Spring 2020 Newsletter
Winter 2020
Volume 3, Issue 2
Spring Newsletter
Call for Success Stories
The Labor and Workforce Development Issues Group is collecting adult education and literacy success stories that can be shared in our advocacy efforts. We hope you will submit yours.
Stories should detail the success of individual program participants or families. We recommend including the following components in each success story:
- A statement of the challenge faced by the participant.
- A description of how an adult basic skills (literacy, ESOL/ESL, basic education, high school equivalency preparation, transition to college, workforce development, family literacy, etc.) program helped the participant
- A description of what success looks like for that participant.
Please forward success stories to Rob Sheppard.
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Issues Group and Task Force Reports
Digital Inclusion
A Digital US preview report, entitled Building a Digitally Resilient Workforce: Creating On-Ramps to Opportunity is available on the Digital US website. ODC is a partner organization in the Digital US coalition.
Labor and Workforce Development Issues Group
In the past very challenging three months, LWDIG members have been staying busy in their respective roles as service providers at the program and city levels and as policy analysts and researchers. In our bi-monthly conference call on April 21st, members described challenges they are seeing in local programs and efforts to re-think how best to serve learners while keeping programs strong. Issue Group members are:
- supporting the E-BAES Task Force’s research about how the field is responding to the COVID-19 crisis;
- considering whether we might offer a series of webinars (possibly in collaboration with other ODC Issues Groups) to the field;
- starting to develop a series of “Learner Success Stories” to disseminate on the ODC website and via other social media. (See announcement elsewhere in this newsletter, inviting readers to submit Success Stories);
- exploring funding opportunities for innovative collaborative projects tied to ODC goals and themes (e.g., uses of distance technologies to support adult learners, health literacy, economic security, environmental sustainability)
Evidence-Based Adult Education System Task Force
Since mid-March E-BAES has been focused on its first (pro bono) project, gathering data on how the field of adult education is responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Several of us have been interviewing teachers and local and state administrators. Alisa Belzer is taking the lead to edit the interview results and working with ProLiteracy to publish them. We have also been collaborating with Jen Vanek, David Rosen, and others on a a recently announced electronic survey for adult educators. (See below for survey web address.) Our hope is that the collective findings will be informative to the field and offer useful suggestions that peers can share with each other. We are looking ahead to planning later phases of this work during 2020.
The World Education EdTech Center, with the help of ODC members, is spearheading an effort to gather information about how adult basic skills and ESOL programs in the US have adjusted instruction and services in response to the pandemic. Please support this effort by disseminating this request for participation within your networks.