Hello, everyone.
This is my first time posting to this list-serve and I wanted to introduce myself.
Having run adult education and employment programming, I have grappled with the issues that Andres, Kearney and Pinder have discussed here.  Individuals with limited English proficiency and/or with low literacy skills do need and benefit from specialized instruction.  One the other hand, federal dollars that support job training in specific sectors do sometimes appear to be more mindful of the particular industry's needs than those of the workers.  
There's a tension between these two realities that I think is being represented in the aforementioned list-serve postings.  In some cases, the responsibilities of the education/employment programs (not to mention policy makers and voters) can be analyzed.  In others, the involvement of the adults who are participating in these programs can be analyzed.  
Given that I was in a leadership role, I tried to address the program-level design by reading, staying informed and by offering creative teaching and programming when possible.  I tried to address learner involvement issues by continually asking myself and my staff:  what are our participants saying they want and need right now?
Thank you all for your work and your comments.  


Gail Fox Adams


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/povertyracewomen/attachments/20070828/084747be/attachment.html