Hi Cindy and all:
        I have been working in family literacy for about 8 years and what I have always struggled with is engaging adults who do not have children in the program.  To clarify that:  although we are family literacy, we do not serve only families.  We probably have about 30% families and the rest are adults.  Having attended a Family Lit  Conference
a few years ago, it seems to me that there are not many other programs of this nature or are there?  
        In the past 4 years, I have been working in morning programs with about 15 adults and only about 4 of them have children in the program.  The children are 3-5 years old and we have a separate teacher for them.  We begin each class with PACT, which usually included parents reading with their child and/or doing a craft or literacy activity.  This year, I am going to try using the Early Learning Standards for the state of Rhode Island and include all adults by sharing a little theory and then an activity.  The difficult part right now is simplifying the theory part for beginnner ESOL learners.  For example:  I want to start with a blurb about how children learn from play.  Then ask the adults to observe children playing in a play kitchen that we have and ask them what a child might be learning.   I thought by sharing some research / theory, I could tie it into how this information transfers to a classroom activity.  
        So, my challenges are:  engaging adults without children and simplifying materials for beginner ESOL.  Does anyone else work in a family literacy program where not all adults have children in the program? 
   
  Sherry Fiaux
Gail Price <gprice at famlit.org> wrote:
    As announced, today marks the beginning of the discussion on "Implementing Parent Child Activities. I posted some questions on September 6th for you to be thinking about and hope that you are ready for a good discussion.
  

  Cyndy Colletti has graciously agreed to be our moderator for this discussion. She has sent the following as her initial post to begin the discussion and will be responding tomorrow to the questions and comments you post today.
  

  Welcome Cyndy.
  

  

  Hi all,
  I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the topic of “Implementing Parent Child Activities” with all of you.  Gail has already posted my bio.  I‘ve been involved in Family Literacy as a grant program in Illinois since 1992. I’m currently the Literacy Program Manager at the Illinois State Library where we offer grants in Family Literacy, Adult Volunteer Literacy and Workplace Literacy.
   
  I have been a fan of family literacy since I first understood that here was an educational structure that built upon the existing literacy activities of a family and used the interaction between parents and children to increase the skills of both.  I’ve watched the positive influence effective family literacy programming can have on the educational achievement of both adult learners and their children. For clarity, I am defining Family Literacy as a set of programs designed to enhance the literacy skills of more than one family member.
   
  The distinguishing feature of family literacy is the interactive activities that take place between parents and children in the program.  Those activities are what we are going to discuss.  For the sake of simple typing, I am going to use the acronym PACT, which stands for Parents And Children Together activities. 
   
  Again for clarity and for our purposes in this discussion, PACT activities will be defined as those scheduled and facilitated activities that take place within a four component Family Literacy project and that include parents and children together in reciprocal, interactive and literacy based activities.
   
  Although this discussion will not center on the issue of the importance of PACT, I think we have to touch on it to begin.  It is a central tenet of family literacy that the family is the primary literacy resource for the child.  Families who share their lives have the ongoing opportunity to foster each other’s literacy.  Meaningful, effective PACT activities are built on this basis and on the needs of the participating families.
   
  When I began working with family literacy, I naively thought this component was intuitive and self-explanatory.  I found out different.  Family literacy takes people with widely diverse cultures, learning levels and life experiences and serves them in one setting for PACT activities.
   
  How do you engage a roomful of low literate parents who may distrust the idea of “play,” and just want to get on with learning? How do we engage both parents and children?  How do we build on the family’s existing social structure and literacies to engage their interest in participation in this component? How do we take what we know as educators and integrate it so that PACT becomes a valued part of the learning program for both parents and children? Is this a design challenge or what?
   
  I hope you’ve had time to think about the questions Gail posted.  We hope to go on to discuss implementation and outcomes as well as design.  Certainly it is all tied together.  But for today, let’s start with these beginning issues.  We must engage adults and children if the experience is to be effective.  Please, share your experience. How have you handled these initial challenges?
  Cyndy Colletti
   
   

    Gail J. Price
  Multimedia Specialist
  National Center for Family Literacy
  325 West Main Street, Suite 300
  Louisville, KY 40205
  

  Phone: 502 584-1133, ext. 112
  Fax: 502 584-0172



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