Sunday, September 7, 2014

A Woman Who Grew a Field

Anne Docherty is a thinker and a changer. Her work in community development was already groundbreaking when she applied her community development work to literacy. She made amazing things happen by taking the risk that the field was ready for new thinking. She moved her practice beyond her own community, first to the NW Region, then to the entire province. This was not a random move; rather she took these steps with the intent to both test and grow her ideas and theories. Her advocacy for learners and mentoring of practitioners, joined with her ability to communicate to government leaders and policy makers provided critical stimuli to the literacy field grassroots. When she was elected for the NW region representative on the Literacy BC Board, and was later president of the provincial literacy organization she found yet another venue for both growing the literacy field, and her own vision and practice.



Anne strongly embraces literacy as a part and parcel of community development work. She will often say, “You call that literacy, I call it community development”. And in so doing she effectively broadens the definitions of literacy for all of us who work, hang out and try to keep up with her. In addition, she reciprocates by taking literacy beyond its traditional boundaries into the community development world as her ideas bounce back and forth. Anne’s passion is contagious. Her openness and ability to accept other people’s ideas and incorporate them into projects or presentations, and to gather input and incorporate it into something new and fresh is brilliant. She is a powerful advocate for literacy and the understanding that literacy is a joined up issue with joined up solutions. Many of her word pictures have now become part of the lexicon for literacy. Joined up issue is just one of them. As is “by naming it you make it real”. And “by giving it words you can now talk about it.” Being intentional, or working with intent. Knowing your North Star, keeping your focus.

Anne seizes ideas and concepts from other disciplines and tries them out, keeping what works and getting rid of that what does not. At the same time, she stays committed to the practices that hold true: reflection on action, the personal power poster (AKA The Poster), appreciative inquiry, informal learning, experiential education – all those buzz words that the rest of us might toss around – Anne can define, demonstrate, argue, identify, articulate, debate, perform all of them – probably while chewing gum or planting seedlings or making flipcharts. Her work and training as an experiential educator means workshops are fun and active. Anne is often off to the side while participants do “all the work”. Then, through another activity or wrap up or somehow, she will pull it all together; her ability to observe and report out about events, projects, or people is legendary. So many times we have heard someone say, “Anne captured and fed it back to us so that now I understand it.” Or sometimes in shorthand as “Anne nailed it.”

Anne loves getting her ideas out to other educators. She works with local practitioners and academics to show how social capital and literacy are connected. She works tirelessly to educate fellow practitioners, across the province, about issues related to engagement, reciprocity, reflective practice and community development. Anne always upholds high academic standards when educating the rest of us. While her cerebral approach may leave heads spinning while her audience works to keep up, she never falters, knowing that her audience can and will understand the complexities she is committed to sharing with them. She believes in the field, and in the power of the local community practitioners to make change.

Anne believes in developing the field and encouraging practitioners to share knowledge and see themselves as experts. She does this one-on-one at a meeting or over coffee or in workshops. She was ahead of the field in setting up a network for practitioners: Rural Roots. Part of the founding philosophy of Rural Roots is that we all hold knowledge. When experts are brought in for their specialty, they are encouraged to follow the same philosophy. Workshops are held with a member or guest facilitating, but knowledge from the participants is encouraged and expected, as are the hard questions. Anne is also a demanding advocate – asking those hard questions of others when required. She is honest about her successes and her failures, about changing her mind or her plan when new information arises. She is also incredibly energizing. Practitioners love to work with her at workshops; they leave feeling full of new ideas and perspective.

Anne can tell stories that paint pictures about the realities of rural, remote Aboriginal communities in ways that policy makers, government officials and bureaucrats understand and are moved to act upon. Her explanations of orality and the complexity of Aboriginal culture as it pertains to learning and literacy has helped many of us understand some of the nuances of Aboriginal literacy. Concepts around learning in relationship, reciprocity, connection to the land, engagement, to name a few.

