Keeping Us Honest:
One
Teacher's view of EFF
by Marty
Duncan
|
Marty Duncan
teaches at Sumner Adult Education in East
Sullivan, Maine. She's been involved in the
development of EFF standards in Maine for the
past five years and is currently working as a
pilot classroom instructor . Most of her EFF
experience so far has been with the field
development process in a business English class.
Working with her students as "co-researchers"
has helped Marty not only facilitate their own
learning but also to begin testing the EFF
performance indicators. I spoke recently with
Marty about her experiences with and personal
understanding of Equipped for the
Future.
|
Resource Center:
So your program has been involved with EFF for
some time now?
Marty Duncan:
We've been involved in the standards process from the
very beginning, since the quality indicators became a
requirement through the federal government. We worked
with Sondra Stein in developing the "four purposes,"
which are part of EFF, and we've been involved in the
field development process for EFF, and we are currently
involved with trying out the performance
indicators.
RC:
Could you briefly describe your class, the type of
students that you serve, and where EFF fits into it
all?
MD: I'm the
center-based teacher for our program; we also have a
family literacy program, and there are two home-based
teachers for that part of the program. For my own part, I
teach basic reading, I teach GED prep, I teach adult
diploma preparation, ESL, job readiness, college prep,
and I work one-to-one and through individualized learning
plans. I do group sessions, but often they are
individualized group sessions, which means there can be a
bunch of people in the room, but they're all working on
their individualized plans, and sometimes small groups
emerge out of that, for example a math group. With EFF,
my first experience was the field development process. I
was teaching a business English class, and it was that
class that I asked to be sort of "co-researchers" in
trying out the EFF framework.
RC:
Divorcing yourself for a second from your researcher
role, how has EFF changed what you do in the
classroom?
MD: I think one of
the important effects of EFF is that it has enhanced some
of the things I've always tried to do, but may have been
getting away from. For example, really grounding things
in student-specific interests, and how those interests
relate to their roles and goals outside the learning
center, in their daily lives. I can see already that with
using the performance indicators, we're being asked to
look at specific steps that will lead to a so-called
"picture of competence" with a certain standard, for
example "reading critically" is one I'm using. And I've
been asked to outline steps that students will follow or
the kinds of things I'll be looking for to show evidence
that they're moving toward their goal. I think that
that's a really important focus. One thing that I tell
students when I'm explaining EFF to them for the first
time is, "it's something that helps keep us
[teachers] honest."
RC:
That's an interesting way of looking at
it...could you elaborate?
MD: Well, I tell
students that a lot of the purpose of EFF is to be sure
that what students are asking for from programs, in terms
of their goals, their needs, are really being met. I
mean, I can sit there and report that, "yes, my students
are learning to read," but where's the specific evidence?
We always in our program have done a lot of ongoing
evaluation, but I think EFF is helping us really hone our
skills at that and be more specific, and document it
better.
RC: So
in general, has student response to EFF been
positive?
MD: Yes. Students
seem to recognize the value of the basic concepts of EFF
-- and we also incorporate EFF into our initial intake
interview with students; we've put all of the purposes,
and roles and generative skills on our intake form-they
seem to relate very well to it, see it as practical, see
it as useful, and as addressing what they've come here
for. We also just decided to do a spread in our brochure,
and we had a discussion yesterday on how to present EFF
to the larger community, because one of the things that
we want to be able to do with EFF is further explain to
our school board members, our superintendent, our larger
community, what it is that adult ed does, because most
people still have the perception that adult ed is
basically GED prep and cake decorating.
RC: In
adult ed classes where there's a specific, short-term
goal, I think you'll agree that the students are often
ultra-focused. Have you used EFF with this type of
student, and had them say, "well, I just want my GED, I
don't need all this extra EFF stuff"?
MD: A lot of
teachers bring up that issue. I haven't used EFF with GED
prep students yet. But I have had a couple of adult
diploma [an alternative to the GED where credits in
required areas are earned by students] students say,
"look, I'm just here for my diploma." And one person in
the business English class said she really wasn't
interested in what she saw as an "overlay." Everyone else
in that class responded to it very well, but I think
that's probably going to be true no matter what methods
you use.
RC:
Another big appeal of EFF, which has of course been
around in good teaching practice for a long time, is the
incorporation of students into the planning of what
exactly they're going to learn. Can you talk about some
specific ways that EFF has helped you to do
that?
