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The Third Way: A new way to teach and learn It's time for a radical change in teaching methods and curricula. Third Way methods facilitate powerful learning in non-traditional settings.


Adult Education and The Third Way

I have taught and trained adults on three continents, and from many different cultures. It is striking how similar their educational needs have been in spite of the obvious differences. Almost any place you go these days you will run across adults with minimal or poor formal education who need basic language and literacy skills. Increasingly, there is also a pool of adults with good educations in their own language, or with some English, who need to sharpen their skills. Interestingly, I have found that many adults at all education levels have solid basic math skills (especially if they were not educated in this country.) All need reading and writing skills in English to get ahead in the work world.

This is also a population that is usually struggling to get ahead financially, and to provide a good education for their children.

This brief profile is as true for young adults and women I knew in East Africa as it is for the isolated working farm families I work with here in Western Pennsylvania, not to mention the many first and second generation immigrant parents and single adults who are the most rapidly growing demographic in this country at this time. Thus, in some ways this population is surprisingly homogeneous in its educational needs, regardless of whether we are talking about Hispanic parents in New York City, working rural families Anglo, Hispanic, or Black, or even East African women trying to support their families and send their children to school. They all need some constellation of these three skills:

• The ability to understand, speak, and help themselves improve in English, whether it is their first, second, or even third language.

• The ability to read English with fluency and comprehension, to write coherently with a minimum of errors, and to express themselves well in semi formal situations (interviews, at work, in the classroom). This is true of both native and non-native speakers.

• The ability to help their own children succeed in school. This is an area where many parents at all educational levels struggle.

The programs described below were developed over the last 35 years in response to these needs. Each can each be used individually to fill a certain niche. Together the three provide a much needed coherent systematic approach to adult education.* The three programs are:

Self Help ESL:
So called because it targets the first language learning steps of relaxing and then developing good listening skills; next comes speaking in every day life, and, finally, tools for self teaching. This material has been used in both tutorial and classroom settings. In addition, the methods and curricula are designed to help beginning and inexperienced teachers work effectively with multi level classes.

Language From the Inside Out:
This is a program of literacy skills for adults – scanning and summarizing, reading for meaning, organizing information, writing simply and clearly, and speaking in semi formal situations (interviews, on the job, in the classroom). This is can be the next step after Self Help ESL and is also very useful to native English speakers who want to go back to school or move ahead in their jobs.

The Art of Tutoring:
This is the heart of Third Way programs, a training for parents in new and different ways of teaching so they can work effectively with their own children. Interestingly, parents don’t have to speak English to be effective tutors, and to be able to help their children through the critical elementary years. The workbook for this program is in Spanish and English. It includes a discussion of how to fill a home with books, and turn children into passionate readers, and can also be combined with “Baby Logic”, a course for parents in how to prepare their pre schoolers for school.

* These programs provide a foundation for some of the more traditional adult education programs, GED, Job Prep, SAT and College Preparation, even more traditional literacy based ESL courses.