see you in september

Hey there café readers,

I hope your summer is going swimmingly. Mine is cranking along. There is some family stuff that I have been attending to and lots of relatives have come to town so I have not found time to blog. I think I am going to take a break until September... before the 21st night for sure ... see you around Literacy Day.

blogs, websites and ... ?

I hope that everybody had a nice loooong weekend. I did. I am facilitating a workshop about online learning at the Toronto District School Board tomorrow. I made this blog for the workshop: tdsbliteracy.blogspot.com. It was fun. I love a blog start-up. I hope the instructors take it on. I'll let you know how it goes.

The other thing I did was put all of the Issue #10 article PDFs up on the Literacies site so circulate them about the literacy community as you wish.

Thank you to those who left the lovely messages on the last blog post. It means so much to us. And what about this blog? I am not sure. On the one hand, I would like to keep it going. I like writing about literacy practice and research here but am not sure how to maintain that. Partly because I am not sure what I will be doing and partly because I know that when I am not working in literacy I start to become a bit un-connected.

I think I will keep thinking about it and play it by ear. Will that work?

strategic planning

We need your help.

It looks as though Literacies is facing another break in funding with no real idea how long that break will be.*

Some days we are resigned to the fact that Issue #10 will be the last, but as we put Issue #9 together we are struck, as always, by how important it is for us to have this place to express and share all the things we learn, understand, experience, think, create and dream.

For our forum this time we invite you to tell us what you like about Literacies, what could be better, what you think of some options for continuing to publish during a funding hiatus, and what you would be willing/able todo to support the work of Literacies during the hiatus and beyond. We will use your input to make decisions about our future, to demonstrate that people care about Literacies and to advocate for the options that are important to you. We’re ready to hear from you!

There are 22 questions in this survey. Most questions are multiple choice It will take approximately 15 minutes (?) to complete the questionnaire.

The survey will be open from October 13 until December 1.
http://www.surveyconsole.com/console/TakeSurvey?id=515694

To read the questions before you take the survey, download this PDF document (40kb).

*Literacies is funded by the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES) for one more issue. The last OLES request for proposals was to develop workplace literacy tools and resources. The work that we at Literacies do--practitioner networking and knowledge mobilization--does not meet the criteria for this call. OLES has promised future calls but as this issue goes to press an election has been called. Regardless of the outcome, we know that there is often a post-election freeze on requests for proposals.

reading the reports

Recently a group of literacy workers and researchers came together to apply their expertise and analysis to two reports that could inform education policy decisions in Canada.

Learning Literacy in Canada: Evidence from the International Survey of Reading Skills, was released by Statistics Canada in January 2008. It used data from the International Survey of Reading Skills (ISRS) to offer information that can help “policy makers, researchers and practitioners” decide “how to plan and deliver appropriate and efficient reading instruction for different adult learners” (p. 19).

Reading the Future: Planning to meet Canada’s future literacy needs is a synthesis of work by a number of researchers who were involved in developing IALSS. This report, released by the Canadian Council on Learning in July 2008, offers program recommendations, practices, and strategies for improving the skills of the low-skilled readers identified by the ISRS.

We have created Reading the Reports (PDF download) to let you know what they are saying. We hope you find this brief summary of their discussion helpful and informative.

The group is: Tannis Atkinson (editor of Literacies), Dr. Pat Campbell (Grass Roots Press / Education for Change), Dr. Richard Darville (Carleton University), Brigid Hayes (Brigid Hayes Consulting), Dr. Nancy Jackson (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto), and Tracey Mollins (publisher of Literacies).

What conversations have you been having about these reports? Let us know your thoughts, ideas and questions.

holiday

I am heading westward for a little family fun -- camping on Newcastle Island and cafe-ing in Vancouver. And lots of other stuff too. I may not blog here for a bit so I am going to leave you one more zefrank video. I hope it feels like a little internet holiday. See you soon.

P.S. One person who thinks you're great is me.

preview

here is a preview of the fall 2008 issue that tannis made in wordle

see it in the gallery

hippy hippy rapal

Sorry for the long absence. I got home from my travels late last Tuesday to find that my internet connection was down -- or mostly down. No excuse really. There is always the internet café just a 5 minute bike ride away. The internet was not the only thing that was down. I was sort of down too. I have been on the move for three weeks and was not ready to stop. I wanted to keep going and felt a bit grumpy about having to come home and stay in one place for more than three days in a row. All better now. Still want to move around and am making plans but can probably settle down for now.





The RaPAL conference ended so well. My last day I went to two amazing workshops. I spent the morning with Julie Collins who told us about a variety of storytelling projects. She has worked with a diverse range of people -- striking miner's wives, travellers, street involved people and now me.

