Cultural Arts Literacy-a look at the whole person

Cultural Arts Literacy is the name of the program I created for the students in my Adult Literacy Program. I wrote a grant proposal for the program and I am happy to say it was recently funded by BALIS. We are so excited about implementing the program.

Why is this important to me?

I came to adult literacy as a volunteer tutor. I loved the work and my enthusiasm helped me land the job as a Library Literacy Instructor. Having had no previous official training in teaching (other than in dance) I learned to work with the individual by assessing their goals and constructing a lesson plan. If something comes up that is "urgent" that the student needs help with we will divert our lesson until this situation is handled. The situation might be applying for a job, filling out a government form, or writing a letter.

I had been looking at our teaching styles and program content and realized that most of the information we were sharing was about spelling, reading, writing, grammar, grammar, and more grammar. All this is well and good but not everyone relates to English as well as we'd like them to. What about opening up the student's eyes to other aspects of our society? What about tapping into their creative abilities? Since I had noticed that most of our students had low levels of self esteem I wondered how we might be able to raise their self esteem by using creativity--looking at how society views art--learning about the art of all cultures.

In creating the program I looked at what makes me feel more confident. When my self esteem is low what makes me feel better? Tapping into various forms of creativity REALLY helps. Dancing, creating art, observing and discussing beauty in nature. I believe that all of these things help us tap into our True Selves. When we are in touch with Ourselves, we can handle The World more easily.

In Peace and Gratitude,
Sarah