Always hungry to learn, Anne also worked on several research in practice projects. She always wanted to push the edges, bringing in the practitioner to the From the Ground Up assessment tools, putting engagement into the Community Adult Literacy Benchmarks. The collaborative groups she worked in were always changed by her ideas around literacy, learning and community. And when she brought research to the community and region with a multiday event, Rooting Around in Research, the goal was to encourage others to use, do and read research around their practice, in their community. She always encourages us all to be better than we are in our practice. And she walks that talk.

Keeping up with Anne is one of those unattainable goals. She is always on the go, building new projects, bringing in previous experience and trying out new things. She is always mentoring other practitioners, formally or informally. She is a powerhouse of innovative practice both for learners and practitioners. When she stated that she wanted to do something to keep the conversation open about community literacy, and wanted to do so in a fun “lite” way, with Sandi Lavallie and me, I was worried. I spent hours jotting notes while Anne and Sandi (two brilliant minds) debated and discussed back and forth about literacy and learning. The eventual outcome was “ACME: A Guide to Community Literacy and Learning” in comic book form. And out of ACME another Anne-ism arose: “the man in the middle” from the preface to ACME, as the short form to remind us all of our learners, the folks at the center of our practice.

Anne’s contributions to literacy in the province are huge. She moved the field in a way that respected the foundations, but put a fun and kind of crazy twist on it. She makes the very challenging work fun and creative for fellow practitioners, while staying true to the foundational theories and values that drive her work. She keeps the “man in the middle” at the center and encourages practitioners to do the tough internal work: to reflect on their own actions, values, learning and opportunities to create change.

The BC Literacy Field is a richer, more creative place due to Anne’s thoughtful risk taking and creative engagement of practitioners and policy makers. Meanwhile, her work retains its focus sharply on the “man in the middle”, ensuring that when all is said and done, the learners’ experience is enriched.

And so, literacy folks, think of Anne when you think of your work, and how each of you can and do make a difference. One learner at a time. One strange, wild idea at a time. And if you ever go through the stage of wondering what you are doing and why, there is probably a copy of ACME on a bookshelf near you.

And have a great literacy MONTH!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Wider Angle on Literacy Lens?

I was uncertain what would happen with my literacy lens when I retired. And while it has not been that long, I can already see that it is hard to keep focused on one topic for long. Or maybe it is the same topic, but with a wider lens. After all, there is a whole world out there!

Perhaps in some ways that is the purpose of work (and study). Creating places where people are paid to concentrate on specific topics, to really focus, for long periods of time. To encourage people to expand their knowledge related to certain issues, to build networks, to share ideas and encourage ‘best practice” in the field. And if the field happens to be literacy, practitioners are theoretically able to keep the literacy lens wide open, accepting light and dark from “out there”, and responding with pictures, words, practice, and thought that reflect what is coming in.

It is here that I have to say we are lucky in British Columbia to have a field of dedicated literacy practitioners ready to learn, debate and challenge current literacy policies and practices. Right now, that field is as big and as diverse as it has ever been, and, on a per person basis (I am guessing here) the least funded. But the good news is that a lot of us are paid, for some amount of time, to use a literacy lens. And that the “life experience lens” that came with us to this field is different for each of us. (See how easy it is for me to include myself here?) It is a rich time to share ideas and think things through. I just hope you are not all too busy doing the work to partake with colleagues, mentors, networks, or forums and blogs.

While I think my literacy lens is changing angles, stepping back from the practitioner role, my blog head is carrying forth ranting in my brain to me alone. There are so many things to look at and discuss! Wider, rosy and otherwise. Another blog?? Seems self-serving. I’ll let you know if bloghead gets her way.

In the meantime, Anne and I and others, I hope, will keep discussion open-ish!

