WE LEARN 2009: Celebration and Book Event

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Report:
This spirited and inspiring gathering featured several powerful readings by women learners whose work was published in the latest edition of Women's Perspectives, Issue #4, Transition / Transformation'[1]
Women's Perspectives showcases writings by adult literacy/basic education students across all levels. These collections provide a forum for ABE learners to consider and further their knowledge about a variety of issues relative to women's experiences that continue to impact their lives. We hope these collections will not only encourage students to reflect and write but to also learn from the each other through their stories and opinions.

It also celebrated the publications of two new books about women and literacy, both of which have special ties to WE LEARN:

Empowering Women Through Literacy:
Views from Experience
Edited by Mev Miller, WE LEARN Director, and Kathleen P. King
with contributions by many of the teachers and practitioners in attendance at the WE LEARN conference!
Empowering Women through Literacy: Voices from Experience is the first comprehensive collection of writing from the field by everyday educators who experience the joys and challenges, creativity and barriers to acknowledge or integrate innovative solutions to support women's learning needs in adult basic education and literacy settings. It reveals the many ways in which addressing women's empowerment through literacy continues to impact lives. [2]

~ and ~

'''Laboring to Learn:
Women's Literacy and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era
By Lorna Rivera, WE LEARN Board Member
The American adult education system has become an alternative for school dropouts, with some state welfare policies requiring teen mothers and women without high school diplomas to participate in adult education programs to receive aid. Very little has been published about women’s experiences in these mandatory programs and whether the programs reproduce the conditions that forced women to drop out in the first place. Lorna Rivera bridges the gap with this important study, the product of ten years’ active ethnographic research with formerly homeless women who participated in adult literacy education classes before and after welfare reform. Analyzing the web of ideological contradictions regarding “work first” welfare reform policies, Rivera argues that poverty is produced and reproduced when women with low literacy skills are pushed into welfare-to-work programs and denied education. [3]