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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.
SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach
The authors explain, "The purpose of this paper is to develop a working concept of trauma and a trauma-informed approach and to develop a shared understanding of these concepts that would be acceptable and appropriate across an array of service systems and stakeholder groups.... The desired goal is to build a framework that helps systems 'talk' to each other, to understand better the connections between trauma and behavioral health issues, and to guide systems to become trauma-informed."
I Didn’t Know It Had a Name: Secondary Stress and Educators
From the article: "Whether you’re a teacher, paraprofessional, counselor, or school resource officer, every staff member cares deeply about students. And that means being exposed to the traumas students bring into school every day, including poverty, grief, family problems, racism, drug abuse. Even if they have not endured trauma themselves, educators can begin exhibiting symptoms similar to those of their students – withdrawal, anxiety, depression, and chronic fatigue."
When Students Are Traumatized, Teachers Are Too
Trauma in students’ lives takes an emotional and physical toll on teachers as well. In this article, experts weigh in on the best ways to cope.
Understanding Refugee Trauma: For School Personnel
Trauma can affect a refugee child on an individual, classroom, school, and family level. The considerations and recommendations in this handout can easily be applied to an ABE perspective.
New Resources
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.
Total Physical Response (TPR): A Curriculum for Adults
Learn about the "how" and "why" of using TPR in the classroom and explore a lesson routine that can be used for a wide variety of TPR topics. A great resource for teachers who are new to incorporating TPR into their lessons.
Health Literacy Resources
This collection of multi-language health videos, classroom lessons, and support resources was created to support language learners who are new to English and who may have limited literacy skills to reduce barriers to access healthcare and improve health literacy.
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
April 16, 2021
5:00 pm–5:00 pm
Online
MCTM Spring 2021 Virtual Conference
Online
The theme of this year’s Minnesota Council of Teachers of Mathematics (MCTM) spring conference is Moving Forward. Come learn from engaging presenters and network with teachers from K-12, 2-year colleges, and other ABE programs. More information can be found at the website listed in the Details section below. NOTE: The… Learn More
Online
April 20, 2021
12:30 pm–1:15 pm
Online
MN Teachers: Lunch and Learn: Student Progress in BE – What’s New?
Online
Registration Deadline: TUE. 4/20/21 So much has changed! Join us for this session where you will learn what’s new with locating and using the Student Progress component in BE. NOTE: A BurlingtonEnglish account is required to register. For account setup, contact JennaRose Dahl at: jennarose.d@burlingtonenglish.com… Learn More
Online
April 20, 2021
1:00 pm–2:30 pm
Online
Talk Amongst Yourselves: Building Up to Student-Facilitated Conversations
Online
Registration Deadline: TUE. 4/20/21 Learn about three essential skills students need in order to join a conversation and keep it going. This webinar will demonstrate how to introduce those strategies and get students talking in small groups online. Come ready to participate in your own small groups… Learn More
Online