Abstract

The Silver Valley Learning Center of North Idaho College provides the former mining town of Kellogg, Idaho with a place for displaced adults to complete their GED and obtain job skills. The center has helped a community where unemployment and high school dropout rates had been extremely high. The practice is excerpted from the paper, Tapping the Need by AmeriCorps member Bekka Ravue, which won first place at the 1998 Northwest National Service Symposium, hosted by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL).

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Issue

Two decades of high unemployment and low educational achievement in Silver Valley, Idaho resulted in low self-esteem and motivation among many adults. The Silver Valley Learning Center has helped by providing GED education and job skills training.

Fifty-one percent of the adults who enroll in SVLC have reading skills below the sixth-grade level; only 18 percent of enrollees are advanced, working at the ninth- to 12th- grade level.

Following the closure of mining operations, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Silver Valley as a Superfund site, placing it in a category among, "the largest and most complex abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country." It is suspected that long-term exposure to contaminants is a leading cause for the high level of learning disorders in the Silver Valley.

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Action

The Silver Valley Learning Center provides individual GED and work skills tutoring to adults Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and Monday evenings. The Learning Center also holds a three-hour session every Friday at the local library, and tutors visit the county jail twice a week.The student intake process includes:

• Explanation of the program and paperwork
• Standardized tests to assess needs
• Individual education plan
• Immediate introduction to tutoring

The Learning Center manages to be goal-oriented without rigidity. Test results provide a clear map of the gaps between each student and his or her ability to pass the GED.

None of the tutors pretend to have all the answers or to be perfect. Tutors often learn with their students.

The Center offers frequent, regular hours in a welcoming location. The Steelworkers' Hall is a community center that hosts a variety of programs; everyone knows exactly where it is and when to find tutors there.

Students know they are wanted. Tutors close their sessions with a request for students to return. Students who have less than five contact hours in a month receive telephone calls from tutors encouraging them to return.

The Learning Center sells its product with passion. Every "customer" is important, and most of them "buy" because the Learning Center is selling students on their own futures.

The most important objective for program directors: Networking. Networking. Networking. According to Shirley Spencer, Adult Education Director and GED Administrator for the Idaho Department of Education, "You have to have a vision. Beyond that, you have to make connections and get that vision across to other people in the community."

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Context

In the 1980s the Silver Valley experienced a significant decline in the silver mining industry, the foundation of their once prosperous economy. The loss of jobs was devastating. The community continues to struggle with high unemployment two decades later. The estimated 1998 unemployment rate for Kellogg, Idaho was above 15 percent.

For decades, the mining operations had discharged toxic concentrations of lead into the air and waterways of Silver Valley. Lead poisoning at significant levels over a period of time can interfere with math skills, reading skills, abstract thinking, memory, language, and general comprehension. While a person with lead poisoning may not experience all of these effects, he or she will never experience just one.

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Citation

Rauve, Bekka. "Tapping the Need." Stories of Service: National Service in the Northwest. Portland, Oregon: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 1998.

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Evidence

Before the Learning Center opened in late 1996, students with reading levels below fourth or fifth grade were told that no program in Kellogg could help them. The Learning Center doesn't turn anyone away. Involvement in the program enhances self-esteem and working toward goals. Even goals as simple as finishing a handout or showing up for a certain number of hours per week can be a hedge against depression and related problems such as alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

Between November 1996 and March 1998, 139 had been enrolled at the Learning Center, with 17 obtaining their GEDs.

In the nine month period between July 1997 and March 1998 the Learning Center provided 637 hours of student contact, with an average of 14 hours per student.

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For More Information

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Resources

NW National Service Symposium (Third Annual)

Source Documents

Related Practices

• Designing a family literacy program

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