Elastic Time


As most of the readers of this blog are aware, I retired from my regional literacy coordination work a couple of months ago. See how easy that rolled off the cursor: a couple of months? The elasticity of retirement time has been my biggest discovery. It has only been a couple of months – more discoveries are bound to follow, but in terms of blogging, every week, the elasticity is really getting in the way.

Again my thanks to Anne for taking over duties while I was away. We had planned on tag-teaming and may still do some of that, but after our series of “OMG it’s Friday!!” emails, I have decided we need to relax. After all, it could just be a seasonal disorder? The hummingbirds are demanding to be fed!

But, there is also another option folks. I know many of you have things to say and contribute to the NW Literacy Lens blog, and we would love to have your postings keeping the blog active and thought-provoking. You can reach us through the comment section – to do so, simply click No Comment. Counter-intuitive but works.

We will see how this goes. No more “one per week” deadlines, though. We will operate on the elastic schedule of posting when we have something to say.

Until sometime,
Dee

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Partnering with the man in the middle

Storytellers' is applying to the CRA for charitable status. Part of the application is to send a binder with samples of the organization’s work. I was flipping through my archives binder of past reports and publications and I came across the ACME guide to literacy. This is a guide that Dee, Sandi and I published quite a few years back. The introduction is Dee’s story of the man in the middle. Dee has also posted a blog about the man-in-the-middle.

As I re-read the introduction to ACME I found myself thinking of an elderly man who often comes to the Learning Shop for literacy support. He is a “drop-in” and he is most often looking for Sarah because she is always “there for him”. At any given time Sarah is helping him understand a letter he has received in the mail or a bill statement that is confusing him or she is helping him sift through legal information about residential school settlements. He is the “man-in-the-middle.” It could be easy to describe him only as a learner. It could be easy to think he has needs and we meet those needs and that’s all there is in our relationship with him. He might, at first glance, seem “less able”. His language is often difficult to grasp, he seems confused and he is always a bit “messy” about his personal hygiene. And yet, we know there is so much more to him than only being a learner. He has decades of life experience, he has extensive family relationships, he has held many jobs and he had past success running his own small business. He just needs help interpreting his world because he isn’t great with the written word. We know about his life because Sarah intuitively sees him as a peer. This man is an adult who is agent enough to seek out help when he requires it. When Sarah provides literacy support she sees herself as a partner with this adult man.

When I stop to think about this learning relationship, I wonder how Sarah knows how to be his partner and not only his teacher. I wonder how Sarah knows how to invite his life story in to the learning relationship. How does Sarah know to shift the partnership back and forth between teacher and learner? I witness her become the teacher and he the learner and then he becomes the teacher and Sarah learns from him. I’ve overheard Sarah asking about the skills he used in past jobs and expressing an interest in learning more. As he teaches Sarah, the relationship becomes one of respect. It’s a reciprocal learning relationship and that allows them to each hold dignity in the learning space. This is not only respectful it is good teaching practice. 

Adult learners bring a wealth of experience and accomplishment to the learning situation. Using the adult’s life experiences is an effective way for the teacher to motivate learners and to help them see a connection between their own lives and what they are learning in the literacy environment. Many of us who are older in the literacy field received training and continual mentorship to learn and practice this approach to education. We had opportunity for formal education and on-going professional development. Not only did we build skills, knowledge and confidence to do our work well, we also built a network of supportive relationships. We had a provincial network of colleagues that we could call on to troubleshoot, boost creativity and hold us accountable in our practice.

I’m not sure the “newbies” in the literacy field are receiving the depth and consistency of training and mentorship that once was there. I’m not sure if the “newbies” would describe themselves as part of a community education field. Dee’s retirement reminds me that those of us who had this extensive training and support network are leaving the field. Who is there for Sarah and her peers?

A new literacy practitioner most likely understands that the adult learner is multi-faceted with extensive life experience and rich full lives. They probably know that the adult learner, like many adults, have many demands on their time and energy. And the new literacy practitioner is also aware that the adult learner may have fewer resources and skills to attend to all the demands on their lives, especially trauma and crisis.