In the afternoon Canada's own Bonnie Soroke told us about her work with HIPPY (Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters). Bonnie is the coordinator of the HIPPY plus program at HIPPY Britannia in Vancouver. The HIPPY Plus program combines the traditional HIPPY program with an adult literacy program. The program acknowledges that all parents have levels of competency in different literacies and builds on those strengths to broaden the boundaries and deepen community connections using non-text and creative methods. Bonnie told us we could use art supplies to take notes and reflect on what we were learning. Something that resonated with me was when she told us that one reason some of these parents are isolated from parts of the community is lack of access to transportation. I used play dough to make some rides for them. Later she told us that the HIPPY Plus workers wanted to come to the conference but could not because of costs. That resonated with me because I always feel a seesaw of glad-I-have-this-opportunity and sad-that-others-do-not when I get to attend a conference, especially one that involves travel and hotels. I made a plane for the HIPPY plus workers and am sure they will share it with all of us.

jostling discourses

The Panel Discussion at RaPAL was about the professionalization of literacy teachers, facilitators, instructors or, as they are known here, tutors.

The first thing we were asked to was to generate a list of qualifications we felt necessary to be a literacy teacher. The list was mostly things such as compassion, empathy, flexibility, openness, collegiality, the ability to think on one's feet, the ability to work from where people are, the ability to adapt constantly and so on. The panel seemed pretty surprised that our list was made up of almost exclusively what they called "soft skills" or personal qualities rather than the "hard skills" such as subject matter knowledge. The practitioners objected to the use of the term soft skills because they felt it demeaned what they see as vital to the work. I found it interesting that the list we came up reflects what literacy students say they value in literacy teachers -- they rarely mention subject matter knowledge. We were speaking the language of literacy and our literacy wisdom was on parade.

The rest of the conversation included some of these points:

• professionalization gives practitioners a career path with options and mobility
• a professionalized workforce will garner more respect from policy-makers and the public allowing the field to have a stronger, more effective advocacy voice
• the terms and approaches to achieve this voice means we are using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house and where does that leave us
• the reason practitioners are not respected is not because we are not professionalized (certified, accredited) but because the people we work with are not respected, because we are a female dominated field
• there is a big difference between professionalization and professionalism

The we went to a dinner where the Lord Mayor greeted us and a senator danced with a practitioner.

ancient literacies

I visited the Book of Kells exhibit at Trinity College. One of the first exhibits were examples of the old Irish script called Ogham. Ogham writing looks like a long vertical line decorated with cross hatches. There are 20 letters named for trees. Pretty nice.

With the introduction of Christianity to Ireland came the Roman script and the transcribing of the books of the Bible in the Book of Kells, the Book of Armagh, the Book of Durrow, the Book of Mulling and the Book of Dimma. The Book of Kells was transcribed by Celtic monks around 800 CE and contains the four Gospels of the New Testament in Latin. It is an illuminated text decorated with an extraordinary array of pictures, interlaced shapes and ornamental details of great beauty and delicacy.

After looking at the books and videos about the binding and inscribing processes, you can go upstairs to see the Long Room. The Long Room is an absolutely beautiful library containing the oldest books in Ireland. In the 1800s the library was full so they raised the roof in order to accommodate more books. I am not sure why but it feels almost cosmically wonderful to enter this room and stroll its length.

Last night Sheila Rosenburg opened the RaPAL conference with a talk about English and why people can't, don't and won't learn English. She finished by speaking about whose language is English, referring to the history of colonization and imperialism that brought English to so many places and imposed new names for everything on the people who lived there. Ireland is, of course, one of those places. In the play Translations, Brian Friel depicts how as the British Army mapped Ireland linguistically as well as geographically, as they renamed everything, they were conquering the land from within and using language as a means of oppression. As Sheila was talking about how imperialism then and now intersects with the practice of teaching English in different places, I wondered what it might feel like to be an Irish ESOL instructor teaching newcomers the language that came to my country in such a brutal fashion but has been and continues to be used so beautifully and creatively by a legion of great Irish authors. What place in history do we teach from? Is it the same every day and in every classroom?

quick note

I am in Galway now.

I am late getting going but I awoke early to an car or shop alarm and then slept in a bit. I chose to keep the noisier room with the balcony rather than move to a quieter, non-balconied room with wireless. I am a little proud of myself for that. I am sitting on the stair landing to write this.

I want to tell you about the Book of Kells and the Long Room and the Lisbon Treaty but the bus for Rossvael leaves in an hour and I hope to be on it and then a ferry to Inis Mor. Whee!

edupunks in ireland

I am heading to England tomorrow to do some visiting and reconnecting with family and friends before Tannis and I meet up in Galway for the RaPAL Conference.

