Intercambio Staff Presented at COABE 2024 Conference

L-R: Karin Bates, Leanne Chacon, Andrea DeJong from Permian Basin Adult Literacy Center (member of the Intercambio Network), and Rachel Fuchs

Intercambio Director of Partner Services Rachel Fuchs, Director of Curriculum and Training Leanne Chacon, and Curriculum and Training Specialist Karin Bates presented at the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) conference in Nashville, Tennessee in March. The COABE conference is the world’s largest national annual convention where adult educators gather to share best practices, network, and get inspired with ideas to bring back to their own programs.

The Intercambio team presented the following workshops:

• Improving Accessibility and Creating Community with Volunteer Teachers (Rachel Fuchs and Leanne Chacon)
• Pronunciation for Adult English Learners: Goals, Principles, and Top Teaching Techniques (Leanne Chacon)
• Sparking Conversations about Race and Equity with Adult English Learners (Karin Bates)

Leanne Chacon presents at the COABE national conference

Intercambio’s workshops received much interest, with 200 registrants! Rachel shared, “I was impressed by the number of people who came up to our table having already known about us and our products. Many have used our materials, and others have simply heard colleagues mention them. Many adult education programs are newly seeing the need for English language learning.”

The workshops provided opportunities to showcase our teaching methods in action. Karin shared, “In the workshop I gave called ‘Sparking Conversations on Race and Equity with Adult English Learners,’ I had a chance to model how to facilitate a conversation with participants as we got into a slightly heated discussion about a topic addressing race and equity introduced in the presentation. At the end, I was able to say, ‘See? We just had a conversation on race and equity, and we all did it well!’ It was a real moment of insight for myself and for others about what it means to get into these conversations with one another. Several people came to me afterwards and said how much they appreciated the information and ideas shared.”

COABE’s mission is to inspire educators so adults succeed and communities thrive. COABE represents the field with over 79,000 adult educators and provides a variety of services, including professional development through annual, state-of-the-art national conferences, more than 50 webinars annually, advocacy and communication, and a peer-reviewed journal.

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