MD: Well, that was
very much the focus of the use of EFF in the business
English class. It was the first time I had taught that
course, and I received information from other programs,
and was given materials that they said had worked well
with that type of class, but the students were very much
involved in evaluating those materials, talking about
what worked and what didn't. I felt that because we had
the EFF focus in that class, it really made a difference.
In that class we talked about how learning is different
when you're an adult from when you're a kid, what works
well for adults, and also got into some specific
evaluation that was very useful for redesigning the
business English course for next time.
RC:
That's another interesting thing EFF has to offer, making
students aware of metacognitive issues. I taught ESL for
a number of years, and many times students come in with
the idea that learning is the same for adults as for
children. Often their only previous educational
experience was up to grade three or four, and they think
that they need to study the same way now as
then...
MD: ..."and it has
to be dictation, you copy everything down from the
book"...that's what I'm finding. We have a new group of
beginning ESL students here, which is delightful, I love
it, but I do see that if I go too far afield from what
they perceive as being "real education," that they get
suspicious.
RC: So
EFF has the potential to address that, to get students to
see themselves as entering a unique type of learning
environment which is linked to the various roles they
fill in their adult lives...but isn't it difficult
sometimes, to get those metacognitive concepts across to
students not far along enough in their command of English
to understand the terminology?
MD: That's been a
big discussion here. But I recently met with an ESL
teacher from southern Maine who's used EFF throughout her
ESL classes, who's gone into the framework with her
students, and has found it really successful. She didn't
see that it's written in language the students might not
be familiar with as a necessary obstacle. It's difficult
to understand certain terminology for ABE students too,
and I think everyone involved in designing EFF was very
aware of the language issues. But it's like, we have to
start somewhere. I'd love to use EFF with an ESL class,
having them help rewrite the standards, to put those
concepts-which they certainly can understand, they're
rooted in the day-to-day realities of being an adult and
acquiring the skills you need to fulfill the various
roles of adulthood in whatever culture you might find
yourself living-into language that makes more immediate
sense to them. In a program in Tennessee, there were some
students involved in rewriting the entire framework. I've
seen posters based on their work, but I haven't seen the
whole finished product.
RC: One
more thing I wanted to ask about was assessment: needs
assessment, and assessing mastery of skills in students.
What is assessment in an EFF framework?
MD: As far as
needs assessment is concerned, as I said, we try to
incorporate EFF as much as possible into the initial
interview with the student. I do think that it helps; we
put it in a section of the interview that's labeled "goal
setting." We talk then about roles, and purposes for
learning, using the EFF roles and purposes. I usually
don't get into the specific generative skills at that
point. But we at least are presenting that framework, as
people talk about what they perceive as their learning
needs, and then I do, and have done for some time, a
learner self-assessment and a teacher assessment as part
of the learning plan that we develop. When we put them
together, usually we're pretty much in agreement,
although there may be some things that I point out that
the student hasn't noticed, and often they're the things
that I've seen, through some assessments, that the
student can do well. I find that people have a much
harder time saying what they can do well, than what they
can't do well. And then, of course we'll be looking very
specifically at assessment of skills through this
performance indicator step-by-step process, because for
every learning session, there's about six pages of
reporting that we'll be doing, and I'm actually finding
it not at all tedious or too time-consuming. They're very
specific questions about what the lesson involved, what
kinds of things the student learned, and what evidence
there is that the student learned these things, and how
they use them in their outside life.
RC: Is
there anything else you'd like to say about EFF to a
region of the country where EFF hasn't been piloted yet,
where many may only perceive it as the latest in a long
line of programs to come down the pike?
MD: I really feel
-- and I've been in education long enough, I know all of
the conversations about how the pendulum swings, and how
programs come along that are later abandoned -- but I
really feel that this is something that has not only
validated the way I like to teach, but that really has
the potential to improve our image as educators, and to
validate us as a field. And, as I said, keep us honest.
Really have us seriously look at what we're doing, and,
in partnership with students, really improve the quality
of programs, and build on the good things that are
already being done. I do think that it's important for
programs to be looking at full-time staff. From what I
gather, it's a national problem -- I know it's a problem
in Maine. We have a program that's in a pretty remote
area, but we have full-time staff, and I think that makes
all the difference in being able to implement something
like this. I know there are funding issues, there are a
lot of things that have to be addressed, but I really
think it's important.
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