Health Literacy

Hi AmeriCorps Members,

I would like to highlight a few important items from the Family Health and Literacy guide written by Julie McKinney and Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi. This is important as you think about how to promote health literacy as a teacher or tutor with your learners. On page 8, the authors state your role as a teacher (tutor) is "to promote:

• Language and vocabulary skills to communicate effectively with health care providers.
• Students' confidence in their communication skills so they can advocate effectively for their family's health care needs.
• Methods of finding needed information, and critical thinking skills to evaluate the information they find. "

What is just as important is what is not your role. This is also shared on pages 8 and 9. "You don't have to be a counselor. You don't have to be a judge. You don't have to be a health expert."

Think about your appropriate role with your learners.

-Hazel

Numeracy & Context

Hi Literacy AmeriCorps Members,

There are a few things I would like to post about math to follow up from our numeracy training. Lynda Ginsburg presented wonderful tools for engaging learners in meaningful math. Last month we had the Saints winning the Superbowl, Mardi Gras, and your national conference. Now, I hope we can refocus and begin to share some of our lessons and strategies we have applied since the training.

One component of numeracy mentioned in NCSALL's occasional paper, The Components of Numeracy that I would like to highlight is context. It is important to remember there are various contexts in which adult learners employ math tasks. It may be family or personal, in the workplace, for further learning, or in the community. Some of these tasks may overlap while others will be very different. When we work with learners as tutors or teachers, we should work to make connections with these areas that learners may apply mathematical skills and concepts.

Sarah and I have talked about having AmeriCorps members sharing some of the lessons and activities you have created since the training. We will share these lessons and activities during the March 12th daylong training session. AmeriCorps members will also share lessons and activities from the health literacy training as well.

If you have any questions about information, please feel free to email me or post something on the blog.

Hazel