Profiles of Engagement:
Literacy Campaign Trains Family and Friends to Teach
Reading and Writing in Spanish

UCLA education professor and Centro Latino partner in unique effort to instruct non-literate Spanish speakers in L.A. County.

By Rachel Benioff

June 2008–On a recent trip to Israel, Uju Anya, a UCLA Ph.D. student in Applied Linguistics and Portuguese, found herself feeling “blind.” Unable to speak, read or write in Hebrew, she was “afraid to go out on the street” without her Israeli husband. She quickly realized that her experience mirrored that of her non-literate students at Centro Latino, where she had been fulfilling a service learning component of her studies.

For Centro Latino’s students, among the approximately 202,000 people in Los Angeles County who are non-literate in Spanish and English, the inability to read and write can turn a 2-hour bus ride into a 6-hour ordeal, a simple task at work into a test of nerves, and mundane documents—bills, timesheets, letters—into indecipherable mysteries. Their daily lives are filled with uncertainty and any dreams of a better life seem well beyond their reach.

Centro Latino is dedicated to teaching reading and writing in Spanish and English to those who have not had the benefit of education, particularly Latino immigrants. Many of its students grew up in poor, rural communities in Mexico and Central America and went to work at an early age. Says Anya, “Centro’s approach to literacy is brilliant in that it teaches them to read and write in their own language first, then bridges them over to English.”

Looking for ways to expand its reach, Centro Latino pioneered ¡LEAMOS!, an innovative computer-based version of their Spanish literacy program. And now the grass-roots organization, in partnership with education professor Concepción Valadez, and thanks to an award from the Center for Community Partnerships, has embarked on an ambitious literacy campaign to train literate Spanish speakers to teach their non-literate family and friends to read and write in Spanish.

The methodology developed and information gleaned are expected to be incorporated into UCLA’s teacher education program, and the campaign is providing Valadez, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, with a rich context for applied education research.

A Shift in Thinking

Explains Centro Latino’s executive director, Melanie Stephens, the campaign represents “a shift in thinking” from their initial strategy, which aimed to deliver ¡LEAMOS! to this marginalized population through adult schools, libraries and community-based organizations.

But numerous barriers stood in the way of these institutions incorporating the program on a large scale. Despite this disappointing result—and even though Centro Latino had made no effort to publicize the program—they continued to received phone calls from people wanting to use ¡LEAMOS! with family and friends.

Says Stephens, “We started to realize that the people who had the biggest stake in literacy in Spanish are those who are directly impacted by not being literate, and the people right around them who care about them. So we stood back and said, okay, now what is it that we need to do on top of what we’re already doing that’s going to make it possible for that model to succeed?”

Breaking New Ground

Centro Latino is one of a very few organizations focused on literacy for non-literate Spanish speakers, and none has undertaken a literacy campaign, says Stephens, “in quite the way that we’ve put this forward. This is an approach that we think makes the most sense for the U.S. context because of the particular kinds of opportunities, i.e., access to technology, as well as limitations, where you’re not going to get widespread government support for a literacy campaign in Spanish.”

Centro Latino and Valadez are now steeped in the first phase of the campaign, designing the training for these unique pairs—the literate, non-professional teachers, and their non-literate students—as well as developing a set of tools, which will include ¡LEAMOS!, to enable these tutors to optimize their effectiveness with adult learners.

Says Valadez, “It’s going to be a challenge, because it’s something that nobody’s ever done. But I think it’s going to be really great. I think we’re going to learn how to scaffold what we want them to do.”

Not only do they need to develop materials for teaching Spanish literacy specifically to adults, as opposed to children—something that has not been developed—but they also need to be careful to give the tutors just enough information to avoid overload.

Says Stephens, “We can’t assume that the family members and friends who are going to be tutors are themselves tremendously fluently literate. They themselves might have somewhat limited formal education. So we want to create things in a way that frees people up to learn this core information without it becoming a drag for either the tutor or the learner.”

Stephens adds that because each pair will attend one training, the team also faces the challenge of having only “one shot to really help guide their process forward.” With this in mind, they are also designing a support system—both online and via telephone—for questions that will come up as the pairs make their way through the program.

After an initial beta phase, Centro Latino will pilot the first pairs trainings September through December of 2008, followed by the official launch, with public service announcements in Spanish language media to mobilize, describes Stephens, “both the non-literate folks to say, ‘Yeah, I can do this’ and their literate friends and family members to say, ‘And I want to help you do this.’”

There will be about 100 trainings altogether, and Valadez is assisting Centro Latino with the ongoing assessment. With students of differing ages, genders and even first languages —43.5% speak indigenous languages such as Zapoteco, Quiché and Canjobal—a well-integrated and careful assessment is critical to analyzing which aspects of the campaign are successful with which groups.

Birds—and Brains—in Cages

Influenced by the methods and philosophy of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, the pairs training, says Valadez, will take into consideration the individual learner and “the concerns that they have at the moment.” To this end, the team has been experimenting with imagery that brings to light the fears, thoughts and messages that can undermine students’ confidence, and embodies the skills and qualities the students will need to draw on to succeed.

