7. Sustaining an Adult Literacy Group with Will Edwards and Company

What might an inviting, inclusive, and altogether more human approach to an adult literacy curriculum look and feel like?

That’s a challenge that Dr. Will Edwards, one of our guests today, has been tackling over many years while teaching academic upgrading for adult learners at a community college in Toronto. As Will tells us, the academic upgrading program, like other adult literacy programs, invites people from across professional and geographical borders, with a range of experiences, histories, and interests, and attempts to funnel that diversity into standard and standardized performance tasks. Will bristled at this model’s “Come in, get educated, get the job, and get out” approach, so he began hosting a weekly reading and writing group where he and his students could slow down, get to know one another, and read and write about the experiences that make them human. That group has now been meeting for over a decade. 

Today we’ll hear from some of that group’s founding members, including Will’s former students Ghofran, Karen, Pamela, and Shelley. Together they show us how a vulnerable, validating, and vitalizing community of learners can emerge from spaces that feel anything but. That means that this episode, like the group itself, is made up of many voices. Not only will we get to hear some of the prose and poetry that these folks have been writing together, but we’ll find out how and why they continue finding their way back to this community, even as their paths splinter and take different directions.

Teaching Writers Speak is a podcast developed by members of the Toronto Writing Project. The Toronto Writing Project—or TWP for short—is made up of teachers and researchers who view writing as a vehicle for change, both in our institutions and in the world at large.

 

This episode was produced by Celeste Kirsh, Velta Douglas, and Ty Walkland. Celeste is our editor and Rob Simon, TWP’s director, is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Doug Freisen. 

You can learn more about the Toronto Writing Project, and sign up for our upcoming writing workshops and speakers series, by visiting www.torontowritingproject.com.