Pennsylvania skills center uses TV411 to bring life skills to life skills to life
The pictures you are looking at came from the Hubble telescope. Look at the number of stars and the relative size of the planets. Compare the size of the sun to the planets. What are those stars? They are suns. They could even have other planets around them. We know that there are billions of suns in the Milky Way. How does that make you feel? Small? Insignificant? Unlike the table you are sitting at and unlike my cocker spaniel, Sadie, you realize how insignificant you are, and that makes you significant. You understand your place. That’s a lot of power. What are you going to do with that power? You are a gift from the universe. It’s time to use it.” If that seems like an unusual start to a literacy program, it gets even more interesting as Kloza seamlessly moves from the stars to genealogy and mitochondrial DNA just minutes later. “How many people had to go right or left and connect for you to be here today?” Kloza challenges. The number is so high few even venture a guess, but that isn’t his point anyway. The point comes with the next sentence: “That means you have to be my cousin. I don’t care where you came from, we are all related. No matter what race we are, we all came from the same gene pool down the line. It is wonderful to have pride in who we are, but not to be egotistical about it.” That discussion leads into diversity training. And so it goes each day for the next three weeks as Kloza weaves reading, math, and self esteem improvement together with music, interview skills, and basic anatomy. Each day is a new mix of subjects, new progress on foundational skills, and improving self esteem. Amazingly, the disparate topics fit together—a testament to Kloza’s creativity and to TV411, a multimedia package he uses to pull literacy into everyday life. Produced by the Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA), TV411 introduces math, reading, and other literacy skills in the context of topics important to every adult such as health and finances. Take percentages, for example. Kloza found numerous TV411 lessons that address fractions and percentages. The TV411 lessons explore the meaning of percents, and give learners practice converting percents into fractions and decimals, as well as matching equal fractions, decimals and percents. Kloza uses that understanding of percentages to discuss tipping at a restaurant. “Many of my learners have been waitresses and waiters and worked in restaurants,” Kloza notes. “Most of the time, they don’t even know whether someone tipped them appropriately or not. They are not sure what 15 percent of the total is. We practice figuring percentages from one to 15 to see the difference in the tip. And that is just one real life situation.” “Has anyone ever had a waiter or waitress bring a glass and noticed that the server put his or her fingers on the rim?” That question is a transition into hygiene and infection control. Those subjects are addressed in health segments of TV411, so Kloza once again reaches for the multimedia package to help teach important concepts. Hygiene leads into specific skills the learners will need as a pre-clinical nurse aide—skills such as time management. Enter the executive director of the Employment Skills Center. He passes out planners to all the learners and shows them how to make to-do lists and keep up with schedules. Again, TV411 has a segment on the subject, so the learners view that to see examples of how other people manage their time and priorities. One of the most important lessons, Kloza believes, is TV411’s lesson on highlighting to make reading easier. Like most of the other lessons from TV411, Kloza uses parts of the prepared material, mixing in his own and adapting it to the situation. When he worked with people in shelters, for example, he used the entire video. For this training, time is so limited, he uses segments. That flexibility is an asset many adult educators applaud. “Highlighting is such a big thing,” Kloza says. “It really opens up minds and allows learners to comprehend what they are reading. Anything I prepare is something they can keep, so they can mark it up. Everyone gets highlighters, and we read something together and highlight passages every day. “We discuss the salient points. Salient. It’s a word many learners might not know. I do not dumb down the class. Salient becomes a vocabulary word. We have a good laugh and learn something. I also ask learners to keep a personal dictionary. They write down words they don’t know and we discuss them as a group. At the end of the three weeks, they can see how many words they learned. And in three short weeks, the learners move forward quickly. Kloza says most learners increase at least one grade level in reading and math during the three weeks; many increase two or three grade levels during the three weeks. They move closer to their employment goals as well. Last year, 54 learners began the preclinical nursing classes; 49 completed the classes, and 35 went on to the clinical training. Seventy to 85 percent of learners are employed—learners who have never held a job or held a job only at a fast food restaurant. “The biggest change is attitude,” Kloza says. “We want them to see the glass as half full instead of half empty. Everything we do is built around increasing their self esteem.”
“It’s true,” Kloza insists. “It’s not an illusion. We are not just telling them they are worthy. They have to believe it. They have the power to attract good and do good. They have to start to exercise that power.” The academic foundation learners receive in the pre-clinical course also makes the clinical course a lot easier, according to Kloza. “A lot of people try going into clinical training directly,” he notes. “This is taught at the community colleges and includes anatomy, and actual training for the activities of daily living. The problem is that the foundations haven’t been laid for them. During our three weeks, learners receive a combination of life skills, academic skills, and nursing skills so they are prepared to hit the ground running. Laying a foundation with life skills has proven to work not only in their clinical studies but in their future career.”
With that, Kloza must go. He is on his way to another graduation in just a few minutes. There were 11 learners in this class, and nine of them are graduating today. One was ill and is repeating the class. The other needs some ESL work before continuing on.
“Once you believe you can be successful, anything is possible,” Kloza says. “In 100 years your picture (or holograph) will be on a wall of the family house. That lady or man—you—made a change in your family. Somebody has to start the change, might as well be you.” For more information, contact Joseph Kloza at Employment Skills Center, 29 South Hanover Street, Carlisle, PA, 17013; call him at 717.243.6040; or email him at JKloza@employmentskillscenter.org. The center’s website is www.employmentskillscenter.org |
“Welcome to the Home Health Care and Pre-Clinical Nurse Aide Training class. My name is Joseph Kloza. I’m program manager and instructor here at the Employment Skills Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
One tangible sign is that after week two, the learners come to class in white lab coats. They are now professionals, Kloza tells them. The white coat is an outer symbol of internal changes.
Regardless of where they are today, Kloza says he expects every single one of them to be successful and tells them so throughout the class and again at graduation. He’ll probably repeat some of the important messages from class as well.