My question is how does the new literacy practitioner become equipped to support the adult learner to deal with life pressures and support them to get what they want as far as literacy skills? How does the new literacy practitioner know how to take real life situations and turn them in to lesson plans that are relevant and useful to the adult learner? How does the new literacy practitioner learn to navigate an adult-to-adult learning relationship, which involves sharing who teaches and who learns? 

Facilitating learning with adults requires a multi-faceted skill set that includes robust mental and emotional health. It requires that the literacy practitioner knows their world view including their biases and assumptions. I worry that the new literacy practitioner is often alone in navigating these complexities.

Our intent in publishing the ACME guide was to open a conversation about the complexities in community adult literacy. We wanted the guide to be an agitator for deeper, reflective conversation. We hoped that people could gather around the content of the guide, unpack it, challenge it and talk with their colleagues. Our hope was that by the end of the conversation everyone would be more knowledgeable and skilled as literacy practitioners.


I still hold on to that hope. I want a community literacy field where we partner with each other, our provincial network and government to train and support excellent literacy practitioners. I believe we must invest more in resources instead of cutting back on resources. I believe we must create reflective learning spaces for all literacy practitioners to critically analyze their practice and we must offer learning opportunities for literacy practitioners to provide current, relevant and meaningful community literacy education. The new literacy practitioners deserve the right to be trained and to feel well equipped in their practice. The man-in-the-middle should expect nothing less.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Literacy can save lives on job sites

Today is BC’s Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. The purpose of the Day of Mourning is to remember and honour workers who were killed or injured in the workplace. It is also a day for government to commit to improving health and safety in the workplace.
For most of my adult working life I’ve been employed in a small NGO, or non-profit as we more often say in the literacy world. We don’t have a lot of health and safety talks or procedures outside of fire escape routes and strict protocols within our small commercial kitchen. And so, worker safety isn’t often on my radar.
However, when I stop and think about people being killed and injured on the job I realize it’s touched my life more than I think. A friend’s husband was badly injured in the Burns Lake mill explosion. Their lives changed drastically in that one moment. They’ve fought many battles these past two years to get the medical support he has needed to treat the burns on his body. And they’ve struggled to deal with the mental health issues that accompany such a trauma. A few years ago I helped another friend organize to make changes to health and safety procedures in farms in the Fraser Valley. Many of the workers lived with fear and low literacy and wouldn’t admit that they couldn’t understand the safety procedures written on signs or in manuals. The result was continual injuries, or people always at risk of being injured. I think back to my childhood and remember the many funerals I attended because a relative or neighbour had died in an underground mining accident.

When I stop and think on this Day of Mourning I realize that many people are affected by worksite accidents every day. In B.C. alone, 128 people died on the job last year. And an average of nearly 2,800 injury claims are reported each week; 21 long-term disability claims are accepted every working day and 3 work-related deaths are accepted each week. How does this relate to a literacy lens you may ask?

Alison Campbell, principal research associate at the Conference Board of Canada says that applying a “literacy lens” to workplace health and safety can have a broad impact on a workers safety. When I think of the industrial development projects in northwest communities I stop and think about literacy in the workplace and how increasing literacy in the work place can change the lives of many. In fact, not just change but save lives. It seems like a real easy and simple solution.

I’ve pasted an article from the Canadian Occupational Standard’s website. It’s about a 2010 Conference Board of Canada’s research study on health and safety. I think it’s worth the read, especially today the Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job.

Employers have a higher confidence level when it comes to workers’ ability to comprehend health and safety policies, than the workers themselves, and this is creating a gap that can increase the risk for workplace injuries.

This is according to a new study released by the Conference Board of Canada entitled, What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety. The study included a survey of 319 respondents, representing 136 employers, 126 workers, 26 union representatives, 19 immigrant service providers and 12 aboriginal service providers.

