Enhancing communication to develop community

Imagine you move to a foreign country and meet a neighbor who quickly becomes your friend. Despite the language barrier, this man helps you learn the local customs, watches over your family, and makes you feel welcome. Then his mother dies. And you want to write a note, expressing your condolences. But you don’t know enough words of your new home’s native language to communicate what you feel. This was the problem facing one gentleman living in West Liberty, Iowa. A recent immigrant from Mexico, he spoke just enough English to maintain his job at the local meat-processing plant. But his writing skills were poor. Luckily, he recently had enrolled in the West Liberty Adult and Family Literacy Program. There, with the help of a writing tutor, the man spent two weeks working on his letter and making it perfect. Then he sent it to his neighbor.

The West Liberty program was founded in 1993 by Carolyn Colvin, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education. She designed the weekly sessions specifically to assist residents with functional literacy tasks such as filling out forms and deciphering official letters, as well as more traditional academic writing. Her goal was to help link non-native English speakers with their community.

"When I moved here from San Diego in 1991, I’d already seen a television special about the Spanish-speaking population in West Liberty," Colvin says. "It was one of the first places I visited. When they formed a committee to reach out to Mexican-born parents of schoolchildren, I became involved. Then I began working as a liaison resource for the Louis Rich plant. My starting the literacy program for adults just felt like the next logical step."

West Liberty has a unique history for Iowa, with a Mexican population that dates back to the turn of the century, when Mexican people were drawn here by opportunities for migrant labor and railroad work. Today, 45 percent of those living in the town of about 3,100 speak a native language other than English. For the vast majority, that language is Spanish.

For the past eight years, Colvin has administered the adult literacy program in partnership with the West Liberty Community School District. She and a team of graduate student volunteers travel from Iowa City to the West Liberty Middle School media center each Thursday night. The sessions last for two hours and include one hour of group instruction and a second hour of one-on-one instruction—time that is devoted to the specific literacy needs of the students. Additional literacy instruction is provided by College of Education volunteers, who play educational games with the children of adult clients.

"We do any number of things to enhance literacy," Colvin explains. "I’ve had students write histories about how they came to the United States. We’ve written stories for children about Mexican holidays. We study irregular verbs, and we practice filling out vaccination forms."

Colvin’s program is a model solution for a growing need. Iowa’s Latino population doubled in the last decade of the 20th century, and immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries now make up the largest ethnic minority group in the state. In Gov. Tom Vilsack’s 2001 State of the State address, he called upon Iowans to embrace new immigrants who have "added to our economic wealth...[bringing] strength and cultural richness to our state."

"It’s my view that the University must play a leadership role," Colvin says. "We have resources to offer and ways to bridge different populations. We can be the leaders in this area."