English Department
City College
of New York
March 17,
2015
Deborah
D'Amico, PhD
Consultant,
Consortium for Worker Education
Dear Dr.
D’Amico:
Thank you
for sharing the generous resources of your time and publications with my class
last week. Professor Gleason’s course is my first in the Language and Literacy
program at CCNY, so I am just beginning to explore my new chosen profession. I
thought your list of important websites was so valuable that I put it in a
binder where I am hoping to compile other helpful resources for discovering my
career. Given that the landscape of teaching adult learners is complex and it
seems that finding a job is a challenge, I was comforted by having your
tangible and concise resource.
Though I was
incredibly grateful for your concrete hints at career development, your visit
to our class and the vastness of the
Qualitative Education Report for Consortium of Worker Education were even
more beneficial to me because they started to inspire me to feel more invested
in and curious about how to make my new career my own. Your perspective caused
a shift in how I began to see myself: I started to see myself less as a student
of adult learning and more as a teacher of adult learners. In just the short
time with your writings and words, I made several decisions because my identity
as a teacher of adults became more defined.
First, I felt
responsible for helping adult learners. As I read about Local 28’s
apprenticeship program, I not only learned about a schooling structure that was
refreshing and intriguing to me, I felt the recognition that this type of
education could help my supervisor’s boyfriend. Before work, as I was reading
your report, I was sending her enthusiastic texts about the program. I told my
mother more than once how excited I was to find a way to help someone who had
been let down by the K-12 system. My recommendations to a superior made me feel
useful and excited, but it made me feel something new; I was this man’s
teacher, because I am making a commitment to teach adults, no matter what
context they were in.
Second, I
was inspired to change my fieldwork site. I had originally wanted to watch a
composition class at a local, for-profit vocational school, but it felt like a
decision I had made entirely from my head, not my heart. I knew it would be a
fieldwork site where teachers were educated in andragogy and had curriculums
and syllabi I could borrow and refine. Working there could pay the bills, so I
should take a look at what they did. After reading your report on the Henry
Street Settlement JET program though, I identified my interests in both career
skills and literacy intertwined in a way I had not previously imagined. I
currently teach pre-vocational skills to visually impaired teens, and it is the
highlight of my week.
I had
thought that this type of experience was potentially helpful to teaching adult
language and literacy. However, until reading about the programming at Henry
Street Settlement and hearing your comments that most funding goes to work-centered programming, I had only thought that this experience
with teaching prevocational skills was only tangentially related to my career
as an English teacher for adults. I have now decided that I would like to
change my fieldwork site to Henry Street Settlement and explore how vocational
and literacy skills intersect. I enjoyed identifying that the type of teacher I
would like to be weaves together literacy and prevocational skills
meaningfully.
Thank you
again for your visit.
Sincerely,
Laura Rizzo
Cell: (860)
614-1287
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