A new partnership between the University Honors Program and a local nonprofit, Linked2Literacy, has students going beyond studying literacy to building it. In “Community Impact Lab: Literacy Across Nebraska,” an Honors seminar co-taught by Dr. Tamy Burnett and Hanna Varilek, a graduate teaching assistant in English, students collaborated with the nonprofit to expand access to literacy resources across Nebraska.
The students engaged in a semester-long effort to create resources for families, expanding their impact to the world outside of the classroom. Burnett said this class developed out of a desire in the Honors Program to create “more educational opportunities that marry traditional learning with experience in tangible ways with clear and immediate impact.”
As students learned, literacy goes far beyond reading and writing. It is being knowledgeable enough in a topic to know how to find and use relevant information. For the class, students were divided into groups focused on different aspects of literacy. “With Linked2Literarcy, we identified several possible areas of literacy,” said Burnett. “Then, we matched each student’s interests with those topics to identify five primary literacy areas to focus on. Each student then identified a specific subarea on which to focus their work this semester.” The final areas of literacy the class chose to explore were academic and information literacy, cultural and historic identity literacy, ecological and sustainability literacy, health literacy, and wellness literacy. Each group researched relevant literacy resources for a online database Linked2Literacy is building.
“We each individually found 25 resources related to our selected subtopics,” said Caylee Dennis, a fourth-year architectural studies and business administration double major. “As a group, we worked together to ensure that we were all finding accessible and useful resources that can help people across the state of Nebraska and hopefully even further.”
One of Linked2Literacy’s main goals is understanding where literacy gaps exist and then figuring out how to fill those gaps. To work towards this goal, the class began identifying gaps in their materials that they had found in their research. The students worked to pinpoint areas where existing resources fell short and began designing their own tools to address those shortcomings. They worked together to cover a wide range of topics, including those vital to Nebraskans.
Dennis said feedback from her peers helped her to develop her idea for an at-home craft guide focused on creative ways to reuse household materials. “This collaborative aspect allowed us to be more successful in our own work overall,” she said.
While Dennis focused on sustainability, Naomi Chamberlain, a fourth-year psychology and film studies double major, worked on mental health and wellness. “I compiled 25 plus free mental wellness resources, analyzed those resources for gaps, and then filled them,” she said.
Chamberlain discovered that many existing resources were informative but lacked clear calls to action. “Almost all of the resources I found could tell you why mental wellness is important, but they could not, for example, help you ground yourself during a panic attack,” she said. This observation shaped her final project: a set of flashcards featuring actionable five-minute mental wellness strategies that parents could use to teach children good mental wellness habits as they grow.
Fourth-year global studies, French, and political science triple major Brenna Whitten said the class also allowed for students to address conversations important to the future of Nebraska. She worked within the category of ecological and sustainability literacy to focus on environmental justice. “There are several environmental justice issues in Nebraska, and they often go unnoticed because no resources are teaching what environmental justice is,” Whitten said.
Beyond the classroom, the partnership provided useful insight into Nebraska’s literacy landscape. Kathleen Ousey, executive director of Linked2Literacy, said that the value of the class “goes beyond theory. The students are helping us build tools and insights we can use to strengthen our programs and expand our reach. This work is laying the foundation for what we’re calling a ‘Literacy Learning Map,’ which will help families, partners, and communities more easily find and access the literacy experiences they need.”
“Between the existing resources students identified and the resources they created,” Burnett said, “the class provided Linked2Literacy about 500 resources to start the Literacy Learning Map.” She continued, “It was exciting to see the prototype of the Map website at the end of the term. I think the students especially appreciated seeing this concrete evidence of the value of their work this semester.”
Many students said the class stood out not only because of what they learned but also because of the opportunity they had to make a difference in the future. “My favorite part was getting a better understanding of the kinds of resources that are already out there. Hopefully, now, my own resource can be one of them,” Chamberlain said.
“This partnership exceeded my wildest expectations,” Burnett said. “We are grateful for both partnership with the Department of English and Linked2Literacy. English faculty and Linked2Literacy board members attended students’ presentations and offered them insightful feedback to make their resources even better.”
This class was an experiment for the Honors Program, and one that program leaders such as Burnett and Dr. Tyler White, Honors Faculty Director, hope can serve as a model for future class sections. As Burnett explained, “Dr. White and I are very interested in developing more versions of this class partnered with other nonprofits. We see an incredible opportunity to give students hands-on experience doing good for the community while supporting the work of nonprofit partners to help them with projects they might not otherwise have capacity to take on.” For next year, Honors plans to partner with Linked2Literacy again and is also exploring a second such class partnered with Centerpoint, a community health organization.
