Jean
What a great place to start.  Pitfalls: well with so few hours, I
wouldn't expect a lot of progress, but if you can build in some small
group times or PACT, the interaction could help with the isolation that
this population deals with daily.  PACT can imbed the job skills needed
by the adults: planning, completion of a plan, thinking ahead, what if's
and fun.  The children will get the benefit of play time with folks.
The tutors could help with this as well as work with the adults.  The
parents needs some time to wear the student hat, instead of the parent
hat, if possible.  Are your volunteers willing to work with children,
without the parents too?  PACT is a powerful tool and the first one that
the adults will want to eliminate.

Good luck
Va

-----Original Message-----
From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Gail Price
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 4:04 AM
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 581] Drop in Family Literacy?

I am forwarding this post on behalf of Jean Marrapodi. Jean sent her
first post without her full signature and then sent a second post to
correct that. I have combined both posts, so all information is included
in one.

I am sure many of you can provide Jean with some guidance.


Gail J. Price
Multimedia Specialist
National Center for Family Literacy
325 W. Main Street, Suite 300
Louisville, KY 40202
gprice at famlit.org
502 584-1133, ext. 112


-----Original Message-----
From: PHCSJean.46639044 at bloglines.com
[mailto:PHCSJean.46639044 at bloglines.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 10:02 PM
To: familyliteracy at nifl.gov
Subject: Drop in Family Literacy?

I feel like I have stumbled into uncharted waters and am hoping some of
the
folks on this list might have some thoughts for where I might begin. 

I've
been working with below basic adults for a couple of years, and we
decided
to explore the needs of the folks who attend the soup kitchen we sponsor
to
see about expanding our program. We conducted a survey of the attendees
last
week and got an overwhelmingly positive response from them for attending
a
reading class or for getting help for their children with reading. A
discussion with the team has morphed this into the potential of creating
a family literacy program. 

My questions for you:
The soup kitchen population is different from week to week. Our thought
was to bring in a set of volunteer tutors to work with whoever comes and
sticks around, sort of like an after school homework tutorial program,
then dealing with the needs of whoever shows up. I suppose this is like
the "just in time" model we use in corporate training. We have been
tossing around the idea of before the program and an hour after the
program.
We also thought about a Saturday morning breakfast with tutoring.

Would this kind of thing work? What pitfalls am I not thinking about?
Does this fall under the umbrella of family literacy? As I'm researching
this I'm finding there's quite a bit of diversity in the definition.

We serve an inner city population. The volunteers would be from the
church and the connection we have through Literacy Volunteers. My
thought is there might be LVA people willing to commit to volunteering
but might not want the responsibility of "owning" a student, but might
be willing to function in this way by committing to a Wednesday
afternoon or evening. 

Are there models out there doing this? As I said in the beginning of my
post, this is truly uncharted waters for me.

We are literally playing with the ideas at this point and I'm hoping
there's some expertise in this group that might be able to help me
formulate
this --or kabosh it quickly if there's some huge pitfall we haven't
thought
of. 

Thanks!
Jean Marrapodi
Providence Assembly of God Learning Center



I just remembered that this list asks for full signature information.
Here's mine as a tag onto that last post about the potential program
springing out of our soup kitchen:

Jean Marrapodi, PhD, CPLP
Director of Education
Providence Assembly of God Learning Center
353 Elmwood Avenue
Providence,
RI 02907
www.providenceassembly.org
rejoicer at aol.com
401-461-7210

I
run this program as a volunteer, and am a corporate trainer during the
work week.
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