{"id":40,"date":"2017-05-03T00:03:34","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T04:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/?page_id=40"},"modified":"2017-05-15T12:01:47","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T16:01:47","slug":"credits","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/credits\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though I worked with my local library’s literacy program\u00a0intermittently\u00a0throughout high school and college, I never paid much attention\u00a0to its institutional organization, the source of its funding or its origins. As I started preliminary research on\u00a0this website, I began to think about my time there and wonder: Were community members in my hometown asking for English classes and English language book clubs, or was the state funding these so as to more rapidly assimilate its citizens? Does the state control the curriculum of the literacy program, or do learners have input on content areas covered? How is the program held accountable – does it lose or gain government support (namely, funding) based on its successes or failures? Though I was not able to answer these\u00a0questions specifically in my research, the construction of this website did lead to several other interesting discoveries and revelations regarding\u00a0adult literacy programs, grassroots organizing and urban education as a whole.<\/p>\n

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  1. Family and adult literacy are\u00a0relatively well-funded and well-supported in the U.S.<\/strong> As I was looking for grassroots organizations to include in my website’s directory, it was very difficult to find organizations that\u00a0were not in some way connected to Head Start, United Way, or maintained under the programming arm of a public library or public school. This suggests not only that there\u00a0is\u00a0significant\u00a0government funding available for family and adult literary programs,\u00a0but also that this funding is relatively\u00a0accessible to organizations who desire\u00a0it. Generally, the government allots money for literacy programs to states and then states, in turn, are free to\u00a0distribute these funds to organizations that\u00a0request them. While organizations receiving state funds to run their programs must remain accountable to the state on a basic level (ex. recording\u00a0their budget, periodically testing their learners),\u00a0there do not seem to be strict guidelines regarding the\u00a0structure of adult literacy\u00a0organizations. Thus, even when literacy organizations that began as grassroots begin to accept funds from larger institutions, they are still able to remain local, maintain a degree of autonomy and, in many cases, keep their grassroots-oriented identities.<\/li>\n
  2. While there is significant research on the positive effects of family literacy programs, there is little to no research on the effects that adult literacy\u00a0programs have on adults themselves.<\/strong>\u00a0To me, this finding was especially worrisome given the nature of the adult literacy programs that I found. Most hired\u00a0volunteer tutors who seemed well-meaning but\u00a0were relatively untrained, save for a few weeks orientation at best. Though my research convinced me that adult and family literacy programs have positive benefits on children’s literacy development, I am left with questions about the outcomes for adult learners. There seems to be little accountability within the field, and, given that adult literacy programs tend to be free, I wonder if learners would feel justified in demanding more effective teachers or teaching, if they felt they were not being adequately served.<\/li>\n
  3. There has been little research on literacy in general, within the past five years.<\/strong> Though I found much research on literacy and literacy programs (ranging from practitioner-oriented articles to articles in peer-reviewed journals), none of it was very recent. I wonder if this is simply because it is a relatively well-studied field, in which old research still holds true. However, the fact that literacy and illiteracy rates in the U.S. have remained stagnant for the past decade was worrisome to me and seemed indicative of a need for more research. I would be curious to know why research on this topic seems to have slowed, particularly when the number of immigrants and people whose first language is not English continues to rise.<\/li>\n
  4. Adult literacy is a pressing issue in\u00a0both urban and rural\u00a0settings.<\/strong> Because most of the grassroots organizing we’ve examined throughout the semester\u00a0has centered in cities, I was surprised to find that grassroots organizing in adult and family literacy seems to be happening at similar rates in rural and urban areas, with many organizations emerging in the Midwest specifically. This, for me, highlighted the similarities that issues in urban education have with issues in rural education. I would be interested in knowing how much communication takes place between scholars of these two very different, but also similar, geographical areas.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Though I worked with my local library’s literacy program\u00a0intermittently\u00a0throughout high school and college, I never paid much attention\u00a0to its institutional organization, the source of its funding or its origins. As I started preliminary research on\u00a0this website, I began to think about my time there and wonder: Were community members in my hometown asking for English […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":450,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-40","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/450"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2017-egraumli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}