A little over a week ago, Marty Finsterbusch, Executive Director of VALUE (Voice of Adult Literacy United for Education) met with me to talk about students as adult education leaders. At the end of the following interview with Marty, he posed the questions for list participants: -Tell me from your own perspective, what is student involvement? -What have you seen? -What have you heard? -What are you doing to involve students in your work?

It is our hope that you will respond to these questions from your perspective and/or comment on the many points Marty makes in his posting. Many thanks to Marty for the time and effort he took to share his thoughts with us. Marty has also agreed to actively participate in the list for the next two weeks as we explore this topic.

Sandy Strunk
PLI List Moderator
******************************

Interview for the NIFL Program Leadership and Improvement List
June 2004

SS:  Could you talk a little bit about who you are, how you got involved in student leadership and what your role is now?

MF: Well, my name is Marty Finsterbusch and I am the Executive Director of VALUE. VALUE stands for Voice of Adult Literacy United for Education. It’s the only national adult learner organization in the United States. Basically, we are the alumni of adult Ed. What happened is the adult learners from across the United States got together and said, “We need our own organization; we’re part of this field." So, about 45 adult learners got together at a place called Highlander in Tennessee in the middle of nowhere and said, “We’re going to do this.” It took us a couple of years to figure out our mission and by 2001 we opened up our own national office. They asked me to become its first executive director. Since then, we’ve been developing training for our peers so they can go back and work in their programs on improvement. We have a national training system we’re getting ready to launch across the states this fall. We’re also turning ourselves into a national resource center on student leadership and involvement. We’ve been working with NIFL on this. And then we have our own national leadership institute that we do every other year. This year, on March 8, 9, and 10th we’ll be in Washington, D.C. We expect approximately 200 adult learner leaders from across the United States to be there. 
As far as how I got started, you would have to go back now about 18 years. I got involved as a student in adult education. I had a learning disability and as a child I got put in a special education program where I sat for 12 years. I came out with a 4th grade reading level. With that, I wanted to go to college but I was told, “you can’t go to college; it’s for normal people.” No one could really help me because I had a high school diploma. But, the local literacy program had external money and they were able to take me. My reading ability jumped six levels in little over a year and I became one of Pennsylvania’s Outstanding Adult Education students. That’s how I got exposed to adult education leadership.

I went to my first national conference and 1986 and it was the first time they actually had adult learners at a conference. They had a workshop for the students and they had feet cut out on the ground to show us where our room was. And, they had it down in the basement and I swear the ceiling leaked on us the entire time. 
Anyway, I got involved at a conference workshop. There were a group of students in the front of the room who were introduced as national student leaders. Locally, I was starting to organize student support groups in our local program area, so I kept asking questions like, “How do you run a support group?” They didn’t seem to know anything. One person sat there with his hands crossed the whole time and didn’t say anything. Finally a practitioner got up and shut me down and turned the questions away from me. So, that’s how I got involved – out of anger. If you’re going to be a student leader, I don’t care what you know, but you need to know something. And that’s been my philosophy ever since. I don’t care what you know as long as you’ve able to speak up, and share some kind of knowledge or information with someone else.  That makes you a leader.  That philosophy has carried me through 18 years of student involvement.

What is student involvement? Over the years, people saw student involvement as support groups where students get together and talk to each other. Today, some people are seeing it as advocacy. It’s much more than that. The reality is -- anything your organization does, students can be involved in it, (Anything). If you’re looking at fund-raising, student involvement can be part of that. If you’re looking at your retention rate, student involvement can be part of that. I don’t want to get into all of the specifics since it is part of our training, but you can involve students in anything.

SS:  What unique perspective do you think student bring to leadership and program improvement?

MF: Look at any company. Any company would be foolish to run their business without customer input. Look at higher education. They have alumni groups. K-12 has alumni groups. What does adult education have?  No alumni. Why is that? 
Why aren’t we asking the people we have helped to be part of our organization and be involved in what we are doing? We get them up to a point and say, "bye," -- so there is a vast resource in our field that has not been tapped. This could help us a great deal, but our field is broken into smaller pieces and is very rarely looked at as a whole. We don’t think about how to keep students involved. Thus, our field is missing important allies -- our students. We’re not bringing the students back in to the program and this is the most important part of student involvement.

SS: I hear you saying two things. First, students are an untapped resource, as we look at all of the shrinking resources in adult education we are over looking the people resources. Secondly, from a customer perspective, maybe students know ways we can improve our programs.

MF: Yes, you are dealing with adults. They may be lacking in reading, writing, or English skills, but they also have life experiences that a child does not. They know what has worked and what has not worked for them in the past. We need to get rid of the image of adult learners as the poor minority adults on welfare with 20 kids. 
Our society’s rules are changing and pushing people out of the mainstream.

SS: Who are we pushing out?

