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Comprehensive Essay

Kirsten Petroska

Adult and Higher Education

University of Southern Maine

May 4, 2018

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I spent most of yesterday’s Reading Workshop class in Kathleen’s cubicle. Tears rolled

down my face, heavy drops saturating the top of my blouse, there were so many of them.

“I just don’t understand how you do that to your child,” I sobbed. Kathleen is our new

math teacher. She’s become a bit of the staff den mother, and as it happens, she’s my actual

mother’s best friend and has known me since I was ten. She comforted me as only she could and

letting me cry.

“I don’t understand it either. It’s awful.”

We were commiserating over a student, who I’ll call C. He’s 18 and essentially homeless.

He’s also brilliant, certainly smarter and far more articulate than I’ll ever be. His mother and

step-father have chosen take themselves out of his life, so when he arrived to class yesterday he

immediately took me aside and asked for advice on opening a bank account and how to find an

apartment to rent. All I wanted to do was offer him the couch in our living room, but knew I

couldn’t and that he wouldn’t accept the help anyway.

Eventually I was able to collect myself and returned to the classroom so I could do my

actual job, which is to facilitate a weekly, three hour class that was intended to be spent reading

books, discussing them, and writing reactions. Instead, with C.’s arrival, it’s turned into a poetry

reading, debate having, hysterical laughing, and life skills learning class. It’s a change I don’t

mind.

And so, I went on with the class, C. entirely unaware, as he should be, of the extent of my

concern. We made a plan together and next week I’ll check in. If needed, I’ll give him one of our

ready made lists of all the resources our community can offer someone who may be in need of

food and shelter.

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And this is my work. We learn and discuss and share and grow. We triumph and cele-

brate together. And sometimes, not too often fortunately, we face crises together, and I witness

trauma and it’s fallout. This is what I’ve been taught to face in every course I’ve taken, in every

thing I’ve read, in every discussion I’ve participated in. All of it has better prepared me to be

what C., and every student like him, needs.

In revisiting my notes and papers and projects from the last two and a half years, I’ve

come to the realization that I have, in many ways, fulfilled many of the dreams I had when I

started this program. I burst into tears when I read a Carl Rogers’ quote I’d plugged into a jour-

nal entry from History and Philosophy of Adult Education, because I honestly feel that it reflects

much of what I do now: “Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the

learning process. When he chooses his own directions, helps to discover his own learning re-

sources, formulates his own problems, decides his own course of action, lives with the conse-

quences of each of these choices, then significant learning is maximized” (Rogers, pg. 162). I

am making this happen. I do not do it perfectly and there are many improvements that need to

be made to my teaching and to our program, but I know that the will and ability is there. I’ve

gained much of what I need over the last few years with what I’ve learned here.

Academically, I did well in this program, too. It’s mostly because I’m a strong intra-per-

sonal learner and read and write well and most of the courses I took played to those strengths.

“A” is a letter I’ve grown used to seeing, and I would be lying if I said I don’t have some pride in

that. But here I am going to talk about the letter “F”. Facilitation, Freedom, Folks, and, yes, Fail-

ure. Each one of these things have been a part of my time in this program and play a role in who

I am as an adult educator. I feel like “F” and all it’s jarring significance in the world of aca-

demics is where I need my head to be at in this last stretch. “A” means complete; no more needs

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to be learned here; you’ve got it. “F” means you have so much more you need to learn, so much

more to do, and that’s exactly where I’m at.

Facilitation

As a word, to speak or to read, I’m not terribly found of “facilitation” or “facilitator”. It

makes me think of the word “facilities” which then makes me think of going to the bathroom.

Not exactly the kind of imagery that incites thoughts of learners taking charge of their own edu-

cation with the facilitator along for guidance.

However I might feel about the word, I still have a great love for what it means. To facili-

tate is to help, to grease the wheels, to be a catalyst, to make possible. The very moment I chose

to become an educator, at the age of 19, until now, over ten years later, these things have been

what I wanted to be. I did not realize until exploring what a facilitator does for learners that this

is what I should be. Much of my time in this program has been geared toward making me much

better at all these things.

