In spite of the rich potential for family literacy to stimulate personal growth in its participants, as well as to develop their academic and employability skills, the success of the program currently depends on LVA�s ability to adapt to change in the face of welfare reform. The ESOL element in family literacy is thriving, but after several years of flourishing enrollment by English-speaking families, those numbers are now declining.

Over the past decade, JOBS funds were available for education to prepare people for work. JOBS also paid for child care while parents were in school. Now, although funds are still available for pre-employment ESOL training, the educational component is gone for most English-speaking welfare recipients. Work, not school, is the requirement in Wisconsin even for those without a high school diploma.

�I think that was a flaw in the early legislation,� Jessica Collins speaks thoughtfully. �It seems as if they moved too abruptly�from the concept that training and education were good building blocks�to welfare-to-work where the goal is just to quickly get a job and continuing education is a lower priority.�

No one at LVA denies that jobs and self-sufficiency for families are laudable ends, but still there is an underlying regret for what may be lost. Will parents still read to their children? Will they help with homework? Will the daycare stimulate children? Will parents be too tired and too stressed to work their jobs and continue their own education and spend time with their children?

�The needs of families are greater than ever,� Jessica says. �We must find ways to support them during this transition.� When Linda Stewart was appointed by the governor as Wisconsin�s Secretary of the Department of Workforce Development in December 1996, she emphasized her concern not only that parents get jobs but also that children be nurtured. �Living in Milwaukee and being active in the Milwaukee community for a long time,� she was quoted in a Milwaukee newspaper, �I know it is very important that we not just look at the people we�re serving today but also the children who will be coming behind them.�

Literacy providers continue to anguish about the minimalist education of many parents. Once employed, will parents continue to learn so they can advance to better jobs? In August 1996 the National Institute for Literacy reported that of the four million adults on welfare, �almost 50 percent do not have a high school diploma or GED, and do not have the literacy skills necessary to fill out an application form or locate an intersection on a street map.� They also reported that workers lacking a high school diploma �earn a mean monthly income of $452, compared to $1,829 for those with a bachelor�s degree.�

The concerns are not restricted to big cities but also focus on literacy needs in rural areas. Joan Sosalla, charged with establishing a new technical college in western Wisconsin, worries that W-2 encourages a mindset that already existed, �that a person doesn�t need literacy�a person needs a job.� Joan argues, on the other hand, that �the person needs literacy�reading, writing, numbers, computers�to continue in a job.�

In Chandler, Jessica Collins remains unswerving in her dedication to families, but she stresses, �We have to evolve with the times.� When parents are working thirty or forty hours a week, they cannot also be in school all day. �We have to make our schedules and curriculum meet their needs.�

Since family literacy is only one of a broad array of LVA programs�including one-to-one tutoring, citizenship classes, satellite literacy programs in adjacent counties, Reading is Fundamental (RIF) parties for distributing books to children, and a recent �Learn and Earn� initiative�efforts have already been made to realign offerings for working families. The LVA computer lab housed at the public library is now open at night. Those seeking citizenship can attend class two nights a week. Night-time tutoring classes are offered along with child care. One evening a week is devoted to past family literacy participants�the entire family is invited to return for continuing education. University students earn service learning credit by visiting homes to read to the children. New ideas are constantly proposed, such as a weekend �college on parenting� and weekly discussion groups focused on �problem-solving in the workplace.�

Actually, traditional programming still meets the needs of many parents, in the form of morning classes at the family literacy sites. Often parents can arrange their work schedules during the afternoon, evening, or weekend shifts, to free themselves for family education classes three to five mornings a week. Many parents attend school in the mornings, and their children stay in family literacy all day while the parents work in the afternoons.

However, in addition to the traditional classroom, LVA also seizes every opportunity to extend family education into the workplace. A recent RIF party for parents and their preschool children�books, puppet show, and cookie decoration with a �Gingerbread Man� theme�was moved from its customary site at the public library to the Vocational Training Center where many of the parents now work. After-work classes and brown bag lunches on topics of interest to parents are scheduled. Employers are recruited who will provide on-the-job training, a mentor or job coach, and rotation through various types of jobs.

One tutor offered to visit the work site at a lamp shade factory where her student and several other Hmong employees were having difficulty understanding the oral directions of a newly hired supervisor. Jessica Collins contacted the factory owner and arranged to go with the tutor to the site. Impatience on the part of the supervisor had resulted from various cultural and linguistic barriers; the Hmong women, for example, tended to look down rather than at the supervisor when she explained jobs to them, they did not understand the need for speed in production, and they seemed baffled by crucial words such as frame or fabric.

