The Adult Learners Network
of Ontario (ALNO)

by Patricia Brady*, OLC Learner Coordinator

The Ontario Literacy Coalition (OLC) has a new learners’ advisory body. It replaces the old OLC Learners’ Council. The new body is called the Adult Learners Network of Ontario or ALNO. (They call themselves the ‘all knowing’ ones!) It is involved in almost everything that the OLC does. This group helps the OLC to see issues from the perspective of people who have literacy challenges.

Top Row, Left to Right: Patricia Ashie, Denis Lemieux, Sandy Johnston, Shirley Annable, Bev McKay. Bottom Row, Left to Right: Dan McGibbon, Peter Fitzpatrick, Donna Lovell.

ALNO does this by:

• Promoting the exchange of information among ALNO members, as well as between ALNO and OLC members, staff, Board and others. The OLC Board gets advice from ALNO when drafting the policies and procedures of the organization.
• Letting the OLC know about the needs and interests of people with literacy challenges when OLC is researching what the literacy field needs to support its work. It also gives this advice when OLC is developing and carrying out projects.
• Reviewing OLC’s progress in including the voice of people with literacy challenges in all aspects of OLC work.
• Taking part in OLC meetings such as the Advisory Roundtable meetings with regional and sectoral networks.
• Sending a representative to the Movement for Canadian Literacy’s Learners Advisory Network .

ALNO works with the OLC in other ways. Other ALNO activities include: staffing the OLC booth at Word on the Street Fair, participating in workshop and conference development and planning, presenting at OLC events, and making contributions to OLC publications such as newsletters and information flyers.

ALNO also encourages learner leadership activity in the OLC through the Kim Strickland Learner Leader Sponsorship Program. This annual program sponsors two learners to the meetings and events around the OLC Annual General Meeting. The program helps people who are interested in literacy to see what provincial literacy volunteer work is like. ALNO hopes that this will encourage the sponsorship winners to continue to volunteer in literacy when they get home, or get involved with the OLC in the future.

The eight people on ALNO represent different areas of the province. To be an ALNO member you must be:

• living in Ontario
• over 18 years old
• a member of the people with literacy challenges membership category of the OLC
• comfortable with others knowing about your literacy challenges - interested in the OLC, literacy and issues that affect those who have literacy challenges
• able to serve a three-year term that starts and ends at an OLC Annual General Meeting
• able to travel to and from ALNO meetings

Members of ALNO are selected by a committee that is made up of the OLC Board, staff and ALNO members. Nomination forms for vacant ALNO positions will be available in the spring of 2004.

*For more information about ALNO and the Ontario Literacy Coalition, please visit the OLC website at: http://www.on.literacy.ca or contact Patricia Brady, OLC Learner Coordinator at patricia@on.literacy.ca

Some ideas that you can try when teaching low-literate students :

• Help low-literate students develop fine motor skills with hands-on activities, including cutting, poster-making, etc. This allows all students to participate and produce actively, regardless of level.

• Pair or group students with mixed ability levels. Make sure all students have a role to play (more literate students can be “secretary” while beginning students can contribute orally, visually, etc).

• Organize your lessons around the content and themes that are important and new to all students (i.e. content-based). For example, when I teach a math or social studies lesson, the skills and content are the same for all students, yet I can design different reading/writing activities and outcome expectations for students depending on their literacy level. Students might study a map of the town or city you live in, for example.