Tomorrow, Friday 2/29 is our last official day for our discussion on:  Discussing Diversity and Power Issues for Professional Development in Adult Literacy. Of course, we can continue to discuss this for as long as we like, but our guest facilitators, Margery Freeman and Kathy King will no longer be our guest facilitators. Therefore, if you have any last minute questions that you would like to address to them, please do so by 12 noon on Friday.

I would like to invite everyone to reflect on any of the following questions:
a. What have you learned from this discussion?
b. Is there anything that you will be sharing or have shared from this discussion with colleagues/friends/family members?
c. What do you wish was discussed in greater depth?

My answers to the above are:
a. This discussion was an eye opener for me. I have learned that diversity and professional development in adult literacy needs to start with deep and difficult conversations about how we see ourselves, how we think we are perceived by others, and how we think our own views and other people's views of us shape our experiences. These types of conversations need to take place before we can even begin to think about our adult literacy classrooms.
b. I have shared the above with a few colleagues.
c. I wish that we had time to explore intersections of our diversities in greater depth.

Do any of you have answers to any of the above questions that you can share with us?

I would like to remind everyone that these conversations will continue to take place at the WeLearn Conference, March 7th and 8th (http://www.litwomen.org/conference.html ). Margery, Kathy, and I are attending and we hope that you will approach us so that we can put faces to names! In fact, if you are in the mood to come to a workshop that will focus on this list, as well as the ALE Wiki-there will be one on Friday afternoon.  

One final reminder:
 As part of the WE LEARN 2008 Conference, there is a special section in the Adult Literacy Education Wiki. Descriptions of each of the sessions at the conference have been uploaded to a separate web pages, and on those pages you are encouraged to post questions or thoughts about the topics addressed.  Below are links to the different sections. I encourage you to check out the site and to post your thoughts, questions and comments in the various sessions. 

Main Conference Page 

http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/WE_LEARN_2008_Conference 

Friday Schedule (with links to specific sessions) 

http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/WE_LEARN_2008_Friday 

Saturday Schedule (with links to specific sessions) 

http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/WE_LEARN_2008_Saturday 

Daphne