Lifelong Learning: A Roadway to Success
Published at Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:22:04 +0000
Among its attempts, OCTAE has long participated across the nation that exemplify the work.
She shared the following: “I wanted to provide more for her and I knew education was the route for that.” She has since graduated from the Goodwill Excel Center and is now attending the University of the District of Columbia, studying Early Childhood Development–with the goal of becoming a teacher.
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Are you a student with a story to share? OCTAE would appreciate hearing from you, and featuring your story in a future blog post.
As these two student stories exemplify, the work of programs across the nation are making a profound difference in the lives of adult learners. These learners are able to be more solvent financially and to care for their families, be more actively engaged in their communities and as citizens, and are better able to continue to sustain their competitiveness and employability in a changing marketplace. Unfortunately their successes are the exception since one in six adults in the U.S. lacks basic reading skills and cannot read a job application, understand basic written instructions, or navigate the Internet.
Highlighted here are just two students whose stories represent both their successes and those of programs that supported them.
Instruction is and continues to be the pathway to success. The Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) supports applications through WIOA funding that help adult students in acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to become productive employees, citizens and parents–and that help them transition into postsecondary education and lifelong learning and instruction.
In sum: “[E]ducation is life–not merely preparation for an unknown kind of future living… The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no endings. This new venture is called adult education not because it is confined to adults but because adulthood, maturity, defines its limits…” (Lindeman The Meaning of Adult Education. 1926: 4-5).
Of the 36 million adult learners, the U.S. Department of Education’s Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) program, enacted as Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), serves 1.5 million adults each year under. WIOA is the primary federal program that offers foundation skills to those that are under the level and English literacy instruction for out of-school youth and adults over age 16.
Paul “Reggie” Bryant, age 68, shown at left and with his flat at the top of this post, attended the Academy of Hope Adult Public Charter School (AoH), also recently gave the keynote address at his graduation, where he recognized his peers and their achievements. In his address, Reggie shared with the audience which he had spent most of his life only miles away from the Academy of Hope but “the journey to graduation was a long one.” Like many adult learners, Reggie has exceeded the age of a typical high school graduate. But his story–which includes serious struggles with addiction, brief periods of incarceration, along with a misdiagnosed learning disorder–are not unfamiliar to the educators supporting these students’ efforts and the students enrolled in the Academy, many of whom share similar journeys and accomplishments.
National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week (September 24-30, 2017) is a big chance to come together as a field to celebrate adult education and to raise awareness of the 36 million adult learners across the nation that are in need of assistance.
As these two adult students’ stories suggest, people have a wide variety of opportunities available to them in which they can explore tipping chances, whether it’s through the completion of a diploma or via libraries, online courses, such as massive open online courses (MOOC), professional development programs, podcasts and other kinds of learning options.
Tiffanie’s decisions and her accomplishments will continue to affect her daughter. Large-scale international and national surveys of student achievement reveal that children with parents who have lower levels of educational attainment tend to have fewer socioeconomic advantages and score lower on academic assessments and those whose parents have higher levels of educational attainment often have greater socioeconomic advantages and score higher on academic assessments. Non-traditional students, like Tiffanie and Reggie, serve as powerful role models and exemplars for the power of lifelong learning.
Joseph Perez is a Management and Program Analyst in the Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education.
Source: TPd Paying for College Feed
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