Each One Teach One Diablo Valley Literacy Council
EACH ONE TEACH ONE To teach English as a second language (ESL) to non-English speaking adults.

 

Newsletter
Summer 2002, VOL. 16 No. 2

President's Message
As we reach midyear, it is a good time to answer the question recently asked, "What does the Board do?" The answer is immediately after this message.

We have been recipients this year of some generous gifts: Laurel Resources, $4,000; Zonta, $1,000; and an $800 donation from Lutheran Brotherhood. Our operating expenses have been limited to membership dues and donations; these gifts allow us to do such things as add to our Library, print new brochures, cover the expense of sending our newsletters, marketing materials, and send one or two members to the annual State conference. A volunteer organization needs to rely upon its membership for help; thank you for your positive response when asked.

We never forget our Tutors who meet weekly with their students, making life easier for them in their new country. You and your students are what the program is all about. Board meetings are open to anyone who would like to attend. Please contact me for time and place.

Lorraine Gosbey

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What the Board Does
Our Board meets on the second Thursday of every month, except July.

To date we have a number of accomplishments to report. Many of the Board members are long-timers who have devoted many years of hard work to the goals of the Diablo Valley Literacy Council. But we have been fortunate to have 5 new members join the Board in the last year and a half who have added new enthusiasm and talent to an effective Board.

Two new members, Kris Torske, Librarian, and Dianne Brin, Member-at-Large, are in training to join our present Tutor Trainers. To be certified, they must attend workshops and conferences for new trainers. Other new Members-at-Large are Jane Keating, Workshop Chair; Sandie Harris, Hours Coordinator; and Lan Ly, Webmaster.

Board members Fred Pellegrin and Ed Chambers have completed the process of incorporation of the Council. This has required many hours of time and communication to complete the required data.

In April and May, we had two very interesting special presentations made at Board meetings:

In April, we were very fortunate to have new Tutor, Judy Bradford, a Marketing Consultant with Goldrush Consulting Co., give a presentation to the Board to develop a program for recruiting tutors. She has volunteered her time and is instrumental in setting up a marketing outline from which we can work. We thank her for this invaluable service to the Council.

In May, through Tutor Sally Sprague we arranged for a presentation by Rosemary Slavin, Program Coordinator of CBETP (Community Based English Tutoring Program) a part of the Loma Vista Adult Education Program offered at several elementary schools with parent participation. This was a very informative meeting; we also learned that we may be able to use Library space at Cambridge Elementary to tutor our adult students in that area. There are many community organizations tutoring adults and children in our county -- we hope to have an In-service in the fall to acquaint our tutors with some of these related programs.

Lan Ly, a new Tutor, offered to develop a new web page for DVLC. His experience in this field was just what we needed. We have received several contacts through the web page which will now be updated regularly thanks to Lan.

The Library is enlarged with additional materials. Librarian Kris Torske with Fred Pellegrin have organized materials for easy access. We hope you have had occasion to explore available options which will make lesson-planning interesting and fun.

Lorraine Gosbey

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A Report from the LITERACY FOR ALL Conference
The First Joint National Conference of Laubach Literacy and Literacy Volunteers of America was held in San Diego in May. For two and a half days, there were workshops on adult literacy and ESL.

There are so many people who work as volunteers with a limited amount of resources. Everyone is looking for new ideas and places to go to get supplemental material to make the sessions with their students more interesting and useful. This conference provided lots of information for trainers, tutors & students and opportunities to share ideas.

One workshop introduced reading supplements Easy Stories Plus for low beginning ESL students and Stories Plus for high beginning ESL students. Each book has 15 lighthearted stories. Students will relate to characters that face the typical ups & downs of everyday life. We will let you know when we add these to our library. Another workshop, put on by California Literacy, Inc. and Laubach Literacy Action focused on a national online collection of ESL resources. The internet is a useful resource for supplemental materials, lesson planning ideas and teaching techniques. Dr. Bob Laubach, the son of Frank Laubach, also gave a talk on his father & the birth of "Each One Teach One". He is 83 years old, a true gentleman and a delightful speaker.