Designing the trainings has been a “process of co-creation,” says Stephens. “We’re trying things out, we’re trying to be innovative, and we welcome other ideas.” In this spirit, in February 2008, Centro Latino convened a cross-section of colleagues and individuals from the community, including former Centro students, to introduce them to the campaign and invite their feedback and involvement.

Reflecting the Freirian approach, this “encuentro” began with a poignant story, written and told by Dianna Moreno, a Ph.D. student in Urban Schooling in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, of a caged bird that longs for freedom, yet when a sudden wind upends the cage and unlocks its door, the bird encounters its own fears of flying free.

Says Moreno, the story “played on the idea that we all have fear of something. The sensation that ‘we can’t do it’ is something we can all relate to. It prepared people to think about how we keep ourselves back.”

The encuentro also presented attendees with another vivid metaphor: a brain in a cage, and the five “keys” needed to unlock it – confidence, motivation, persistence, patience and a sense of enjoyment. The playful prop engendered a lively discussion as the group guessed at the identity of each key, and a similar metaphorical device will be used in the pairs training.

Says Stephens, the presence of the former literacy students at the encuentro not only underscored the vital importance of the literacy campaign, but it also helped the students to envision the role they themselves can play. Stephens believes the students will “be very inspired as trainers,” and Centro Latino’s Assistant Director Ana María Ruiz adds that many of them “want to help others learn as an act of gratitude” for the opportunity they were given “to finally learn to read and write.”

Maestro + Orchestra = Great Partnership

Throughout the design of the trainings, Valadez has guided the graduate students and Centro Latino in what she describes as “learning about learning, learning about teaching and searching for the natural principals that go into effective teaching. And the context is the campaign for literacy.”

Stephens praises Valadez for her critically important role: “She brings enormous skill and experience and yet she’s also very open to trying new things, to letting things evolve, to really working in partnership. The whole idea of the encuentro came from us, but she said ‘Sounds good, let’s try it!’ She doesn’t command, she collaborates.”

Or as Valadez puts it, “Centro Latino provides the learners and the teachers, and I come in like the orchestra director and just say ‘Fine tune that flute. Fine tune that violin section.’”

Beyond the Classroom

For Uju Anya and Dianna Moreno, the graduate students who were instrumental in designing the encuentro, the issues confronting immigrant communities hit close to home. Anya and her family immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria and Moreno’s parents immigrated from Mexico.

Says Anya, who in addition to working on the encuentro, assisted in the Centro Latino classrooms, the benefits of her participation went beyond gaining skills and experience in her area of interest, the intersection between service learning and second language acquisition. “Being a part of the launching pad of the literacy campaign was important to me because I saw firsthand in the classroom how necessary this is. Those who learn to read and write through this campaign are going to have a much better shot at fulfilling their dreams here. That’s a very, very worthy thing, and I’m blessed to be a part of it.”

For Moreno, whose focus in urban schooling is on critical pedagogy, the experience has been “very applicable to what I am studying. It’s helping me ask the questions that are hard to answer, and we can’t really get that by reading a book or by having class discussion. And I get to see the theory and the practice as interconnected and that’s certainly a great learning experience for me.”

Research Enterprise Meets Community

Valadez commends UCLA and the Center for Community Partnerships for bringing “the research enterprise closer to what the community’s needs are. And it’s a two-way street, because by doing this project in the community, we’re gaining knowledge about the teaching piece. And this particular teaching piece also feeds into the research component, because I teach about teaching, and I also do research on learning.”

The graduate students who are participating in the literacy campaign are also discovering how academics can do applied research, says Valadez. “The UCLA mission of training researchers and the UCLA Graduate School of Education mission of doing research that makes a difference—you can see these in a project of this sort.”

Opening Doors

Says Stephens, “I see the whole literacy enterprise as being about helping people get the tools they need to develop the other skills that they want, and also giving them the opportunity to realize that they can do it, that they’re worth it, that they matter, that it’s not easy, but it can be achieved. The sense of achievement when somebody learns to read and write, is really tremendous.”

Centro Latino estimates conservatively that it will engage about 1% of the approximately 202,000 who are non-literate in Spanish over a 2-year process. The benefits of literacy will also ripple out to the next generation. According to a 2004 Rand report on school readiness among second generation Hispanics, “mothers educational attainment and neighborhood poverty are the two social characteristics most strongly associated with school readiness. More literate immigrants will translate into more literate 2nd generation Latinos.”

Stephens sees Centro Latino’s literacy campaign, along with the work of other organizations trying different strategies, as the combined effort that is needed to move the field forward: “This is the particular area we can tackle. It will be our contribution as an organization to the larger field and to the community that it’s our role to help.”

Valadez can imagine that the entrepreneurial Centro Latino might, down the road, add components for middle schools: “We have a lot of students coming in who are not literate, who haven’t been to school, and they’re coming in at 12, 13. The curriculum now is very much for adults, but the principles could be adapted to any level. And the program as it is could go into middle school.”

Stephens has her visions for the future too: “What’s exciting to me about the campaign, beyond the impact on folks who aren’t literate, is the potential impact on the community as a whole. Because once they realize that they can come together and do that, then they may look around and say, ‘We can come together and do other things too. We can improve our schools and we can help our children with their education more effectively. We now know how this works—we have the key.’”