Return-Path: <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id e8RChG914757; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 08:43:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 08:43:16 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <s9d1b255.013@langate.gsu.edu> Errors-To: alcrsb@langate.gsu.edu Reply-To: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Daphne Greenberg" <alcdgg@langate.gsu.edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:1007] A personal experience X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise Internet Agent 5.5.3.1 Status: O Content-Length: 2683 Lines: 4 I wonder what it is like for instructors to receive information from learners, when they are not ready or have not made a conscious decision to bring it up in class. I will never forget an experience that I had when I was going from program to program testing and interviewing adult learners for my dissertation project. I was fairly new to the field and was very careful not to include any questions in my interviews that I would perceive as being intrusive. It amazed me how people opened up. I met with individuals reading below the fifth grade level and I was interested in their basic reading knowledge. The interviews were only demographic in nature and yet everyone shared with me information that I did not ask for, and many shared very personal information-such as drug use, drug selling, prostitution, incarceration history, etc., etc. The learners that I tested and interviewed spent an hour and a half with me, and they had never met me prior to this. I will never forget the one young man who had shared with me that he was nervous while doing the tasks I gave him and he kept blanking out. I asked him if he wanted to stop, and that it would be fine to do so, and he said no, he wanted to learn as much as he could about himself (I shared with the learners information about their underlying reading knowledge at the end of their time with me). I gave him time, space, and we took things at his pace. He told me that he was severely abused as a child. I asked him if he felt that this interfered with his ability to concentrate on the tasks and he said yes. I asked him if he had shared this with his adult literacy instructor and he said no-he was scared to. To make a long story short, I found out that he had never seen a therapist, and when I asked the adult literacy instrucor and administrator about referrals for one of the students I had tested (I didn't reveal which one), they told me that they did not have any. I went home, did my homework, and went back to the program and gave him all of the information that I could. I was very shaken by this experience-the disclosure, the fact that the program had no referral information to give me, and the fact that he had decided to share with me this information. I did a lot of thinking about why he had shared-was I safer because he would not have to see me again; because of my own experiences, my unconscious "talked" to his unconscious and he "knew" that I would understand;was the time simply right for him;or something in the specific tasks that I gave him triggered stuff for him? Unfortunatly, I moved out of the state a few months after my contact with him, and have lost touch. Daphne
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