Top 5 Reasons to Teach with SPOTLIGHT
by Hillary Major
1. Student Voices are Powerful!
The voices highlighted in the links provided below are just a few of the powerful stories shared in the pages of SPOTLIGHT*, Virginia’s annual anthology of writing by adult education and literacy learners. Of course, SPOTLIGHT also includes humorous stories, narratives of everyday life, information about cultural traditions, poetry, and more.
- Learners in a workplace literacy class write a letter to the mayor about the importance of local bus services.
- A woman survives nearly overwhelming challenges to share the message, “Don’t give up.”
- A young woman starts a new job in the city and in just a few days finds herself fleeing for her life.
- A former class clown reflects on his choices.
After the first issue of SPOTLIGHT was published, I spoke with Inocencia Toribio Garcia and Rosa Hernandez, English language learners from Fairfax Adult High School who contributed to the issue, along with their instructor Kim West. Kim shared that, at first, learners were reluctant to write; they felt they didn’t have a “special story.” She continued to ask questions and provide encouragement, and the results showed how much learners had to share. Inocencia found her inspiration in family, writing about a traditional Peruvian dance and her nephew, who dances competitively. “I very happy when I writing … It is part of my country; it is part of me,” said Inocencia. She shared how improving her writing skills helped her support her daughter with her own school work. Rosa wrote about her personal story of coming to the United States as a thirteen-year-old and how she is thriving today, advocating for her son’s education. She spoke about learning how to organize her writing, learning about main ideas and supporting ideas, along with literacy terms like “setting” and vocabulary for parts of speech. Her advice is that, no matter how challenging the circumstances, with “focus and determination,” you can make a difference. “I think it’s important for us to … educate ourselves,” said Rosa. “[W]e can cooperate to have a better world if we … educate ourselves.”
2. SPOTLIGHT aligns with standards-based instruction.
Writing for publication is explicitly built into the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRS). Writing Anchor Standard 7 reads, “Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.” This standard highlights the digital literacy and workplace readiness skills that can be taught alongside skills like organizing paragraphs, providing relevant and specific details, and making use of standard English grammar and mechanics. Consider supporting learners in using tools like Google docs, which makes it easy to save work online, make comments, collaborate, and revise. Be sure to explain how sharing settings allows writers to keep work private, share it with chosen readers and classmates, or share work publicly.**
Writing for publication can help learners understand the importance of “clear and coherent writing” that is “appropriate to task, purpose, and audience” (CCRS Writing Anchor 4). Learners can resist the revision process, but knowing a piece of writing will be published can provide motivation for them to “strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach” (CCRS Writing Anchor 5).
3. SPOTLIGHT is multilevel.
Model writing by other adult learners can show student writers what’s possible in an approachable way.
Working with beginning writers? Browse the poems that have appeared in SPOTLIGHT, including haiku, acrostics, and list poems. It only takes a few words for learners to create something they can take pride in. Beginning writers can overcome fear of the blank page or screen by using sensory words to describe a scene or memory. Students can also write prose about a shared experience, like the visit to a local art center described by several of The READ Center learners featured in SPOTLIGHT 2024.
As learners’ writing skills progress, consider sharing personal narratives—SPOTLIGHT provides many examples, from some as short as a few simple paragraphs to longer, more complex pieces. Working with learners preparing for the GED® tests? Explore informative writing, like Dajan Kantimerov’s “Tatars in Russia: History and Challenges” or the use of compare and contrast in Milena Alfonso’s “A Special Day to Show Love.” Encourage learners who write persuasive or argumentative essays or letters to the editor to submit their work to SPOTLIGHT.
Use the online SPOTLIGHT index to find texts that align with your curriculum and your learners’ interests. Under the “Search” and “Filter” options on the left side of the webpage, click on the arrow next to “All Topics” and check the boxes next to types of writing (Personal Narrative, Informative Writing, Poetry, etc.) or topics (Work, Education and Learning, Cultural Traditions, etc.) that are relevant to your instructional setting. Or, simply type key words in the “Search” box to look for pertinent SPOTLIGHT articles.
4. SPOTLIGHT can be part of reading instruction, too.
Many SPOTLIGHT articles reward close reading. Learners can practice their self-monitoring and prediction skills as they read narratives like Fatima Hairane’s “I Did Not Miss the Train.” They can ask and answer questions grounded in the text’s main ideas and key details. Pieces like “The Saddest Persimmon” by Soyoung Early and “Love Is Worth the Wait” by Dina Gortman provide opportunities to discuss metaphors and figurative language (CCRS Reading Anchor 4) as well as how ideas develop throughout a text (CCRS Reading Anchor 3).
Shorter pieces can provide opportunities to focus on reading fluency; learners might, for instance, choose a poem to practice reading and re-reading. SPOTLIGHT articles reflect their writers’ English vocabularies so can be approachable for beginning readers. Teachers or tutors can copy-and-paste from the VALRC website into an online readability tool like the ATOS Analyzer to help get a general idea of whether the reading level of a SPOTLIGHT article will be a good match for their learners. SPOTLIGHT articles can be paired with readings from curriculum materials or other sources to provide multiple, engaging points of view on a topic or theme.
5. SPOTLIGHT provides an annual opportunity to celebrate writers.
Submissions for the fourth edition of SPOTLIGHT will open in fall 2024 and be submitted anytime through the issue deadline on March 14, 2025. (Find SPOTLIGHT FAQs, which are updated for each issue, on the VALRC website.) This gives teachers and tutors flexibility to plan how they will incorporate writing activities into their instruction. Giving learners choices in what they write can be motivating, and including regular writing practice provides opportunities for learners to develop their skills. In the words of SPOTLIGHT contributor Heidi Gao, “I think writing is a process of continuous thinking and improvement.”
Contributing to SPOTLIGHT is a meaningful accomplishment for learners. One learner requested extra copies of SPOTLIGHT to send to family overseas. Another shared a photograph proudly holding a copy of his published article. Programs have honored student writers with opportunities to read their work to learners in other classes and at special readings or events such as graduations. Programs can also share SPOTLIGHT with community partners and funders to help demonstrate the impact of adult education and the important roles adult learners play in our communities.
I consider it a privilege to be part of SPOTLIGHT’s editorial team. I am excited to see how SPOTLIGHT will grow, featuring more learners, more localities, and more types of writing.
*Note: This article focuses on Virginia’s SPOTLIGHT publication to discuss the benefits of using learner-generated writing in instruction, but there are other valuable sources of learner work, including local and regional publications and The Change Agent.
**Digital Literacy Tip: Photographs, illustrations, and other images are welcome in SPOTLIGHT. They should be either learners’ own original work or work that has been made available for free reuse (and the original creator of the image should be credited unless they have given permission for their work to be used without attribution). When teaching learners to locate images and incorporate them into a document, consider highlighting sites that focus on freely usable images, such as:
You will likely need to teach terms and concepts such as “copyright,” “license,” and “attribution.” Resources like GCFGlobal’s Copyright and Fair Use and Avoiding Plagiarism lessons can help.
Hillary Major is the Instructional Standards and Communications Specialist at the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center. She works to assist Virginia adult educators as they incorporate the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education into their programs and instruction. She is a coordinator for Virginia’s Teaching Skills that Matter pilot team and SPOTLIGHT, Virginia’s annual anthology of writing by adult education and literacy learners.