Sixty-four per cent of employer respondents felt that their workers understood health and safety practices fully or to a large extent. However, when the same question was posed to workers, only 40 per cent of them agreed.

“This gap in perception creates the potential for accidents in the workplace to occur,” says Alison Campbell, principal research associate at the Conference Board of Canada. “Because employers are confident in their workers’ literacy levels, they are less likely to see the need for training to upgrade employees’ knowledge and understanding of health and safety practices.”

Campbell says the research aims to raise employer awareness of the importance of literacy as it relates to their workers’ health and safety. This two-year project was funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, and included a literature review, national survey, interviews with stakeholders and case studies.

Ten companies across Canada participated in the workplace literacy improvement case study: Abbot Point of Care in Ottawa; Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation in Saint John; Bristol Aerospace in Winnipeg; City of Vancouver; De Beers Canada, Yellowknife; Keyera Energy, Calgary; Lilydale Inc., Edmonton; Loewen Windows, Steinbach, Manitoba; Omega 2000 Cribbing Inc., Calgary; and Robinson Paperboard Packaging, Mississauga, Ont.

“We do know that workplace health and safety is a critical issue for Canadian employers, and they already invest quite a bit in health and safety capital investments and training,” Campbell says. About 10 per cent of Canadian employers’ training budgets go towards health and safety, she adds.

Campbell says that the confidence of employers about the level of literacy of their workers stem from the fact that many companies are unaware that they have a literacy skills issue.

Typically, companies would create health and safety manuals and documents that they would then communicate to their employees, without necessarily looking at the workers’ literacy skills that may hinder their understanding and implementation of the health and safety policies, she explains.

“We know from international survey results that foreign-trained Canadians lack the literacy skills they need to perform most jobs well, and that low literacy skills can hinder employees from understanding how to perform their jobs safely and also from understanding their right to refuse unsafe work,” she says.

When incidents occur, the typical response is to review policies and practices, rather than verifying whether individuals have the literacy and basic skills to fully understand or follow set procedures, the report says.

Two-way communication
One health and safety practitioner agrees that the issue of literacy is critical to workplace safety, but notes that the more important aspect of this is ensuring that the workers can communicate back to the employer about issues related to safety.

This is particularly true when language barriers impede that ability to communicate, says Alan Quilley, president of Sherwood Park, Alta.-based OHS consulting firm, Safety Results Ltd. “We have to constantly think about not just getting the message to them, but how do you get it back.”

When it comes to workplace safety, employers have done a good job in communicating the message to their employees in a manner that they can understand, says Quilley. The challenge is getting the workers to communicate and articulate their questions and ideas about workplace safety “because that is really when safety excels.”

“If you’ve got some questions or if you’ve got some process input that you’d like to have on how we’re managing that, that’s also pretty important to the safety challenge,” he says.

When employers don’t pay attention to the need for enabling workers to communicate their thoughts about workplace health and safety policies —hiring a translator, for example — then that’s when communication break down happens, increasing the risk of injury or accidents.

“That, I think is the common shortcoming in all of these studies and all of these results, where we’re focused on the delivery and not on the feedback. Communication is two-way and that is the big problem, Quilley says.

Seven steps
Campbell says the study did look at “broader definition” of literacy and looked at both communication and language skills. “So there’s understanding the policies, and then there’s being able to act on them in emergencies and things like that.”

As a course of action for employers, the Conference Board recommends looking at their health and safety policies from a “literacy lens”.