A year and a half ago I was finishing up Facilitating Adult Learning (HRD 630). I re-

member signing up for the course thinking how badly I needed a methods class and a refresher

on how to really teach (whatever that means; I don’t think I knew). This class, being titled as it

was, did not have the goal of presenting me with instruction methods. Instead, it offered me a

multitude of opportunities to consider how I interacted with learners. Looking back at my reflec-

tion on a workshop I ran, I see my burgeoning realization that I’d had this adult teaching thing

wrong the whole time.

“The one thing that sort of gets to me though, and certainly plays into a lot of the

‘chapters’ of The Tao of Teaching, was my difficulty in listening. I feel as though the Tao, when

applied to educators, asks us to do the least amount of talking as compared to our students.

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“… My greatest weakness, in this area and probably in life, is my difficulty in balancing

my excitement with a sense of calm, or being able to switch back and forth between passionate

discussion and passionate quiet and listening.

“So, essentially, while I needed to slow down and breathe (as many [classmates] sug-

gested aloud and in writing), more than that, I feel as though I needed to shut up and listen…”

(from my HRD 630 self-reflection).

Breath. Slowing down. Passionate quiet and listening. These are some of the greatest

things I learned and sit with me today whenever I work with my learners. I make a conscious de-

cision to breathe. I listen to a student and I will tell myself, silently, to hush, to hear to their

words, to stop the internal dialogue that so desperately wants to pipe up and interject. I’ve begun

asking myself, “What will your words add to this conversation?” And the honest answer is often,

“Nothing.” I am learning to be okay with that. It does not mean I have nothing to offer or that I

am less intelligent for not speaking, but that my passionate listening is what my learner needs

more than my passionate rambling (however well intended).

So then what is a better word than facilitate or facilitator? I’m grasping for one, but it’s

hard to find something quite as concise. However, before, I said to facilitate is to make possible,

and while it is no less clunky than facilitator, I rather like Maker of Possibilities, because in lis-

tening and sharing selectively with my learners, this is what I do and that is what they need.

Freedom

“Dewey described ‘vocation’ as any activity that is meaningful to a person as well as so-

cially productive: ‘(vocation is) nothing but such a direction of life activities as renders them per-

ceptibly significant to a person, because of the consequences they accomplish, and also the use-

fulness to his associates’ (pg. 31).

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“This rang very true for me, it’s also something I’ve said to students, though not so elo-

quently. When having a discussion recently with students about what a job is versus a career, one

young man said, ‘A career is a job you want to get up for every day. It’s something you love do-

ing for a long time.’ I could not agree more, and I think Dewey would agree, too, though he

might tack on something about it being beneficial to the greater population.

“With these two thoughts (Dewey’s and my student’s) floating around in my head, I’ve

been considering how to practically introduce the liberal arts into adult education. It’s not to say

it doesn’t exist in our program, but when brought in, the students often feel like it’s frivolous,

and I feel silly for doing it. I don’t ever want my students to feel as though they are doing some-

thing ‘just ‘cause’, because their time is precious.

“This has led me to think about project-based learning (PBL)…. I think, implemented

well, this could be an amazing thing for many of my students, because it could be the embodi-

ment of what Dewey suggests when he ‘argued that learning should be the counterpart to doing;

all education should be vocational in its broadest sense, with the student learning academic sub-

ject matter through practical experience.’ (pg. 28) PBL could be just the thing to help me bridge

that gap between educational triage and life-long learning health.”

I’m somewhat shook as I read this last bit, an entry from a journal summary I submitted

in History and Philosophy of Adult Education (HRD 600). I’ll be lying if I say I remember writ-

ing this, though as I read the words from my student I can instantly picture who said them

(Caleb, mid-twenties, sweet disposition, terrible handwriting). Regardless of whether or not I re-

member writing this, the mark of these words, the mix of Dewey and a student and my own, is

now permanent in our adult education program. They were the catalyst for a student and teacher

course favorite: Diploma Lab.