MF: Take my father for instance; he worked in the meat cutting business when we were young. We always had everything we needed but not everything we wanted. Now the meat cutting business is gone. Large factories process and package the meat. Another example may be someone who is widowed. Once their spouse has died they are forced to assume another role. 
Our society is changing, and we are all being placed in “less than” categories. In our society there is discrimination against adult learners. Yes, there is discrimination on the basis of wealth, race and gender, but we also discriminate based on knowledge and skills. Just because you can't read and write well, you are seen as “less than."  Our reading and writing skills may be less than [that of others], but as a human being we are not less than anyone else. 
Even in our field a lot of people see their students as less than themselves. They don't see what students could do for them because they believe they are less than. They don’t realize that student there just happens to be the cousin of your town’s commissioner or that student just happens to be the CEO of that company over there. So we are not seeing our students as a whole, we're seeing them, as “my class with a lack of basic skills.”  Students could bring a lot of empowerment to programs, but we don’t ask.

SS: So what you are saying is students are not just people who have a learning need, but the also have a lot to offer in many other areas.

MF: We are dealing with tradition in our field. When people come into our programs, what do we normally say to them? We say, "Don’t worry, we'll keep it a secret." What our field is doing is reinforcing that there is something wrong with adult learners. So then, why would they tell other people about the program in the community? Why would they speak up about the program when we ask them to speak? We've told them that there is something wrong with them. 
When we involve students in the VALUE core training what we are doing is inviting them to be involved in something, a project. What are students getting out of that? Are they coming just for the sake of it? No, they are coming for the skills. They’re learning how to manage a project, they’re learning how to work in an office, and they’re learning how to work in a team. All of that translates into job skills. If you only picture Adult Ed as teaching reading and writing, it doesn’t work. 
SS: As you were talking, I was thinking about the name of the organization, VALUE. Was the name selected to underscore the VALUE adult learners bring to our field?

MF: Well you had 45 adult learners at Highlander. Highlander has all of their meetings in rocking chairs and you sit in a circle. So, you have 45 people in a circle trying to come up with a name for the organization. That’s where VALUE came from, a lot of compromises on the acronym and what it would represent. Our name is a voice, not voices, but a voice for adult literacy because we already have so many people speaking for our field. We are speaking as one voice, the adult learner and we are united when it come to education. We all come from different backgrounds but we all care about this field.  
SS: And the other difference is you are speaking for yourselves. Someone’s not speaking for you.

MF: There’s always someone saying“ they need this, they should be doing that.”  I say, “HELLO, were right here in the room! This is what we need.” We’ve never spoken as a group. This is the first time in the history of the United States that you actually have a group that is totally run by the students. We’re not a puppet under any other national organization. We’re not a division or a little sub-committee that has no power what so ever. My board or trustees are all individuals that learned to read as adults. And they are the owners of VALUE. We have a 501c (3), so we are the first of its kind. That gives us a really unique perspective on this entire field. Now we are looking at the whole field from the customer’s viewpoint.

SS: What can programs and states and administrators and other program leaders do to help VALUE and to help students have a greater voice in our field?

MF: One, acknowledge the present situation and help to get the word out to students. Let's be honest, we have a few of gatekeepers, meaning VALUE cannot not get to the students in your program. To deal with the state we have to get through the state director or the state group and get them to understand student involvement. Then, once they understand, you can get through to the next level of gatekeeper, program directors. Do they understand student involvement or are they set in their ways and saying, “This is the way we have always done it and this is they way we are going to continue to do it.” Are they accepting of power sharing and seeing things differently? Then, once you get through that, you have to get through the program manager. After the program manager you have to get through the teachers. Some teachers say,“ Well, students aren’t ready for it.” Sometimes, if you send out student meeting letters to tutors, the tutor might say, “my students aren’t ready for that.” They made the decision before even talking to the students. Do you see all of the different levels before we get to the student? That’s our problem.

SS: So, you want students to know they don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to join VALUE.  They can just do it.

MF: We have to convince so many people of the value of having students participate in their own program. At the same time, they’re getting skills that they can use for the rest of their lives. Those same skills can help run an organization. I constantly hear organizations say,“ We don’t have the staff to do a newsletter.”  Why don’t they ask students to be some of the reporters? They can do it with their teachers or they can do it with their tutors. They can interview you and your other staff as a writing assignment. You could proof it and invite them into your office to produce it and pop it in the mailing. Now they are getting office skills. They are learning how to use a copier and how bulk mailing works. And what did it really cost you? It gave your students the chance to come into your organization and be exposed to what you are going through. They are hearing things and seeing things that help them understand how the program works. In the future, if a situation comes up for your program, they are more willing to speak up and defend your program because they feel like they are part of it. Many programs are missing students willing to stand up for them.

SS: If someone is a member of the list and they want to get more information on VALUE, what should they do?

MF: Go to our website www.valueusa.org. It’s still being updated, but you can get the most current information there.

SS: Earlier when we talked, you had a good idea about an initial question you want to pose to list participants. 
MF: That’s right. The question I want to start off with is “Tell me from your own perspective, what is student involvement? What have you seen? What have you heard? What are you doing to involve students in your work?”

SS: Thank you, Marty, for sharing your thoughts on student leadership with list participants. I’m hoping many of them will respond to the question you posed and I appreciate your willingness to be an active participant in the discussion over the next two weeks.