During the on-site visit, as the supervisor demonstrated tasks and explained how to perform them, Jessica listed 75 phrases she heard used repeatedly, terms such as too large, too small, doesn�t fit, diagonal. Later the tutor wrote each term on a 3� by 5� card and created lessons based on these terms; in weekly tutoring sessions the student practices speaking, reading, and writing English discourse featuring these words. In addition to vocabulary cards, the tutor uses a basket of items borrowed from the factory (e.g., glue, scissors, fabric samples, a metal frame) to focus conversation. Highly motivated during these meaningful classes, the student invited a friend to attend, and as time goes by this student is becoming a teacher to the others at the work site.

This LVA tutor, herself a supervisor of a considerable staff in a hospital setting, was alert to a problem brewing when one of the Hmong was fired for inattentiveness. Out of loyalty to a member of their group, the other Hmong women planned to quit their jobs and walk out of the factory also!

But the tutor talked with the women and asked if they liked working at the lamp shade factory. �Yes,� they said. She asked them if they were doing well on this job. Again �Yes� was the unanimous response.

In fact, the women are adjusting very well to expectations at the factory. Both the supervisor and the factory owner are increasingly enthusiastic about the quality of the needlework done by the Hmong. Their skills are especially valued in the newly acquired division for hand-produced silk lamp shades.

�Why do you think your friend was let go?� the tutor continued probing.

�She is daydreaming,� someone answered.

�Do you have a problem with daydreaming?� the tutor asked the women to think directly about themselves, and they said �No. We work hard.�

Thus, through step-by-step questioning, the tutor helped the women see the necessity of separating their own work experience from that of their dismissed co-worker. Because of this tutor�s management experience, as well as her intuitive way of working with adult students, the women�s jobs were salvaged, to the discernible appreciation of all involved, including both supervisor and factory owner.

To get business to buy into the concept of supporting the entire family is a challenge, and soliciting that support has been LVA�s major thrust in recent years. Two years ago a school-work program placed family literacy students, on alternate days, in class and at a job site secured through the efforts of strong community partnerships. The partners have applied their most creative energies to combining workplace and family education in the Evergreen Valley. In 1996 they published Learn and Earn, a jointly written �model for employment training in business and industry that includes family education services.� The happy ramifications of the tutor�s work at the lamp shade factory suggest further possibilities for creating good will and receptivity for literacy efforts within the business community.

In the Evergreen Valley, LVA�s broadening mission has begun to be reflected in its nomenclature. Family literacy is being increasingly referred to as �family education.� As programs are retooled to fit workplace realities, ESL has become �Language for Work,� and the various supports for family literacy are now being marketed to agencies and employers under the rubric �Education for Work.�

It is a new age, and survival of LVA services for families requires new ideas, new patterns of connectedness in the community web. Jessica Collins is an avid student of current theory of organizational change. By nature, she disdains what she calls a �bureaucratic rut.� All signs are that she will not let LVA fall into one.

In the next few years, family education sites throughout the nation will, like Evergreen Valley, seek broader supports for families and more innovative ways to implement services. An initiative promising to undergird the efforts of such sites is already under development by a vast network of organizations led by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL). This initiative is known as Equipped for the Future (EFF).

According to Sondra Gayle Stein, EFF National Director and author of Equipped for the Future: A Reform Agenda for Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning (NIFL, 1997), NIFL was charged by Congress to measure America�s progress in achieving �Goal 6,� the national goal established in 1990 for adult literacy and lifelong learning:

By the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

After asking hundreds of adults what knowledge and skills they thought they needed to accomplish the economic and citizenship components of Goal 6, EFF articulated four purposes for adult learning: (1) access to information, (2) a confident voice in expressing ideas, (3) ability to act independently, and (4) knowing how to learn. EFF will work to change a �school-based� education to a �customer-driven� system focused on what adults need to know in order to accomplish these four purposes within three fundamental roles:

• parent/family member.
• citizen.
• worker.

Currently, EFF is at work in detailing role maps for adults as family members, citizens, and workers, and in setting standards for measuring how well educational programs help adults prepare for these roles.

Once the role maps are fully elaborated, they should be of great use not only to adult students but also to family education leaders seeking to enlarge a collaborative. Ideally, partners from various agencies throughout the public and private sectors in a community can use the role maps to focus their goals�as virtually �everyone� collaborates to help all members of the adult population develop their greatest potential.