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The class works like this: Rather than someone coming in three hours a week for a pre-

scribed lesson designed by the teacher, learners self-design the entire semester. Learners come to

us knowing what subject areas they need to earn credits in and with our help (if they need it) they

find topics they are interested in learning more about that will fill those at least one of those

credit requirements (though often we can fill two). Some examples of completed projects are: a

comprehensive report on alcoholism and addiction as well as an accompanying memoir piece; a

visual presentation on the history of the national anthem; a video game; a report on and a large

scale model of a Maine lighthouse; a lesson plan and visual display for an early childhood spe-

cial education class; a report on the Vietnam War that included an interview with a veteran.

We’re only in our second full school year of offering this course and, as always, there are

still kinks that need to be worked out. For example, we would like to add a larger community

component and to encourage students to step outside the box of report writing more often. The

course, however, is far more inline with project-based learning than anything else we offer. Ad-

ditionally, we’ve begun offering more classes that have a similar style. I teach two English cour-

ses that are run as workshops. Learners choose what they would like to read in one and then fol-

low up with a project that suits their learning to style to show what they’ve read. Similarly, in an-

other class, learners choose what they would like to write about, whether it’s fiction, essay, po-

etry, and so on, and then they write it, and I simply serve as advisor and editor.

I feel compelled to describe these courses and the work our students are doing because

they are a direct product of what I learned from Dewey at the beginning of my work in this mas-

ters program. Dewey, the liberal arts, and the knowledge that my students need skills that are rel-

evant to their life as much as they need exposure to good books, the arts, and unique philoso-

phies prompted me to propose our first Diploma Lab two years ago.

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But this section is titled “Freedom” and I did that for a reason. Diploma labs and work-

shops work well for adult learners because they provide freedom to choose, freedom to express

themselves in a way that makes sense, and the freedom to say yes to some kinds of learning and

no to others. This freedom creates autonomy and self-advocacy and self-efficacy. Lately, I’m

particularly drawn to the self-efficacy this creates. In research I recently conducted on resilience

in adult learners for my capstone seminar (HRD 649) and Action Research (HRD 667), self-effi-

cacy surfaced as a crucial piece in creating and maintaining resilience. If a learner does not feel

they are capable, then they are much more likely to give up. And how does one learn that they

are capable? By having the freedom to experiment in their education and know that those “in

charge”, the facilitators, trust them to make the right choice for themselves.

Folks

Here are two phrases I use a lot in reference to my students: “my folks” and “they have

some stuff” (“shit” is often substituted for “stuff”). Let’s unpack these phrases.

“My folks” are my learners. They are my people, my tribe, sometimes friends, and once

even family. They are people for whom I am always cheering on, who have taught me to look at

life through lenses to which I would have never before had access, who let me hold their babies,

who tell me about their darkest moments, who are eager to share with me their greatest joys.

They are my folks.

But holy shit, do they have some stuff. Once, a student who’s wonderful work and great

responsibility I had vouched for to his grandfather, skipped out on class and got high. He then

disappeared for three days; not even the grandfather knew where he was. Turned out he was at

Oxford County Jail, and when he got out he returned to class, excited to share that you got all

your meals from Market Square, a local diner, when jailed at Oxford County.

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Not every learner who walks into my classroom has spent three days at Oxford County

Jail (some have spent more, ha), but just about every one has walked into my classroom with a

need and I have tried to fill it. Sometimes that need is basic and straightforward, like the need for

someone to guide them through the process of obtaining a high school diploma. Other times, like

it was for the student I described above, it’s a need like understanding or radical empathy.