An exhibitor's hall showcased a lot of materials, like several book series for the different levels of literacy, health education for literacy programs and computer literacy for students. One morning there was even a booth for a free scoop of Ben & Jerry's ice cream since they were a sponsor of the event. So there was a little taste of everything.

The best part of attending a conference such as this is meeting people from all over the country and from all kinds of literacy programs. Everyone is so generous in sharing ideas that worked for them, resources they have found useful and their own personal stories. The people involved in literacy are a concerned, caring and devoted group and it showed in the positive attitudes of both the presenters and the attendees.

Kris Torske and Dianne Brin

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Radisson Hotel Sacramento

California: A United State for Literacy
37th Annual Conference
Radisson Hotel Sacramento
October 2 -5, 2002

If you read Kris and Dianne's article above and think you'd like to attend a literacy conference, it's a great way to supplement DVLC's tutor training and In-service programs. This year, we're offering an incentive for interested tutors. The conference fees are $85 a day, but DVLC will reimburse $35 of these fees to the first 20 people who register for one day of the conference and let us know. Also, we will be arranging a car pool to go to Sacramento on two of the days. To make it even more economical, we are planning to skip the expensive luncheon session, go to a local restaurant together, and compare notes.

Go to Cal Lit's website, www.caliteracy.org, for more information on the conference and a registration form. Then call Lorraine Gosbey to tell her you'd like to be in on DVLC's reimbursement program.

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Tutor Tips
There are a lot of websites that have useful information for ESL tutors. So have fun and take some time to look around for yourself. A few of the websites we have found are:

www.literacynet.org/esl
This is a partnership of California Literacy and Laubauch Literacy Action. It is focused on ESL and has online discussions and literacy resources for Teacher/Tutor, Student /Learner and Manager/Administrator.

www.cal.org/ncle
This is the National Center for ESL Literacy Education, which is funded by the Department of Education and is a project of the Center for Applied Linguistics. It has news items as well as ESL resources.

www.eslcafe.com
Dave's ESL Café is a fun site that promotes itself as the Internet meeting place for students and teachers from around the world.

www.englishpage.com
This site has free exercises and resources for intermediate and advanced English language learners. It helps with vocabulary, verb tenses, games, dictionaries and other ESL resources.

www.TV411.org
The Adult Literacy Media Alliance has a TV show on PBS, and this is their companion website. There are activities to improve reading, writing, vocabulary, math and learning. There's also sections for learning about health, parenting, people, and money.

Thanks to Dianne Brin and Kris Torske for bringing us this information from the Literacy for All Conference.

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Notes from the Tutor-Student Coordinator
Help! Our waiting list has ballooned to 88 in the last quarter! Fifty of those waiting are from Mexico, and fifteen other countries are also represented. Thirty-one of the waiting students are Head Start parents.

Make it a point to talk to one person every week about the tutoring that you do. Tell them it's not too difficult, tell them about your student, and tell them there's a training workshop coming up in October.Encourage anyone interested to call Jane Keating for more encouragement and information.

Current tutors and members are one of our best sources of new tutors, so talk to a friend about what you do! Also, if you are ready for a new student, call me!

Betty Goldstein

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Notes from the Tutor-Mentor Coordinator
The last two workshops have been so successful in recruiting new tutors that we have had to add 2 new Tutor Mentors, making a total of 16 Tutor Mentors.

A big welcome to Kris Torske and Eloy Escarcida. You are truly appreciated.

Elenor Mulkey

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Kids' Books Available
Thanks to Betty Zino, of Ygnacio Valley Elementary, for donating the children's books to our library! Tutors are welcome to read these books with their students, then let the students keep them so they have English language books at home.

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  Diablo Valley Literacy Council
4000 Clayton Road
Concord, CA 94521
(925) 685-3881