National Adult Literacy Database

Three new Interactive Tools that may revolutionize how we learn and/or teach literacy and essential skills – available on www.learningandviolence.net.

Building on what we have learned over the past decade about the impacts of violence on learning, here are three groundbreaking online tools that can help all students to learn more effectively and help all programs to improve their practices.

1. Student Kit:  Helping Myself to Learn
   Stunning graphics help tell animated stories that will captivate students’ hearts and minds immediately. Each one of the five dynamic stories shows how experiences of violence can live on and affect learning – leading students to space out in class or forget what they just learned; struggle with old habits that interrupt their learning; feel like losers or stupid, always comparing themselves to others and coming up short; or quit altogether, weighed down by one crisis after another.  Students will recognize themselves and their friends in the stories and find concrete resources and strategies to help everyone learn effectively. Teachers will value the wide range of thoughtfully conceived activities to explore the issues in depth – using words, images, music, and movement – appropriate for many different literacy levels and situations.

2. College Tool: Changing Lenses, Changing Practices
   A room with a seemingly simple filing cabinet opens up a whole new world with thought-provoking ways to look at your own and your college’s practices.  This Tool looks at every aspect of the college learning environment to ask – how do students experience our institution and how do our everyday practices support or hinder learning?  This online and print resource is simply a must see for everyone who wants to increase learning success in a college setting.

3. Community-based Literacy Reflection Guide: Creating a Culture of Care
   A colourful quilt held in place by a diverse group of people hints at the ideas behind this Guide – the acknowledgement of violence in our society and the desire to create community programming rooted in social justice for all students. This Guide builds on the best of community-based practices to encourage us all to dig deeper and notice how students’ experience of each aspect of the program is shaped by familiarity with violence. At every stage the authors pay careful attention to individual and systemic violence, inviting us to recognize such forms of violence as racism and classism, and encouraging us to reconsider each of our everyday practices so that we can create the best possible community-based learning environments for all.

The creators of these tools want your feedback. They would like you to explore the resources and use them in your program or college. Please send your feedback before September 30, 2011, to be entered into an exciting draw. A feedback form is included here for each of the tools. Click on the appropriate link to provide and submit your feedback.

• Student Kit: Helping Myself Learn
• College Tool: Changing Lenses, Changing Practices
• Community-based Literacy Guide: Creating a Culture of Care

The Government of Canada’s Office of Literacy and Essential Skills funded the creation of these tools as part of a project of the School of Work and College Preparation, Centre for Preparatory and Liberal Studies, George Brown College, in partnership with Spiral Community Resource Group.

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