In Patricia Cranton’s book Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning

(1994), she lists six attitudes (as outlined by Paulo Freire) that I try to embody as an educator and

promote amongst my folks (pg. 124):

1. Love for the world and human beings

2. Humility

3. Faith in people and their power to create and recreate

4. Trust

5. Hope that the dialogue will lead to meaning

6. Critical thinking and the continuing transformation of reality

These attitudes fill needs and make working effectively with my learners possible. It can

often lead to transformation, just as Cranton suggests it might. What’s more, they’re tied to

Freire, a progressive educator who saw the deep importance of educating the underprivileged,

which is what a good portion of my work does. Freire’s work asks us to meet our students where

they are at — radically. It is more than discerning what interests our students and paying atten-

tion to their goals, though it is important to put their learning into a relevant context. It is work-

ing with our students with an eye towards social justice. What can they do for themselves and

their peers with skills they gain with us?

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This pushes us directly into Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School. I went back

through my notes and my Blackboard postings regarding the documentary, “You Got to Move”

and saw this bit I shared: “What was particularly striking to me about…the documentary was…

how it framed Horton and the school. Neither Horton nor the school where particularly high-

lighted, but they were a constant presence. Either one might be mentioned in an off-hand sort of

way, or a few moments of Horton gardening might be shown, a few of his words shared, but re-

ally, it is the others, the ‘students' of the school who are the drivers of this film. I think this

speaks to the reality of Horton and the school. They are a constant presence, a refuge, a resource,

but it's the participants in the school make things happen - Horton is ‘just' the facilitator and the

school ‘just’ a facility.”

Again, the learners are the force behind the learning, the facilitator (Maker of Possibili-

ties) functioning as part refuge, part advisor, part reference librarian. What I probably didn’t ap-

preciate about the name of the Highlander Folk School that I recognize now after some wider

personal reading is the possibilities behind the word “folk”. Folk knowledge is often disdained as

antiquated and useless, but for those who rely on it, whether it be for healing, childbirth, growing

or gathering food, education, etc., it cannot be replaced by education that is standard today. The

Highlander Folk school asked learners to look within themselves and to trust that they had the

answers. More and more, this is what I try to do with my own folks; what knowledge do they

hold that can be excavated in our classroom and put to a greater use?

Failure

The past two and half years have left me immersed in best practice for educators. My at-

tention has been drawn to the deficits in the current public school system. It’s made clear the

benefits of having adult education programs available to those who need us. Adult education is

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necessary not just for those who stop out of “regular” school and need a place to go, but as a pil-

lar of example of how education can be done. In an ideal world, I would love for what we do in

public adult education programs to be viewed as testing grounds and places to look to for innova-

tion for everyone else down stream. We are often educating the parents of our K-12 students;

shouldn’t the goals and values being communicated match? I fear they often don’t, and because

of that, I fear that we’re failing so many people.

If I were to pick one thing I’d like to see change over the next several years in public ed-

ucation, I’d like to see K-12 take the shift that adult education long since has, and maybe in some

forms, has always been doing (hello, Chatacqua, Lyceum, Junto, and so on). It’s a shift to loos-

ening the reins on the learners, trusting their instincts and curiosity more, and letting them do in-

stead of sitting. I know so many K-12 teachers who are fighting for this shift, who try to incorpo-

rate trust and curiosity into their classrooms as much as possible, but they are stifled by stan-

dards, by testing, and by a society (and sometimes administrators) confused by what exactly the

role of a teacher should be.

I say all this, but I don’t know how to change it, not even within our own program. I feel

as though, in some ways, we’re failing a large portion of our adult education students, too, so

how can I speak to helping change things in K-12? In many ways, we’re leaving our adult stu-

dents behind just as much as we’re leaving behind 5 year olds and 12 year olds and 16 year olds.

I’m talking about the HiSET.

I’ve said this many times aloud with my colleagues, but I don’t know how much I’ve ex-

pressed this during my coursework here. I think I try to not discuss my feelings around the

HiSET because I realize, right now, it’s necessary, because there are sometimes no other options

for our learners. The HiSET, GED, TASC and other test of their ilk are the absolutely antithesis

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of what I believe education is for, and yet it is one of the primary instruments I work with in or-

der to help my students gain their high school credential.

