Community Programs
Click here for archive.
Working collaboratively with partners outside of the university, we exchange ideas and develop programs with the primary goal of improving writing. The programs below represent the heart of CSTW's literacy outreach work:
Godman Guild:
Empowering adult learners in the writing classroom
No one thinks it's easy to return to school as an adult, especially after a long absence. But each week adult learners come to Columbus's Godman Guild in pursuit of their General Education Development degrees (GEDs). The Guild, established in 1898, has a long history in the Columbus area for providing adult education and employment programs.
Outreach Consultants work with Godman Guild GED instructors to facilitate writing workshops with adult learners designed to increase clients' confidence and proficiency as they prepare for the essay portion of the GED test. Workshops also aim to foster better writing skills and an appreciation for the role of writing in the workplace and everyday life.
The Columbus Literacy Council:
Reaching diverse communities and sharing cultures
Columbus boasts a rich diversity of cultures. For many non-native and native speaking adults, the Columbus Literacy Council (CLC) is a stepping-stone to English literacy. With the help of Ohio State tutors from several academic programs, clients navigate a computer-training program to enhance their language skills through listening, speaking, reading, and writing exercises. CSTW consultants serve as liaison between CLC and the university.
Collaborators include: CSTW, Columbus Literacy Council, Spanish and Portuguese Department, African American and African Studies Department, English Department's Writing Workshop and Digital Media Project This project was partially funded by Ohio State's Service-Learning Initiative and the Corporation for National Service.
Teacher Seminars and Institutes:
Teaching writing teachers
What inspires more than 100 school teachers each year to spend Saturdays in class? Some like the easy collegiality the CSTW workshops provide. Others are eager for ideas they can take directly back to the classroom. We all agree it's all about preparing students for a lifetime of writing.
Our program is designed for teachers to share curriculum ideas, scholarly theories, and personal experiences with colleagues in a collaborative setting with technological learning support. In the end, we hope teachers have been able to examine and understand the process of developing creative, interactive, literacy-based lesson plans.
Previous Saturday workshop titles were: "Critical Writing, Critical Thinking: Writing to Learn in Every Discipline" (March 2007), "What's Writing Got to Do with It?: Learning to Write and Writing to Learn in Every Discipline" (February 2007), and "TWAC: Technologies for Writing Across the Curriculum" (December 2006), and "Who We Teach and What We Teach: Teaching Writing in the Multicultural Classroom." Summer institute topics have focused on ePortfolio (June 2005), multiple literacies and digital media (July 2005), and the teaching of writing in multicultural settings (June 2004). Columbus Literacy Council: An OSU Partnership
[PDF] - Some links on this page are to .pdf files. These are designated by [PDF] following the link. PDF files require the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader software to open them. If you do not have Reader, you may use the following link to Adobe to download it for free at: Adobe Acrobat Reader
