Literacy B.C. - Newsletter - December 2003

Imprints - The Newsletter of Literacy BC
Volume 9, Number 2- November 2003

Access & Agency (cont'd)

Playing with the meanings and mappings of agency in the concrete and the abstract, the students learned what it takes for adults to become students, to make changes in their lives. They also learned huge things about community, adults, school, learning, maps, research and the two meanings of agency.

Learning and Research from the Participant Point of View

I am a wife, mother, friend, sister and the list goes on. Five years ago I walked into Northwest Community College in the pursuit of an education. I never suspected how profoundly an education would impact myself, my family and my friends. I have concluded that it was far easier to walk through life with little education. Issues that were once black and white are now various shades of grey. The shades of grey represent different perspectives, opportunities and challenges.

Although I am a university undergraduate I have remained a constant presence at NWCC. It is there that I met people who share my love/hate relationship with literacy. There that I gained a sense of empowerment in regards to my literacy abilities. There that I can use the knowledge that I have gained to advocate for those that struggle with literacy issues. So my involvement with this participatory action research is a way of examining the grey areas.

Belinda Lacombe
Houston Project Team Phase 1 & 2

The project has received Phase 2 funding from the BC Adult Literacy Cost-Shared Program, beginning fall 2003. The project teams will build on Phase 1 by planning, designing and implementing an intervention to increase access to agency/agencies.

Anne Docherty is the administrator for the Storytellers’ Foundation Learning Shop in Hazelton, a storefront education centre that promotes informal learning and social development. Dee McRae is an instructor at Northwest Community College in Houston and the Regional Literacy Coordinator for northwest BC.

Project sponsors: Houston Link to Learning; The Learning Shop, Hazelton; Northwest Community College

Some of the Identified Needs of Adult Students

Childcare
Clothing
Comfort
Community
Culture
Desire
Dignity
Dreams
Drive
Drug free
Ease of mind
Encouragement
Exercise
Family
Food
Healthy mind
Hope
Know where to go
Money
Motivation
Need
Nourishment
Patience
Personal control
Purpose
Reason
Recreation
Respect
Security

Brainstorming a list of needs was pretty straightforward, but trying to place them according to a hierarchy became much more difficult. One of the first discoveries the students made was that they each had their own individual hierarchy of needs.

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