Tri-Valley ESL Work Group strives to connect English learners with best course and site options
When Lauren Mason started teaching at Pleasanton Adult & Career Education, she wanted to learn more about the community she was working with and how to better address students’ needs.
She found that opportunity with the Tri-Valley ESL Work Group. One of several work groups working with the Mid-Alameda County Consortium (MACC), the Tri-Valley group focuses on sharing information and resources between the Pleasanton school, Livermore Adult Education, Dublin Adult Education and community partners to better help ESL students find the best possible resources to help improve their language skills.
“We are open to any stakeholders if they want to join this group,” Mason says. “You’ll see administrators, but you also have teachers, librarians and people at the community colleges.”
“This work group provides a sense of connectivity and cohesion that really helps all of these stakeholders and adult educators let students know what’s out there. We all have that same underlying goal of wanting these adults to find confidence in their English language skills so they can live the life they want.”
Lauren Mason, ESL and GED Instructor, Pleasanton Adult & Career Education
The group comes together once monthly during the school year and sets goals to help MACC’s ESL students meet their own milestones. Part of reaching these goals is finding a way to communicate these ESL services to the public, something Mason says she’s been working toward since before she joined the group about a year ago.
“They had this goal that ultimately led them to create this really awesome flier that very clearly shows adults in the community where they should go if they want to learn English,” Mason says.
Stakeholders who partner with the ESL work group include Las Positas College, Alameda County Library, Pleasanton Library and Livermore Public Library, which offer important services like ESL conversation groups and tutoring at their facilities.
“I have one conversation class I teach and I’ve only got enough space for 30 students,” Mason says. “So having the libraries is so valuable because I want to give students alternatives.”
Lori Carducci is a librarian at the Pleasanton Library and member of its adult literacy program team. She notes that the information and resource sharing between the partners has made it that much easier to present the best options for English language learners.
“We’ve really focused a lot on developing a pathway that helps adult learners figure out what’s the best fit for them,” Carducci says. “If they start at the community college, but their English isn’t quite to the level, they can refer them to the adult school or to the library.”
Sara Walke, the principal of Livermore Adult Education, serves as the ESL work group’s co-chair, having been a member since its founding right before COVID. She says one of the group’s biggest accomplishments is creating an infrastructure for all shareholders to share data and information important to their mission.
“Data sharing capability has really helped us hone in on what we as an entity, as a work group, can do to best serve our communities, our learners and the goals of the consortium,” Walke says, “in as far as getting people to the right place at the right time.”
Setting up this infrastructure was no easy task, but the members and partners of the group say it’s worth it.
“This work group provides a sense of connectivity and cohesion that really helps all of these stakeholders and adult educators let students know what’s out there,” Mason says. “We all have the same underlying goal of wanting these adults to find confidence in their English language skills so they can live the life they want.”
The Mid-Alameda County Consortium (MACC) is one of 71 consortia of adult education providers across the state. The MACC includes Chabot College, Las Positas College, Eden ROP, Tri Valley ROP, and the adult schools in Castro Valley, Dublin, Hayward, Livermore, New Haven, Pleasanton, San Leandro, and San Lorenzo. For more information about the MACC and its member schools, go to www.macc4ae.org.
Written by Jacob Peterson
| Regions | Classes & Topics |
|---|---|
| Bay Area California | English as a Second Language |
