An interview with Debbie Tuler, HEAL:BCC Teacher, Charlottesville City Schools Adult Education, Charlottesville, Virginia
October 16, 2001

By Elizabeth Morrish

EM: Tell me about your background and how you got into teaching
adult basic education.

DT: In college I majored in linguistics and then got a masters in cultural
anthropology. I did not know what to do with a degree in
linguistics. Teaching adult education was the first job I landed and I
loved it! I loved it because I learned a lot, met people from all over.
I find language learning and how people manage to communicate
across language and cultural differences really fascinating. I enjoy
the class I have now with students from all over the world.

EM: How is it that you have students from all over the world in
Charlottesville?

DT: Refugees come to Charlottesville because of the International
Rescue Committee refugee resettlement office here. People come
from countries such as Bosnia, Togo, Sudan, and Afghanistan.
The unemployment rate is very low so others come as immigrants;
there are also the spouses of graduate students or visiting
professors from Europe, South America and Asia. It is a very
mixed group of people in many ways - culturally, in education
levels, and why they are here and choose to go to class. Some
students come to class to get work here, while others want to learn
skills to use when they return to their own countries.

EM: What levels have you taught in adult education?

DT: I now teach a beginning literacy class and an advanced
conversation class. I taught the HEAL:BCC Curriculum with a low
intermediate class. I started teaching in 1988 so I have taught at all
levels including workplace education.

EM: Could you see using the HEAL:BCC materials at different levels?

DT: Not with real beginners with no English at all, or with students who
do not read or write in their own language, because at that those
levels, there needs to be so much conversation and the reading in
the curriculum would be beyond them. However, at low intermediate
and up, I would definitely use it. I just would not jump into the
curriculum with students if they needed to learn vocabulary for
basic living.

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EM: How did your students respond when you worked on the
HEAL:BCC Curriculum?

DT: Most of them really positively. But there is something I want to tell
you just so teachers are prepared. There was one student who
would not talk about health at all. She expressed very clearly that
she wanted nothing to do with it. I really appreciated that she
expressed it and did not just disappear. I had just started with the
lesson about health in general - there is a writing assignment
suggested with that lesson - and she wrote what was basically a
letter to me saying she did not want to study or talk about health.
I was teaching with a volunteer, so I arranged for the volunteer to
work with this one student when we did the curriculum.

Throughout the curriculum, students are hearing about health in
general so for everyone else that made them more comfortable. For
some students, information about breast and cervical cancer was
very new; for some they had a medical background in their own
country and appreciated learning the vocabulary in English.
I remember pausing when that one student said she wanted nothing
to do with health and thinking, does everyone feel this way? But
they didn’t. Looking back, though, she did participate when we
made the health wall because that was construction and she had
never used power tools. (This class constructed a free-standing
double panel that they displayed in a common area of the center
and used at community events.) She was also very computer
literate and was able to help others with HEAL:BCC work on the
computer. All my students just happened to be women when I was
teaching the HEAL:BCC Curriculum.

EM: What would you have done if you had no volunteer?

DT: That is a good question. That class met four times a week and I
worked on HEAL:BCC two times a week. I think I would have
given her the option to work independently, at home or in the
library, during those times.

EM: And if you had men in your class?

DT: With male students, I would have linked the work to the lives of
their mothers, sisters, and daughters, and included more on
cancers specific to men. I would have given them research
assignments and asked them to present what they found out to the
class. I remember the curriculum suggests bringing someone in to
work separately with the men while the women are learning about
breast self-exams. That would be the time for them to learn about
prostate cancer and testicular cancer. But, you know, the approach
I take depends a lot on the particular men and the dynamics of the
class. The way I would do it with one class may not be the same as
I would do it with another.

EM: Can you tell me how the students responded to this material and
what skills they learned?

DT: Many shared what they learned with family and friends so they
obviously thought the information was important. They learned
about going to a doctor, a clinic, or a hospital – not only the
language skills but what it was like. There is one lesson that has
students picking up brochures when they can in their community.
That gets them into medical buildings in a very non-threatening
way. It’s not about being sick or having to make an appointment.

Having the curriculum use problem-solving gets people thinking in
ways they may not have thought of. Then, participating in class
discussions and hearing other people’s ideas helps to develop
critical thinking skills. For instance, Stella’s story uses pictures to
describe what is going on in Stella’s life. As a teacher, I appreciated
that this lesson did not tell the students you should do this or that
but allowed them to come up with what was relevant to their own
lives, and also to think of options that are realistic.

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EM: Did you see your students’ health behaviors change in any ways?

DT: A couple did make appointments for gynecological exams. Most of
my students did have regular check-ups in their own country.
However, they were so intimidated by the language and by the health
care system here that they had not gone for health care before we
worked on the HEAL:BCC Curriculum.

EM: What advise would you give a teacher thinking about using the
HEAL:BCC Curriculum?

DT: The most important thing is not to do it alone. Find other teachers in
your program or in the area who will also use it, so that you can talk
about your experiences as a HEAL:BCC teacher. In my program, we
did not get together as often as we had planned but did meet several
times. Come together in person if you can. Statewide, we tried to
communicate over e-mail, but it did not work at all. Before you start
this curriculum, you will be thinking about putting support in place
for your students. Remember, as a teacher you also need support.
You need to be able to talk about how you feel before you start the
work. You need to be aware of your own discomfort, so get together
with other teachers beforehand and talk about that. You can really
want to do the work and know how important it is to do the work
but still feel uneasy. Talk about what would be really hard about
opening up the topics of breast cancer and cervical cancer, then get
together with the same teachers or with one teacher in the middle of
doing the curriculum, or as needed for you. You know, we didn’t
even have to get together, it helped just knowing I could call someone
who was going through something similar. Part of it was being able
to ask “How did this lesson go for you?” So, having a colleague
not using or familiar with the curriculum would not be as helpful.

EM: You mentioned the woman who did not want to deal with anything
to do with health. Is there anything else a teacher needs to be
prepared for?

DT: Keeping people interested for the whole curriculum was a challenge
for me. There were days when they sasked, “Do we have to do this
depressing topic?” Maybe it would be better to scrunch it all
together, and not spread the curriculum out over 10 weeks, but it
was helpful that we could integrate it into other work we were doing.

EM: And what about some successes that teachers can look forward to if they take on using this curriculum?

DT: As I said earlier, people going for checkups that they had not done
before, learning about the health care system, and learning new
language to have the skills to communicate health information. And
surely that is what teaching is about.

EM: Did doing this work change you in any way?

DT: Well, I certainly learned about breast and cervical cancer. I also
think I would be more comfortable in the future to talk to students
about cancer, trauma, and what is happening in the world today.
Once you have talked about something hard you can then take on
other issues. I had dealt with serious health care concerns with
students before, especially in workplace education, but that was
more with health safety and not personal health. I was really thrown
off by the woman who refused to participate because that had never
happened before. I felt there was something going on that needed to
be addressed but how could I open that up? I have to remember the
hardest people to reach are not always reached at the time when you
have them as students. You teach your students long after they leave
the classroom. They may learn something later on in life when they
are ready. But I reached this particular student in a different way – her
writing to me that first time meant she continued to write regularly. I
definitely opened something up. I have to keep reminding myself she
did get something out of this.

I now realize the more you take hard things on, the easier it becomes.
It is important as a teacher to acknowledge the hard things in all of
our lives since this too affects how we learn. Maybe new teachers
have the enthusiasm to take this work on, while the experienced
teacher is ready to tackle something they have not tackled before.

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