VALUETraining

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Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:2099] VALUE training
From: Will Grant

To start the discussion about the VALUE Learner Leadership Core Training, here's an overview of the training.

The VALUE training is a two day student leadership training for educators and adult students. The training grew out of best practices from programs that have succeeded in creating and sustaining student leadership in the U.S. ABE and Literacy system.

Participants come as teams of 2 adult students and 1 educator from local programs or state organizations.

It's a participatory training with a lot of discussion. It is supported by a training manual written in an easy reader format for new readers.

The training has three parts

Part One: Lighting the fire for student leadership -- how to mobilize students and educators into student leadership
Part Two: The Big Picture -- how student leadership fits into ABE and Literacy programs
Part Three: How To-- planning student leadership projects

The training covers:

Recruiting and mobilizing student leaders
Finding funding for student leadership
Integrating student leadership into ABE programs so that student leadership becomes a part of your program instead of floating on the periphery.

The training also deals directly with the barriers to student leadership, for example:

Lack of time for both students and teachers
Resistance to student involvement
Sustainability

Our experience is that the critical issue in student leadership is good planning. The entire second day of the training is spent learning to plan and carry out student leadership projects.

The training gives participants 8 student leadership project templates. The projects include: students presenting teacher training, fundraisers, students working on retention and recruitment, and students co-creating curricula.

The templates are step-by-step instructions for how to do each of these projects. We also provide planning tools designed for student leadership. Students and teachers practice using the tools and templates in a hands-on practice planning session.

This has been everyone's favorite part of the training. The first day is about discussions, vision, and excitement. The second day is about the practical work needed to make it happen. The planning tools are simple and step- by-step. Students, and educators, who have never been involved in leadership learn how to take things one step at a time and make their ideas happen.

When students and teachers leave the training, they've had time and support to workout the specifics of student leadership at their program: How to recruit students How to build support and understanding for student leadership How student leadership could contribute to their program How to think through the barriers that will come up And how to actually, realistically do all of that

The training can offer all of that because it's the outcome of an 18 year history of student leadership in ABE and Literacy. The training was developed over three years and pilot tested in 5 states. Hundreds of talented student leaders, educators, and curricula designers from Literacy, ESL, GED and popular education made contributions. Its been a labor of love.

Will Grant
VALUE Trainer
Voz, inc Director of Education

Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:2144] Re: Good Discussion
From: info_at_valueusa.org

Good morning, my name is Marty Finsterbusch, and I am the Executive Director of VALUE. Why I’m writing today is because I’ve been getting phone calls because of the listserv, and I want to answer some of the questions about the core-training. The first question I would like to answer is, where did this training come from?

To begin, why this training? We need this training because students have been getting involved in the field of adult education, but it has been sporadic, and quite honestly, not a lot of people know how to do it. What has worked in one area might not work in another area, and people weren’t collaborating and working together. There is a vast area of resources not being tapped, and that is the adult learners. Individually we each have something to bring to help our programs, but most programs do not see the adult learner as an asset. They see them as an individual who needs help. There is a bit of prejudice against adult learners. Individually someone may see worth in a single adult learner, but as a whole many people do not see adult learners as people that can help their programs/communities, and we can. Right now adult learners work in every phase of volunteer literacy programs in the United States. We are part of the system already, but we can do more. The issue is that the field has not created a place for the adult learners and alumni to be able to work with their programs as a team to help improve them.

So, VALUE brought together, in our program committee, leading adult learners that have been around for quite a few years and have been working in their programs in all different levels. We also brought in representatives from Equip For the Future (EFF), the American Library Association, and Laubach Literacy Action (now ProLiteracy). We also brought in representatives from state groups in New Mexico and Florida. We also brought in World Education to facilitate a two-day think-tank up in Minnesota. The goal of the think-tank was to figure out what the components of a national training on adult learner involvement would be, if we were to have one.

Then we went to Verizon, and asked if they would fund the development of this core-training. They gave VALUE a grant of to develop the core-training. The team that put the modules together was Alden Lancaster, a curriculum specialist, Will Grant from New Mexico, with his training expertise, and myself, who has nearly twenty years of experience in creating, planning, and implementing student involvement events and activities around the country.

What does this training do? To begin with, most people do not know how to work with their students as equals, and they don’t know what student involvement is. They think student involvement is a group of individuals doing something, they don’t know what, over in a corner. That is not student involvement. Student involvement is integration of students into your system, meaning anything your organization is doing, literally anything, adult learners can be a part of it, but many organizations do not see that yet or know how to do it.


The core training is:

a.. Program improvement
b.. Leadership skill building
c.. Community building
d.. Critical thinking skill building
e.. The ability track student involvement, like never before

How does it work? As Will mentioned, it is broken down into modules. The first part of the modules is mostly discussion. But, it teaches what student involvement is, so all the administrators and adult learners and alumni know. It also teaches how to analyze your program. We are asking adult learners to get involved, but we are not giving them the skills and information to navigate around systems. The field has not taught about structure and how programs operate, but this training does. After that, they get exposed to the big picture, where their programs fit into the state and national systems. That way, they better understand why their programs can’t do certain things.

Next we talk about the needs of their programs. This includes the needs of the adult learners in the programs, as well as the administrators. We then teach critical thinking skills, like how to pick and implement projects. VALUE is not telling the programs what projects to do, that is determined by the adult learners and program administrators together. The skills that the adult learners learn can be used for the rest of their lives.

Marty Finsterbusch

Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:2145] Re: Good Discussion
From: info_at_valueusa.org

The next the question I would like to address is where the trainings been, and how you can get it in your state. We developed this training team. After that, we went back to Verizon to ask their help in implementing this around the country. They gave us a grant which allowed us to pilot test our training in Washington, DC, Massachusetts, Delaware, and California. We went back to Verizon again, and told them about the places where we pilot tested it, and told them that we were ready to implement it around the country, and we started to do that last year. We did core-trainings in Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, Delaware, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Washington, DC. With the grant from Verizon, VALUE paid for the trainers to come in, and paid for all of the materials. The state paid for the participants to come in, and to house them, and then they would work with them when they went back into their own states, in their programs.

Now we are ready to move into the next phase. We learned that we need to train more trainers to be able to implement this systematically. Our plan was to have regional trainings where we trained trainers so that each state and region would have their own training team to be able to do their own training for their own state. We cannot do that at this point, because we did not get that grant. We need to then broker with individual states to bring the training to them. We would train teams in their states. The teams are one practitioner and two adult learners from the same program. If you want the training you would need to call VALUE’s national office, (610) 876-7625, and talk with me, Marty Finsterbusch, and we would have to work out the details. You could also email me office@valueusa.org. We cannot bring our training to local programs; there are not enough trainers or resources to do so. We have to broker with states, and then we can train multiple programs at one time in the core training.

Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:2146] Re: Good Discussion
From: info_at_valueusa.org

The last question I would like to address is, where is this training going? We hope that by 2006 we will have this certified with a University to get a credited course, so that if a person goes through this training, they could receive college credit for Adult Education. We also plan to have a Spanish version of our core-leadership training by the end of the year, but we don’t think it will be able to hit the field before 2006. The issue is getting people trained. This is an in-depth, 13 hour training, and it cannot be cut short. We need our trainers to go through the training and begin implementing it in their own local programs, and then come back to other trainings and learn how to do each module of the trainings. It takes time to train trainers to do our core-training. That’s where we are with our core-training. It was made up because there’s a need for the field. It gives programs the ability to be able to track the student involvement, it allows the adult learners to be able to do critical thinking, and we are doing our best to deliver it to the field with the resources that we have.

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