Adult basic education learners arrive to their courses to Glinda, the good witch saying, "It's always best to start at the beginning - and all you do is follow the yellow brick road." Yet, this glistening and beautiful road of yellow, paved with good intentions, student-centered curriculum, integration of technology, and standardization to make sure everyone gets to the same destination, isn't the same road that the students see.
The road the students see, especially at the beginning, is one similar to what Dorothy and her entourage face on foot. It is a road that is scary and unimaginably long. A journey fraught with unexpected risks and high emotions.
Students begin at a place where they "just want..." to ...go home, ..get a heart, ...get a brain, ...get courage, and achieve their academic goals. Anyone who has worked with basic education students knows that these learners are the composite of the lion, the tin-man and the scarecrow.
Adult basic education learners arrive with courage - a lot of it - to come back to school in order to make things better for themselves and their family. Sacrifice and committing to school when you really weren't successful in the first place is, in a lot of cases, a lot like closing your eyes and stepping into the abyss. The monsters that these learners left behind will often resurface. It might be addictions, abuse, teen angst and rebellion, teen parenthood, learning disabilities, inter-generational affects of residential schools, and/or mental health issues and disorders. Our learners are courageous.
Our learners arrive with a huge heart full of fear, anticipation, hope. Getting to the heart of the matter, being heartfelt, are student centered approaches that led students to trust in their own strengths. Very low self-efficacy has convinced them that they don't know how to learn. Nor do they know how they learn, or recognize how much they already know. They are convinced, like the scarecrow, that "I would not be just a nuffin' my head all full of stuffin'/My heart all full of pain" if they only had the brain for academics.
Hope is really represented by that yellow brick road. We walk with learners through the perils, potential shortcuts, and winding avenues of their academic path, trying to mirror sentiments of
Read more: Wizard Of Oz - If I Only Had A Brain/Heart/Nerve Lyrics | MetroLyrics
