Fieldwork Proposals

Field Work Proposal: English Composition at ASA College

http://www.asa.edu/

            When I first enrolled in this course, I was a little concerned that virtually every context I knew of where adult learners were learning language and literacy skills was primarily staffed by volunteers or inexperienced and low paid workers. I had previously worked at the City College Writing Center being paid $12/hour after a 20 hour training and had visited two literacy programs for adults that were comprised of one paid staff member coordinating with relatively untrained volunteer tutors. I am still concerned that teaching language and literacy to adult learners seems like a field that many people are accessing without formal academic training. Consequently, I would like to use my fieldwork experience to visit a relatively new, for profit college that is nestled in highly commercial locations in New York City, downtown Brooklyn and Herald Square.

ASA is located in the primarily commercial district of Downtown Brooklyn. 

            ASA College offers job-based Associate’s degree programs primarily for adult learners.  Its student body seems to consist of many ESL students since the school runs an ESL program and also has intensive seminars in developing English language skills. Since the degrees offered are in the fields of business, health disciplines, criminal justice, and technology, the English composition courses must be accessible to a wide variety of students whose primary interests are likely not humanities.

            I am interested in exploring the English composition classes at ASA because I believe it would be an intriguing way to explore several challenges of working with adult learners. I would like to see how the class addresses the basic challenges of working with busy, part-time students. I also would like to see how this more abstract core course is connected to the students’ courses of study. I also believe that it will be interesting to see how this community of many ESL students accesses a composition course.

            I also would like to speak with professors who work in these contexts. Overwhelmingly, adult language and literacy educators work in non-profit contexts, and I would be curious to hear what it is like to work in this setting. I also believe that this course might have career-centered content and scaffolding for ESL students woven into an established curriculum since the college is a chain. I feel concerned that I have not gotten the chance to study established curricula for adults and I would appreciate getting the opportunity to study versatile resources that might be applicable to teaching many different adult learners.

After receiving feedback from Professor Gleason,  I realized that ASA college might be a complex organization to get access to for this project. Consequently, I decided to change my fieldwork site. It was only after Dr. Debby D'Amico came and spoke to our class about the amazing work at Community-Based Organizations, that I determined I wanted to observe one of these comprehensive agencies that offers a range of support services to its students. I found a local CBO called CAMBA, and chose to pursue profiling this organization instead. 

 Revised Fieldwork Proposal: ABE/HSE Classes at CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center

http://www.literacycamba.org/     

      

            For my research project, I will be observing the ABE (Adult Basic Education) and HSE (High School Equivalency Test) courses at CAMBA’s (Church Avenue Merchant’s Block Association) Adult Literacy Center. CAMBA (www.camba.org), as a parent organization, is a nonprofit community-based organization that offers over 150 integrated services that promote the quality of life of New Yorkers, concentrating their services in the Flatbush and East Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The Adult Literacy Center (LiteracyCAMBA.org)  is multi-faceted in itself, offering Adult Basic Education, English language classes, basic literacy, civics, computer literacy, and a young adult literacy internship program. Students are expected to attend three-hour courses in the morning, afternoon, or evening five days a week for a three-month cycle. There are about 2,000 students of various backgrounds who attend this center yearly, and they receive case management services, counseling, and childcare to support their general success with the program. The Adult Basic Education Program serves 400 students annually and professional instructors generally teach all courses.

            Though I struggled to select my fieldwork site, I believe that CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center will allow me to investigate several areas of interest that motivated me to enroll in this course initially. I chose to take Teaching Adult Writers in Diverse Contexts because I wanted to develop background knowledge in three areas: the types of learners that choose to study English language and literacy skills, best practices for teaching writing to adults, and types of training and content knowledge I should develop to become a competitive candidate to employers after graduation. CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center is a rich resource of knowledge in all three of these areas, and I appreciate that it will allow me to simultaneously pursue these interests.

