Book Review Back Participation Improves Practice

Farewell to Barbara Hearn

After over 10 years of service at the Resource Center, Barbara Hearn retired in December of last year to take a full-time position as grandmother to her growing family. A mother of three and grandmother of five, Barbara was also a mother in the office. She looked after her fellow coworkers, having fun with us and sharing her wonderful cooking. Her humor and patience were a constant blessing around the office. “I always appreciated her positive attitude. She rolled with the punches, figured out how to get things done, and kept on,” said Barbara Gibson. Donna Grieco, whose son is married to Barbara’s daughter, said, “Barbara and I worked together, and I felt she learned and accomplished so much since the day she arrived. Barbara came to the Resource Center having never turned on a computer and certainly not expecting all of her work to center around the ever-growing database or the never-ending workshop evaluations. She was a great coworker and friend to me. I will miss working with her, but I won’t miss seeing her – we share a wonderful granddaughter, Mckenna.” Everyone at the Resource Center would like to wish Barbara a fond farewell. .:

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the TwentyFirst Century

Written by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Reviewed by DEBORAH WESTIN In the fifteenth century, Columbus set sail to discover the riches of India: precious metals, spices, jewels, and silk. In the twenty-first century, Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, embarked on a journey similar to Columbus’. Friedman traveled to Bangalore, India, to discover the riches of today: brain power, knowledge workers, and call centers. He wanted to understand why Indians had become such an important pool for the outsourcing of service and information technology work from America and other industrialized countries. Friedman

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the TwentyFirst Century

Thomas L. Friedman was prompted to write this book because today more people all over the planet can collaborate and compete on equal footing, in real time, on all kinds of work, than at any other time in the history of the world. Essentially, The World is Flat demystifies globalization. When I first began reading this book, I really had no idea what Friedman meant by a flat world. Not only did his use of examples and analogies open my eyes to the issues of globalization, but it opened my heart as well. It really made me think about the future and my responsibilities for setting an example for living and functioning in a flat world. Friedman divides the book into six sections. In the first, “How the World Became Flat,” he describes ten “flatteners,” as a “convergence” of political events, innovations, and companies that are having dramatic effects on the way the world works. From the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989, to what Friedman calls the “Steroids” – the ability of individuals and companies to connect, wirelessly, to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time – these changes have, effectively, flattened our world. The next four sections describe the United States, developing countries, and companies’ responses to globalization. In the section on the United States and globalization, Friedman discusses ways India and China are racing us to the top of the economic mountain. In order for Americans to function in a flat world, we must be “untouchables” or “people whose jobs cannot be outsourced” (p. 238). Friedman goes on to describe these kinds of jobs and people. In the third section, entitled The Virgin of Guadalupe, Friedman analyzes developing countries and the flat world. The main focus of this chapter concerns policies that developing countries need to adopt in order to create the right environment for their companies and entrepreneurs to thrive in a flat world. Through a metaphor of regions of the world as neighborhoods, Friedman asserts that each one has its strengths and weaknesses, and all are in need of scrutiny concerning the infrastructure, regulatory institutions, education, and culture. Finally, the book ends with a piece on imagination. One of the key statements Friedman makes in the last chapter, entitled 11/9 versus 9/11, concerns the two ways we flatten the world. We use our imaginations either to bring everyone up to the same level, or down to the same level. One way is constructive, the other destructive. Friedman states that we can set the example by being the best global citizens that we can be. Now that I’ve read this book, I definitely have a heightened awareness concerning what I can do to live in a flat world and to assist others as well. .: Deborah A. Westin is a Research Assistant at the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center.

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center 817 West Franklin Street PO Box 842037 Richmond, VA 23284-2037

Participation Improves Practice: A Teacher’s Perspective on Standards

by JAKE MCMURRAY

I started my career as an educator five years ago, principally as an English instructor, but also as a high school chemistry teacher. Currently I am an ESOL teacher with both the Scott County Adult Education program and the Scott County Public School System. Over the past two years, I have had the unique opportunity to serve on Virginia’s Adult Education Standards Writing Panel for both the GED and ESOL standards. In both cases we used the Virginia SOLs, along with other states’ adult education standards, as models. Doing so sped up the process. These experiences were of great benefit to me as a teacher. IwasselectedasamemberoftheGED science standards panel in 2004. The panel focused primarily on the concepts that would enable an adult education learner to pass the science portion of the GED exam, but we also considered knowledge that a learner must have and skills that a learner must master to enter post-secondary education. As you might imagine, the concepts needed to pass the GED had priority over college preparedness, but that does not mean that college preparedness was not important in our work. Last year I began participating as a member of the listening panel as part of the adult education ESOL standards development. This panel focused on the different levels of listening skills that an English learner must master to become an effective English communicator. Through my experience on this panel, I gained insights into the importance of listening in language learning that I had not previously considered. Listening is the building block of spoken language and the primary means of receiving instruction and information in our world. I am a much better ESOL instructor because of my work with the standards panel. I now employ techniques to develop my students’ listening skills so as to improve their listening comprehension, which, in turn, develops spoken vocabulary and grammar skills. Better listening skills also facilitate learning in the content areas because so much content is presented in a spoken format. As a teacher, working on these standards was a valuable learning experience. Researching and developing standards gives teachers special insight into how to better present the concepts and achieve the objectives of Virginia’s adult education programs. It is much easier to understand why certain concepts are included as a standard and others left out when you are forced to prioritize them. It would be a worthwhile project to have standardswriting workshops that allow teachers to develop their own standards and compare them to the existing standards. .:

Jake McMurray is an ESOL teacher with both the Scott County Adult Education program and the Scott County Public School System.