I am so happy and grateful for this opportunity. If you are going too, we'll see you there.

I wish we could take you all with us. We'll do our best to bring as much of what we see and learn as we can to you here in the café. And to promote a cross-Atlantic crazy wisdom parade.

Posting might be a little erratic but we'll be thinking of you every minute.

parade starts today

what are you doing here?

get over to the crazy wisdom parade.

shut down week

I guess you might be thinking that I took the whole shut down day thing a bit too seriously. Well sort of. But it wasn't electronic gadgets that were shut down -- it was me. Lots and lots of coughing and all the usual accompanying aches and gripes. Has anyone else had this one? I hope not. I am still feeling a bit rough but getting better. Posting will resume.

model trapped employees go for a smoke

I am not sure why I am so hooked on this story. Maybe because I have spoken to so many model trapped employees lately.

a model trapped employee goes for a smoke 2008:
Have you seen the New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten called Up and Then Down? He tells the story of Nicholas White who, on his way outside for a smoke, was trapped in an elevator in New York City’s McGraw-Hill building for forty-one hours.

He occupied himself with thoughts of remaining calm and decided that he’d better not do anything drastic, because, whatever the malfunction, he thought it unwise to jostle the car, and because he wanted to be (as he thought, chuckling to himself) a model trapped employee. He hoped, once someone came to get him, to appear calm and collected. He did not want to be scolded for endangering himself or harming company property. Nor did he want to be caught smoking, should the doors suddenly open, so he didn’t touch his cigarettes.

You can watch a time lapse video of White in the elevator from the building’s security cameras. I have been finding it mesmerizing. What would I do?

a model trapped employee goes for a smoke 1945:
Just as fascinating is the later tale from the same article about "the Empire State Building incident of 1945, in which a B-25 bomber pilot made a wrong turn in the fog and crashed into the seventy-ninth floor, snapping the hoist and safety cables of two elevators. Both of them plunged to the bottom of the shaft. One of them fell from the seventy-fifth floor with a woman aboard—an elevator operator [she lived!]. The operator of the other one had stepped out for a cigarette."

Then there is the blazing-Christmas-tree elevator-fireball thing.

Not too sure how this connects to literacy research and practice but just thought I'd like to share this internet tidbit.

P.S. Literacies #8 is at The Learning Centre and will be shipped next week!

cake

Happy Birthday to the café. We opened on April 16, 2007 and have enjoyed every minute of our first year.

I have made a big batch of these cupcakes so grab a coffee, help yourself to a treat, and let's celebrate a blogging good year.

Announcements:
It is one month until the International Day for Sharing Life Stories on May 16, 2008 - get ready.

Literacies will launch the Literacy Wisdom Parade on that day - join us.

In Toronto there will be an event at OISE from the Story Project - more soon. Let us know what you are doing in your town and we can post information here and on the website.

be back soon

Tomorrow is the last day of the forum.
See you back here on Monday.

gone fishing

Just kidding!

We are over at the Literacies web forum until November 9.

Join us for a discussion about the joy, craziness, despair and love (not necessarily in that order) that is literacy work in the 21st century.

autumn

We are starting to see signs of autumn/fall here in Toronto but the temperature remains quite balmy - we are expecting high 20s again this week.

Issue #7 Working in Adult Literacy is at the printers and should be on its way to our subscribers and distribution partners by Thanksgiving week.

The forum will start on October 22 so mark the date.

And here is something else autumnal:

Autumn

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

by Emily Dickinson

on the road

We have been off the blog for a couple of days.
We have been working at getting processes in place at OISE/UT.

We are getting ready to attend a couple of conferences.

Tannis will be going to the RaPAL conference in Belfast June 15-17. It will be an interesting time to be in Belfast, not just for literacy but the start of a new era. It seems that there is great hope in Northern Ireland for a peaceful future. She is going a few days early and will visit literacy folks in Glasgow before the conference.

I (Tracey) will be heading to the Adult Learning Knowledge Centre's national symposium in Halifax on June 10-12. I will be going a couple of days early to visit with some of the CASAE folks.

Let us know if you are going to any of these events... we'll bring you a Literacies souvenir.

more subscription news

Our circulation/subscription manager is back!
Deb Holstein, formerly of Grass Roots Press, has agreed to work with Literacies again.

Deb set up our database and maintained it at Grass Roots. She also deals with all subscription queries, requests and fulfillment.

She is incredibly good at her work and incredibly good to work with so this is very exciting news for all of us.

We are getting set up in our new environment and will be ready July 1st - Oh Canada! - make that July 3rd.