Resources
Results
Refugees in America
This is the official United Nations High Commission for Refugees website, which can serve as a primer for ABE educators who work with refugees to understand who refugees are, where they come from, and relevant statistics and facts about refugees.
Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students
This is a guide for educators on how to work towards creating a more LGBTQ-inclusive school environment. This guide includes four key areas: policy checkup, classroom culture, instruction, and family and community engagement.
Reppin’ the Rainbow: LGBTQIA+ Topics in ABE
ABE professionals can use this presentation to better understand and discuss topics around gender and sexuality in the classroom. Included are materials, discussion questions, resources and research. Scroll down to the second topic listed on the website to find these resources.
CCRS for Adult Education
The College & Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRS) is the document that lays out the standards for English Language Arts/Literacy, Math, and Foundational Reading Skills. CCRS is one of the three components - along with the Transitions Integration Framework (TIF) and the Northstar Digital Literacy Standards - of the Minnesota ABE content standards.
Levels of Learning Mathematics
Developed by Appalachian State University, this resource outlines the levels of learning math proposed by Mahesh C. Sharma: intuitive, concrete/experiential, pictorial/representational, abstract, applications, and communication. The chart explains each level and gives an example of what that level would look like in the classroom.
Creating Questions to Engage Critically with Texts
The strategy described in this article provides tools to create questions that help students engage critically with central texts and examine them for issues of power and social inequity. The activities suggested here also encourage readers to bring their knowledge and experiences to the reading of a text.
Academic Language and ELLs: What Teachers Need to Know
This article helps educators understand the role that academic language plays in their classrooms and in ELL student success. The article also includes information on social vs. academic language, as well as numerous examples of the different kinds of academic language needed for all students to fully participate in classroom activities and assignments.
A Strategy of Giving Corrective Feedback to ELLs
This article explains how using sentence frames and explicit feedback can provide the right balance of structure and scaffolding for English language learners.
8 Strategies for Building Relationships with ELLs in Any Learning Environment
Learn how educators can build authentic relationships with ELLs in virtual and hybrid settings, as well as how they can connect students' experiences to meaningful instruction. This article was written for a K-12 audience, but ABE teachers will find the recommendations to be helpful and easily implemented with adult learners.
Teaching To Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
This book offers educators tools to increase democratic participation in the classroom and to think about education as a practice of freedom. From the back cover: "Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for the author, the teacher's most important goal."
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Brazilian educational activist Paulo Freire originally published the seminal book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1968. This book is essential reading for any educator interested in adult literacy and equity. Freire explains how traditional schooling perpetuates colonization and domination over oppressed classes of people and the way to liberation is through literacy and evoking critical consciousness in education.
Secondary Traumatic Stress and Self-Care Packet
Educators, counselors, and other support staff who work with students exposed to trauma are at risk of being indirectly traumatized as a result of hearing about their students’ experiences and witnessing the negative effects. In the first section of this packet, learn about secondary traumatic stress and related conditions; in the second section, use the tools and strategies provided to help you create individual and schoolwide plans to promote staff self-care and resilience.
Reducing Stress and Promoting Mental Health in the ABE/ESOL Classroom
The ideas in this resource were developed through the Managing Stress to Improve Learning project at World Education in Boston, MA. The project was informed throughout by trauma-informed practice and recent research on how the brain is affected by chronic, toxic stress. The authors have tried here to include very practical, hands-on approaches to help teachers practice— proactively and responsively—creating safe and stable learning environments where students can manage their stressors and persist in their learning goals.
Trauma and Learning: Impacts and Strategies for Adult Classroom Success
Exposure to potentially traumatic events, which can have a significant impact on brain mechanisms for language learning, is high in adult ELL classrooms. This article outlines strategies that target attention and memory networks which may make it easier for adults to learn.