In particular, the Conference Board outlines seven steps to take as an organizational action plan:

•    Review past incidents through “a literacy lens”
•    Review organizational health and safety policies and practices
•    Examine policies and practices from the perspective of an individual with lower literacy levels
•    Brainstorm solutions to help users understand health and safety documents
•    Measure and track health and safety incidents and improvements
•    Recognize outcomes

•    Reward efforts to improve literacy skills.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Making change through learning partnerships

I’m working with Sarah and Beth on the final report for a 2-year grant that allowed us to explore how women can move out of economic insecurity. As we write the final report, I’m re-listening to the voices of women who shared their stories with us. A persistent theme in these stories is how young women don't see themselves as agents of their own lives. These women might be moms on social assistance, without a safe place to live, maybe with substance abuse problems and ongoing different male partners coming in and out of their lives. These women do not see themselves as “in the driver's seat”, as Lynn Newberry, retired high school administrator and current trustee for our school district, describes. Instead they are shaped by poverty and social assistance, by the men in their household and by the immediate needs of their home, children and family. In these situations, frustration comes easily and resilience is not able to grow. These women are simply surviving, not building a better life for themselves or their families.

In talking with other literacy educators I hear this is not unusual. Many people building literacy skills are tired and overwhelmed with the stresses and angst that comes from poverty. Literacy educators are constantly finding ways for learners to push through this veil of exhaustion and frustration in order to gain the skills, knowledge and confidence to change his/her circumstances. Many a literacy organizer is working at the systems level to change policies and programs so they influence the lives of learners in positive ways.

As I write my sections of the report I think of the words of Paulo Friere. He once said that for education to be liberating, for learners to become an agent of their own lives, there must be a genuine partnership between learner and teacher. They have to be in the business of educating together. This requires a set of principles:

Equality: the relationship is between equals. Nobody’s view is more important or valuable than anyone else. Although the teacher and learner hold different roles each person’s thoughts and beliefs are held to be of equal value.

Choice: In this learning partnership one person does not make decisions for another. Each makes their individual choice and decisions are made together.

Conversation: In this learning partnership one individual does not dominate or control the relationship. Partners engage in conversation and they learn together as they explore and articulate ideas.

Praxis: Together the learner and teacher put ideas in to action. It means the teacher enables the learner to have more meaningful experiences by reflecting on the impact of the new content they are learning within their own lives.

I agree full heartedly with this approach to literacy and yet I am aware how difficult it is put in to practice. This approach to education requires an understanding of power dynamics in relationship, it requires an understanding that literacy is a vehicle that moves us to an imagined future, and that it must be the learner who is imagining the future and seeing her/himself in that future. This means that the literacy “program” cannot be fully designed until the relationship between learner and teacher has started. It means the literacy educator must be open to building a genuine relationship with each learner. It also means that educators must be aware of their own values and principles. This requires a lot of work even before the teacher and learner start a new relationship together. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed about how to do this and then I think of three women who demonstrate this approach in their work. And I rest more easily.

Kate Nonesuch demonstrates how she has been a partner of many students as they engaged in the business of educating. Her blog at katenonesuch.com is one of the most inspiring and useful teaching tools I’ve come across. I think it could become mandatory reading for anyone new to the business of literacy education.

Sandi Lavallie is as unorthodox as an educator can be. She is brilliant, spontaneous, curious and fun and works alongside every student that crosses her path. I’ve evaluated many programs in Houston and Sandi is always referred to as the “go to person.” Sandi sees the students as equal. She embodies the principles mentioned above. Sandi taught me the true meaning of praxis.

Janet Melanson resists calling herself an educator. She is a youth worker. Janet works alongside young people in our social enterprise and her practice helps me understand Friere’s words. Janet is a genuine partner in the business of educating. She believes that the goal of her literacy work is to help young people find self worth, because when that happens all other learning paths open up. Janet listens, nurtures, gently pushes and draws out of each young person a set of skills and knowledge and confidence for them to become who they dream of becoming.


These three women give me hope. I believe they bring hope to the learners that they partner with. Instead of only being shaped by poverty, these literacy educators are helping the learner view their lives through a different lens. The partnership helps leaners see themselves as they dare to dream themselves. It takes them above and beyond the immediate struggles. Because of genuine partnerships the learner, and teacher, are moving beyond surviving and together they are building resilient people and resilient communities.