environment offer unique opportunities for the instructor to devise “hands-on” learning experiences for students of diverse interests and backgrounds.

Service Learning Project

Editors’ Note:
Depending on the particular design of the course, and the instructor’s interest, this project is often another way of allowing students to make connections between the work done in class and “the real world”. Because so many (If the writers included in the anthology write from a deep concern and care for the natural world around them (often serving as environmental activists as well as writers), this assignment helps bring the texts to light. It can be modified for short or longer term activities. Because it is often difficult to require students to do additional work outside of class time, the instructor might wish to make this project one option among other more traditional essay topics. Alternatively, the instructor might wish to spend one class period with the class as a group doing volunteer service, such as a campus clean up, and use that occasion to prompt a shorter response essay.

Assignment:
Write an essay that draws together your own experiences from doing at least ten hours of service work related to environment and the scholarly reflection we have engaged in during the class. The instructor will provide a list of possible organizations for which you may volunteer, and you are welcome to recommend other organizations with which you have worked (or would like to work), provided that the proposed activities are germane to the class. The service you do must be externally documented and verified. In the essay you should explore specific ways your service experience enhanced or altered your perspective on the issues and texts studied in the course.

Service Learning Reflection Journal
To receive academic credit for Honors 390 (Adult Literacy Tutoring: Issues and Methods), each student must submit a Service Learning Reflection Journal. The Reflection Journal should be handwritten in a spiral or looseleaf notebook and is due for initial review on March 17, and it must be handed in again on the last day of classes. The Reflection Journal should have at least one entry per week in which you describe key incidents and experiences in your service learning placement and offer reflections on their significance. The Reflection Journal will be evaluated with reference to two main criteria: (1) Detailed and sympathetic observation, and (2) Quality and scope of thought and reflection. Neatness doesn’t count! Reflection Journals are expected to be informal and to display some creative chaos. Feel free to enclose clippings, photos, or anything else you may have produced or acquired as a record of your experience as an Adult Literacy Tutor.

Please write the date above each entry in your journal. In recording the events and incidents of your adult literacy tutoring experience, students are encouraged to follow the practice described by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz as “thick description” in his important and influential book, The Interpretation of Cultures. Geertz’s ethnographic approach is predicated on his vision of “man as an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” Those committed to thick description take for granted that even the simplest act can mean different things depending on the cultural codes at work. In other words, the cultural significance of any action or artifact is never apparent at first glance; only by recording everything we observe, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can we begin to glimpse underlying patterns of meaning or behavior.

Each journal entry should provide a balance of observation and reflection. Once you have provided a “thick description” of your experiences, try to reflect more deeply on their larger significance. To get started, you may wish to address some of the following questions (or any other questions that help you make sense of your experience):

Questions for Reflection:

• The Setting: What are your most vivid first impressions of the adult literacy tutoring site? Describe settings, people, actions and positive or negative feelings you are having.
• The Scene’s Players: Describe who you work with at the tutoring site (including staff, clients, fellow students) their lives, their views, their goals in life. Include some personal reaction to the individual(s) with whom you are working.
• The Exposition: What activities have you been doing with the person(s) with whom you have been working? Describe your relationship.
• The Plot: How do the people with whom you work react to you? Cite specific examples. How does their reaction make you feel?
• The Action: How do you think your presence in the community impacts the person(s) with whom you work? What impact has this placement had on you? Illustrate this point with experiences you have had this semester.
• The Script: Describe in some detail a day at your adult literacy tutoring site, including bits of conversation or a sample of the work with which you have been involved. Be creative. What is the significance of what you have described?
• The Resolution: After serving in the community now for several months, how have your initial impressions been altered? If they have not changed, describe observations that confirmed initial impressions.
• Backstage: What helped to make your adult literacy tutoring experience more successful and why?
• The Producers: Create a wish list for your adult literacy tutoring site. Be sure to include material needs as well as societal support that would make a difference in the lives of your clients.
  
• Critique: Write a summary of your semester. What was learned by both you and the person(s) with whom you worked? Include special experiences or highlights you might have had.

Finally, please be aware of certain ethical boundaries that your Service Learning Reflection Journal must not transgress. You must not mention the name(s) of your client(s) or provide other identifying personal information or photographs. Rather, you should select a pseudonym (such as a first name) to identify each client discussed in your journal. Your Reflection Journal is not intended as the basis for scholarly research, and you must hold it strictly confidential. Do not share your journal or report your observations to any person who intends to use them as a basis for research. Rather, the main purpose of your Reflection Journal is for your own academic and professional development. Your instructor agrees to hold the journal confidential and to use it only for the purpose of qualitative assessment of individual student learning outcomes of the service learning placement.