<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">May 1, 2025</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Workers and Mothers of the World Unite in Education</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Tom Sticht, International Consultant in  Adult Education (Ret.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">On May 1^,2025, we celebrate International Workers Day, also known as May Day, a day for celebrating the working men and women of the world as they labor </span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">for personal, family, and community development. Ten days later, on May 11, we celebrate Mother’s Day. Adult literacy educators have long known about the importance of educating mothers or mothers-to-be for improving the educational development of their children (e.g.: Stewart, C. (1929). Mother’s First Book: A First Reader for Home Women, available online using a Google search).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, first signed into law on July 22, 2014, addresses both workforce and mother’s educational needs with a focus on basic skills (English,literacy,numeracy) development within Title II: Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">A special sub-program within the AEFLA, Integrated Education and Training (IET) focuses directly on workforce education that combines adult basic skills education with workforce preparation and training, focused in some instances on specific occupational fields.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Significantly, research on workplace education programs has indicated that such IET programs may not only improve the basic skills of the adults in the programs, they may also stimulate adults to better interact with their children to improve the children’s basic skills thereby increasing family literacy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Research by Wider Opportunities for Women found that mothers enrolled in basic skills (literacy, numeracy) education, often integrated with job training, reported that they spoke more with their children about school, they read to them more, they took them to the library more and so forth. These increases in cognitive and non-cognitive behaviors of the mothers’ children happened even though there was no teaching of these types of parenting activities. These types of changes in the parenting behaviors of </span>the<span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt"> mothers </span>was<span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt"> obtained for free as a spin-off of adult workforce basic skills programs (Van Fossen, S. et al., 1991. Teach the Mother and Reach the Child. , available online using a Google search).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">See Sticht (2018)for more on how numerous organizations , including the </span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">American Federation of Teachers, the Secretary of Labor’s Commission on </span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">Necessary Skills,   the Work in America Institute, Wider Opportunities for</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Women, and adult education in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and </span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">UNESCO, have called for and provided adult basic and workforce skills for </span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">Workers and mothers of the United States and the world.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><i><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Tinos,"serif";color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black">Reference: Sticht, T. (2018). Mainstreaming Marginalized Adults: The</span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">Transformation of Adult Basic Education in the United States (online using </span><span style="color:black;font-family:"Courier New";font-size:10pt">a Google search)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><i><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Tinos,"serif";color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><i><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Tinos,"serif";color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"> </span></i></p></div>