            First, the ABE/HSE courses at CAMBA will allow me to complicate my understanding of who adult learners are. I was very impressed that this center services 2,000 people, since they are generally local and not all of the students are ESL students. I have begun to realize that adult learners in language and literacy courses are an incredibly diverse population, and I hope to gain an understanding of the various backgrounds of these learners. I live and work relatively close to the 885 Flatbush Avenue location of the Adult Literacy Center, and I am fairly familiar with the location of the center. I look forward to learning from adult learners in my neighborhood and hearing what motivates them to attend classes. In addition, I am hoping to understand the broader spectrum of obstacles that prevent some adults from obtaining literacy proficiency beyond English being a second language. I anticipate that my observations will cause me to investigate issues of race and learning disabilities.

          I  hope to use quotes from students in the center or student success stories and writing samples that are featured on the website to explore these issues. In addition, I would like to bring in data from national assessments of adult literacy to contextualize the profiles of adult learners in a bigger context, such as Adult Literacy in America: A First Look at the Findings of the National Literacy Survey by Irwin S. Kirsch, et. al. , and Andrew Kolstad, or  Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy by Mark Kurtner, et. al. To complicate the exploration of learning disabilities as an obstacle for literacy proficiency, I might use “Teaching a Learning Disabled Adult to Spell: Is It Ever Too Late?” by Marianne Mazzel Hanlon and R. Jeffrey Cantrell. Since three of the four profiled students from the ABE/HSE program were African-American women, I believe that Sisters of Hope, Looking Back, Stepping Forward: The Educational Experiences of African-American Women by Audrey P. Watkins might enrich the explorations of race and gender’s roles in the epidemic of low literacy levels in adults that this research might provoke.

            Second, I believe that CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center will allow me to study best practices in teaching writing. Since most of the staff has a professional background in teaching English skills to adults, I am looking forward to seeing some exemplar teaching. I very specifically sought to avoid visiting a fieldwork site that was staffed by volunteers or low-paid hourly workers. Simply looking at CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center alone, there were several dozen resources for students to study and teacher resources posted. I am hoping to learn further about who curates the resources on the site and how they decide which content to share. Ideally, I will also see some of these best practices and valuable curricula in action during my observations. To enhance my discussion of best practices of teaching adult learners, I am hoping to include secondary sources that are classics in educational philosophy, such as Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the work of Malcolm Knowles, since their work will complement many of the missions of this community-based organization. I am also hoping that my interviewee, Mara Kolter, Program Supervisor of the ABE program can recommend some texts on best practices for adult writers, as well.

I was especially impressed by the program's website. This is just a sample of a few links that the Adult Literacy Center at CAMBA makes available to its students.

            Finally, I am hoping to get a sense of how I can best enhance my career through work experience and content knowledge. I know that CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center offers professional development to their staff annually and I would like to learn more about the structure and content of this training. In addition, since I will be interviewing the program director and there is a current job posting for an ABE instructor, I am hoping to ask questions about the process of breaking into basic education instruction. I believe that this might be a unique opportunity for me to identify and even pursue some goals in developing my experience. One of the reasons I chose to observe this center was that it is part of my community and I would eagerly pursue any paid or unpaid opportunities with this program. In addition, I was very impressed by the resource library on LiteracyCAMBA.org. Finally, I am very inspired by Mara Kolter’s background and knowledge as an adult literacy professional. (See her LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mara-raizer/7/377/157) She has 15 years of experience in the field, and has a background in applied linguistics and anthropology, which I think will be especially relevant to my research project for this course. In just a few email exchanges I have found Mara to offer insightful and supportive suggestions for discovering the adult education field and I look forward to learning more from her. I will be conducting my observations and interviewing Mara Kolter the week of April 12^th in the evening. The dates will be finalized when I hear back from Mara. (Please see attached conversation.)

            I am looking forward to my investigation of CAMBA’s Adult Literacy Center and hope to develop a long-term working relationship with them through this project. I believe that I will deepen my knowledge on factors beyond secondary language acquisition that cause low literacy, best practices for writing instruction, and how adult educators begin and develop their careers through this exploration.