For the past 28 years, Al­ta has pro­vid­ed free adult lit­er­a­cy class­es to the cit­i­zens of Trinidad. Every year Al­ta ad­min­is­ters class­es at 50 venues around the coun­try, li­ais­es with some 300 un­paid vol­un­teer tu­tors, and aims to re­cruit and train 100 new vol­un­teers an­nu­al­ly to sus­tain our class­es.

The pan­dem­ic ne­ces­si­tat­ed swift, sweep­ing changes to the man­ner in which the world func­tions, as so­cial dis­tanc­ing reg­u­la­tions were en­act­ed to mit­i­gate against the high rates of in­fec­tion. This ar­ti­cle shares Al­ta’s strate­gic out­look as we all seek to nav­i­gate this rapid­ly chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

Up­on news of two con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19 in Trinidad and as ad­vised by the Min­istries of Health and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Al­ta im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed all com­mu­ni­ty lit­er­a­cy class­es and train­ing, and from Tues­day, March 17, shift­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive staff to a work from home arrange­ment.

En­sur­ing ef­fi­cient com­mu­ni­ca­tion of these changes to stu­dents, tu­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers be­came the fo­cus as it meant a dis­rup­tion to stu­dents’ sched­ules and oth­er time-sen­si­tive oblig­a­tions.

There was im­me­di­ate recog­ni­tion that while class­es would be sus­pend­ed, Al­ta’s work would car­ry on as we have oblig­a­tions to our stu­dents, both now and when nor­mal­cy re­turns. Our In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems man­ag­er took the lead in en­sur­ing that all staff had ac­cess to the nec­es­sary equip­ment, soft­ware and train­ing in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate con­ti­nu­ity.

As an as­so­ci­a­tion with scores of vol­un­teer tu­tors op­er­at­ing off-site, Al­ta has long had the ad­van­tage of fa­mil­iar­i­ty with var­i­ous tools in­clud­ing Mi­crosoft Of­fice 365, do­nat­ed sev­er­al years ago by Mi­crosoft T&T through its soft­ware do­na­tion pro­gramme.

Al­ta re­mains con­nect­ed at this time through the use of tech­nol­o­gy, with reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled meet­ings, doc­u­ment shar­ing and re­al-time col­lab­o­ra­tion. Dai­ly MS Teams meet­ings dur­ing the first week have re­duced to three times a week as staff ad­just­ed quick­ly to re­mote work.

Stu­dent en­gage­ment ef­forts are on­go­ing in an ef­fort to en­sure that these stake­hold­ers con­tin­ue to feel sup­port­ed in the midst of un­cer­tain­ty. Ear­ly on, the Al­ta team had to piv­ot as Read­ings Un­der the Trees, our high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed an­nu­al event which brings stu­dents and lo­cal au­thors to­geth­er to share in the joy of read­ing, be­came Read­ings on the Web.

En­gag­ing an au­di­ence at a vir­tu­al event via so­cial me­dia was new and chal­leng­ing. We re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the videos that our au­thors, po­ets and stu­dents pro­vid­ed, and we were pleased that so many en­gaged on­line with these. The col­lec­tions are on Al­ta’s Face­book video li­brary for those who missed this.

To deal with the loss of about a third of the aca­d­e­m­ic year for our stu­dents in our free com­mu­ni­ty class­es, a team of ex­pe­ri­enced Al­ta tu­tors has ex­plored re­mote teach­ing through What­sApp and Zoom and this op­tion is now be­ing of­fered to all our stu­dents.

While we know that many stu­dents will not have the de­vices or in­ter­net con­nec­tion need­ed for a vir­tu­al class, many will be able to main­tain and en­hance the skills gained so far to achieve min­i­mal in­ter­rup­tion of their learn­ing goals. A num­ber of our vol­un­teers have quick­ly em­braced this op­por­tu­ni­ty and stu­dent feed­back is very pos­i­tive.

Apart from this im­me­di­ate mea­sure, the Al­ta team has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to com­plete our own Al­ta On­line plat­form, and the pan­dem­ic has cer­tain­ly high­light­ed the ur­gency of launch­ing this project. Work con­tin­ues un­abat­ed to widen the reach of our lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme through this web-based ser­vice, which be­gins its pi­lot in May.

We have al­so es­tab­lished a process for tu­tors to as­sist their stu­dents with com­plet­ing the forms to ac­cess pan­dem­ic as­sis­tance - a lit­er­a­cy ac­tiv­i­ty in keep­ing with Al­ta’s man­date!

While there may be no sub­sti­tu­tion for our face to face learn­ing, we at Al­ta are fac­ing this “new nor­mal” with a com­pre­hen­sive ac­tion plan and a sense of op­ti­mism. We re­main com­mit­ted to our mis­sion of em­pow­er­ing adults through lit­er­a­cy and we ap­peal to our stake­hold­ers to re­main com­mit­ted to us so that to­geth­er we can “Stand Tall!”

If you or some­one you know is in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing a tu­tor, join­ing a class, or be­com­ing a spon­sor, call 624-2582 or email al­ta­pos.tt@gmail.com