Some background: In order the “pass” the HiSET, a student must take a series of tests

and receive a score that is high enough. Some students come, take a series of pretests over the

course of a couple of classes, and then they’re done. I can’t make them stay; they’re ready to take

the official tests, which they will very likely pass. Others take the pretests, there’s an area they’re

struggling in, we work together to cover the test material they’re not familiar with (Yes, abso-

lutely we’re teaching to the test.) and then they pretest again, pass, and move on with their lives

as well. And then there are those who become trapped in some impossible limbo. They can pass

(often barely) some of the pretests, but not others. They could switch to earning credits through

seat time, but so often these folks have no high school credits to begin with and so then they are

looking at coming back to school full time for the next two years in order to graduate in a timely

fashion. Often that is an impossible thing to ask an adult who is also working as well as raising a

family.

I feel frustrated just writing this. I’m frustrated because there is so much wrong with what

I just wrote. First of all, the HiSET itself. It’s a test meant to be aligned with the Common

Core/College and Career Readiness standards set before us by people so far detached from edu-

cation they’ve forgotten what it is we’re really supposed to be doing for our learners. And let me

be absolutely clear: the HiSET is extremely difficult to pass. I’ve seen this test make grown men,

good ol’ Maine boys, cry. I’ve seen it tear down seemingly confident and intelligent women to

the point where they will not come back to school for months or longer. I’ve made a copy of the

math test and in a moment of deep catharsis, shredded it with a student because we were so done.

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Again, let me be absolutely clear: the HiSET has absolutely no educational value whatso-

ever. Anything my students gain from the process of studying and passing the HiSET comes

strictly from them wanting to know more about the test materials being memorized for regurgita-

tion. It is them asking questions, it is them taking home books, it is them igniting discussions

over test topics. When one considers something like Bloom’s Taxonomy and where something

like the HiSET lays, we’re looking at the lowest portion of the pyramid:

At best, when students are studying for and taking the HiSET or any other standardized

high school equivalency test, they are “applying” what they’ve learned and “understanding” and

“remembering” are close seconds. With the sole exception of the essay portion of the writing

test, which is the only section I even remotely enjoy teaching, never do we appear to go above

“apply”. There is no evaluation, no creation.

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Each time a student comes to me and is preparing for the HiSET, a part of me feels as

though I am just a cog in the system, churning out people who are intended only for the work-

force and not for anything else. I feel like I am failing to facilitate, failing to work with in my

highest values. But here is where things become truly complicated: For all the dislike I have of

the HiSET, for all the frustration it produces, I see why so many need it.

We live in a society that tends to only value work. If you cannot work, you are not valu-

able. My HiSET learners are most often my students who are there because they need a high

school credential in order to continue working or to get a new job. It is often extremely important

to them to pass and to pass quickly. What’s more, if they are receiving any kind of state benefits,

their time with me hardly counts toward the hours they must complete in order to qualify for

things like medical care and food and housing. Looking for work and “volunteering” are priori-

tized over education by our state government. This often leaves my learners exhausted when they

come to class at night, hardly in a position to absorb what’s necessary for them to pass the

HiSET.

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My HiSET learners generally don’t have the energy to fuel the desire to look beyond

what’s immediately necessary. It is difficult to impart on them that there is more to education

than school. They’ve been told by our government that they’re not worth feeding unless they can

work, and work tells them they can’t come unless they have a diploma, so here they are in my

classroom and they can’t understand why I seem to think reading novel now and then might help

them get a job to put the money together for a car that runs.

So, what do we do?

Professional Development Plan

I know that, for now, I am not going to eliminate the HiSET, especially when it remains a

necessary tool for many of my learners to fulfill basic needs, so my most immediate goal is to

find a way to best utilize my learners’ time while they are working toward the HiSET that will

not only allow them to prepare for the tests, but also learn in such a way that they are moving be-

yond remembering, understanding, and applying. I want to get to analyze, evaluate, and create

with them.

