麻豆视频

CU Boulder literacy practicum a boon to students and community members alike, director says

Kira Hall isn鈥檛 a big fan of the term 鈥渟ervice learning.鈥�

鈥淭he notion of service seems to suggest that people are giving up their precious time to help others,鈥� says Hall, professor of linguistics and anthropology and director of the Literacy Practicum program at the 麻豆视频.

She thinks of the program, which is funded by the Office of Outreach and Engagement, as community-based learning.

After all, when Literacy Practicum students go into the community to work with students or adults on reading, writing and other communications skills, they are gaining valuable experience and education themselves.

鈥淵ou are enabling the goal of learning through practice instead of sitting in a room hearing a lecture,鈥� Hall says.

Hall has overseen the practicum, which started in the Department of Linguistics, since 2007. One longstanding program is Reading Buddies, in which CU students link up with kindergarten through fifth-grade students at the Boulder Public Library and, in a recent addition, bilingual University Hill Elementary School. The practicum also works with Boulder鈥檚 Family Learning Center, matching practicum students with adolescents from homes where English is often not the primary language.

鈥淥ur students are learning Spanish, too, seeing how the kids code-switch between two languages and how they navigate the whole English-Spanish world,鈥� Hall says.

Another avenue, the Student Worker Alliance Program (SWAP), which connects practicum students with CU Boulder employees who speak English as a second language, often opens students鈥� eyes to marginalization and hierarchies within their own community, Hall says.听

鈥淪ome students are inspired to get politically involved after SWAP,鈥� she says.

The practicum, which has received numerous awards from CU Outreach and CU Engage, often helps students to escape an insulated campus experience, Hall says.

鈥淪tudents can go through four or five years here without ever meeting someone from the Boulder community who is not associated with the university, and it鈥檚 really powerful for them to have that experience,鈥� she says.

Students involved with the program agree.

鈥淚 am thankful that I came across this program and often wonder why it鈥檚 not a bigger program 鈥� here on this campus,鈥� three-semester veteran Thomas Jung wrote in a blog post on the program website. 鈥淚t has a great purpose and there is no losing. Everybody wins in this situation and gets something you wouldn't be able to experience anywhere else.鈥�

While the program still focuses heavily on reading skills, in recent years it has continued to expand on the idea of literacy to include the basic skills needed to 鈥渘avigate everyday life and be a successful citizen,鈥� from writing checks to ordering online.听

鈥淭his is not a monolingual nation, though it pretends to be. It鈥檚 really challenging for students and adults who don鈥檛 speak English as a first language to live in a place like Boulder, which is not very diverse,鈥� she says.听

Working with such community members can help students understand the challenges faced by people whom they otherwise might never even meet, Hall says. She believes programs like the literacy practicum are powerful evidence against stereotypes that academic communities wall themselves off from the real world.

鈥淎 lot of the divisions today are fueled by the perception that the educational system and academia are completely divorced from everyday, real life in the United States,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a strong perception that I don鈥檛 necessarily agree with. But that鈥檚 also why you can鈥檛 be paternalistic when you tread this territory. When you go out into the community, you want to make it beneficial to all involved, not 鈥楬ere I am to help you.鈥欌�澨�

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