Race, Identity, and English Language Teaching
A Joint TESOL Quarterly and TESOL Journal Publication This is an online database of articles on race and teaching curated by editors from TESOL Journal and TESOL Quarterly, to support TESOL’s statement against racial injustice and inequality.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Author Peggy McIntosh explains, "I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group." Proceeding from her studies on male privilege, her list outlining the "daily effects of white privilege" is a starting point to help people understand how this dynamic shows up in our lives regardless of intent and without our conscious participation - so that we can begin creating a more equitable society.
Worth the Risk: Towards Decentering Whiteness in English Language Teaching
In this article the author reveals how English Language Teaching (ELT) centers whiteness and its negative impact on teachers and students of color. The author also provides suggestions for how ELT educators can de-center whiteness in the ELT field.
On the “Flip” Side: A Teacher Educator of Color Unveiling the Dangerous Minds of White Teacher Candidates
Dr. Cheryl Matias teaches urban education courses at the University of Kentucky to prospective teachers, many of whom are White women. She identifies how the "white savior" narrative serves as a motivator for many of her students, and she examines its implications in the classroom. Dr. Matias also discusses the impact that her students’ whiteness ideology has on her as an educator of color, and how she counteracts the psychological harm done to her through the “pedagogy of trauma.”
Understanding Implicit Bias
The Kirwan Research Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity works to raise awareness to the complexity and impact of implicit bias and the ways it acts as a barrier to access. This website provides a concrete definition of implicit bias and the ways it operates to broaden social inequality. You can sign up to receive their newsletter to get updates on their interdisciplinary research.
Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture
This site lists characteristics of white supremacy culture that regularly appear in organizations - such as either/or thinking and fear of open conflict - as well as "antidotes" to combat them. These characteristics are shown as damaging to both people of color and white people because they are "used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group" and they promote white supremacy thinking.
New Resources
Physical Science Task
This task provides an opportunity for an adult diploma student to demonstrate diploma competencies in Physical Science. The resource includes teacher-facing instructions, student-facing instructions, and materials needed to complete the entire task. Components of this task are also appropriate for use with GED learners.
Nature of Science & Engineering Task
This task provides an opportunity for an adult diploma student to demonstrate diploma competencies in Nature of Science & Engineering. The resource includes teacher-facing instructions, student-facing instructions, and materials needed to complete the entire task. Components of this task are also appropriate for use with GED learners.
Life Science Task
This task provides an opportunity for an adult diploma student to demonstrate diploma competencies in Life Science. The resource includes teacher-facing instructions, student-facing instructions, and materials needed to complete the entire task. Components of this task are also appropriate for use with GED learners.
Presenter Information
Get information about stipends, reimbursements, and other instructions for presenters.
MN ABE YouTube Channel
The MN ABE YouTube Channel is a free online PD resource that you can use to explore teaching techniques and classroom ideas in action! Find out more in this MN ABE Connect newsletter article.
Upcoming ABE Events
September 17, 2021
1:00 pm–2:15 pm
Online
Help Students Become College Ready with EdReady
Online
Registration Deadline: TUE. 9/14/21 EdReady™ lets your students assess readiness for college math and English, see target options, and get personalized study paths to fill in knowledge gaps. This training will give an overview of the EdReady platform and discuss recent changes as well as review reporting steps. Learn More
Online
September 21, 2021
12:30 pm–1:15 pm
Online
MN Lunch & Learn: Using Progress to Engage Students
Online
Registration Deadline: TUE. 9/21/21 In this session, we will have an overview of how to use Progress and also go over the reports feature. We will go through helpful tips on how to increase student usage. NOTE: Attendees must have current login credentials for their BE account. Learn More
Online
September 22, 2021
1:00 pm–2:30 pm
Online
Web Chat with MNABE
Online
Registration Deadline: WED. 9/22/21 Web Chat with MNABE is a webinar discussion led by state ABE staff from the Minnesota Department of Education. Web Chat webinars provide updates from the state ABE office on new and emerging issues and an opportunity for local ABE staff to ask questions… Learn More
Online