Graduation to 5 years out. For the next five years, my plan is to develop a comprehen-

sive program for the HiSET that includes not only studying for the test, but offering students op-

portunities to explore where their strengths and interests lay. The goal is to shift focus from get-

ting through the test to using the HiSET as a tool and stepping stone to unlocking greater self-un-

derstanding and curiosity.

I’m not entirely sure how this will look. It may include reflective writing, scheduled

meetings with myself and our student advisor, and/or options to take on additional reading. This

will take some thought and experimentation and consultation with current learners and my col-

leagues both within our program and outside. Regardless of how it manifests, the first two years

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of the next five will be spent developing the adapted HiSET curriculum, and the last three will be

spent troubleshooting and refining. My goal is to have a program settled and working well at the

end of five years, because, at that point, I plan to leave my program.

Five to ten years out. In about five years, my goal is to apply to doctoral programs and

begin work on a PhD in education. My hope is that this will give me the skills to work with the

next generation of educators. I want to work with teachers-in-training, because I know how for-

mative those years before officially entering the classroom can be. I gained so much from work-

ing with compassionate, challenging, and intelligent professors in my undergrad years. I want to

join their ranks and help to build on the foundation of educational philosophy that will propel

new teachers forward in their work.

Ten years and beyond. I haven’t thought too far beyond ten years after I receive my

masters degree. I know I would like to be done with my doctorate and working consistently with

future and current classroom teachers. I know I want to be working on new curriculum and class-

room structures. I know I want to bring in a stronger influence from folks like Cranton, Freire

and Horton, to make philosophies like social justice and transformative learning more prominent

in the classroom.

At some point down this road, I would like to pivot and move into policy making. I don’t

know what that would look like or how I’ll get there, but for a long time now I’ve suspected I

ought to be developing policy. I try to not say this without any sort of hubris; I certainly don’t

think the solution to all of education’s ills lays within me, not by a long shot. But I think that I

might someday know some things and given time, I might be able to use that knowledge to help

reshape our current system. I’m not by any means ready to do it now, at least not on a grand

scale, but someday I think I will be.

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Conclusions

It’s Sunday, a day that straddles endings and beginnings. I feel like I’m in a perpetual

Sunday at the moment as I finish up all my coursework. This chapter in my life is coming to a

close and it’s hard to know how I feel. I’ve been working hard on this part of my life for nearly

three years. My children have grown and changed so much; my son from a babbling toddler to an

almost kindergartener, my daughter growing into her strengths of keen intelligence and humor as

fifth grade approaches. My husband, who’s in the thick of his own educational journey, has

waited for me to be done like someone waits for their loved one to be discharged from the mili-

tary; excited for the freedom and time together, but realizing that things have changed over the

course of time and we’ll have to find a new rhythm.

While eager to experience whatever is ahead, I want to slow the next few months down.

Summer is coming, I have no classes to take, I’ll be teaching only one day a week, student loans

won’t quite be knocking on my door yet, and I want to just be. I’m going to read trashy novels

and float in the lake and watch the stars come out around a fire with my loves. I’m going to

stretch this summer out like the longest Sunday afternoon in the universe. And then, at the end of

August, after my husband and I celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, I’ll turn my eyes for-

ward to that first blessed Monday morning of the school year and go back to work.

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Works Cited

Cranton, P. (1994). Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning: A Guide for Edu-cators of Adult. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dewey, J. (n.d.). My Pedagogic Creed. The Social Foundations Reader. doi 10.3726/978-1-4539-1584-4/15

Freire, P. (n.d.). The Adult Literacy Process.

Massie Phenix, L., & Selver, V. (Directors). (n.d.). You got to move: Stories of change in the South [Video file].

Mcdaniel, R. (1970, June 10). Bloom's Taxonomy. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

Nagel, G. (1994). The Tao of teaching. New York: Donald Fine.