Adult and Family Literacy Cluster
of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation

The promising practices are:

• Career Academy that helps students to develop marketable employability skills while continuing their basic education.
• Collaborative Approach to Adult and Family Literacy in a Rural Area where several partner agencies work together and share resources to make available a wide range of coordinated services under one roof with transportation for adults and their children;
• ESOL at the Ready: Making Study Acessible documents a relatively low-cost approach that draws on free online teaching resources to providing distance learning opportunities for ESOL students who may be waiting to get into classes or have had to stop out.
• Learning Resource Center that enables students to learn at their own pace until they can commit to a full-fledged educational program;
• New Books, New Readers, a theme-based book discussion series led by a scholar-facilitators that engages new adult readers in reading and thought-provoking discussion and stimulates a love of reading;
• Promoting Immigrants as Assets, established by ILC as a permanent Public Education Program to educate the public about the positive impact immigrants have on the country, the economy, and communities;
• Rhode Island Family Literacy Initiative, a collaboration of five public libraries united by the goal of being responsive to the changing literacy and language needs of the communities they serve;
• Student Assessment and Program Evaluation system that enables the program to present to all its stakeholders countable outcomes as well as narrative student and program success stories;
• Supporting Literacy Within Families, as its general goal supports families in working with their children at home, both to foster literacy within the family and to strengthen children's literacy development at school;
• Teaching Beginning ESOL Through Story Books, a way to help adults increase their vocabulary and comprehension while also engaging them in discussions about themes such as fairness and friendship;
• Values-Based Adult Education: Peace Circles is a process for conflict resolution, decision making, community building, healing and support.