Learning within the Community, Learning from the Community

It's Saturday morning and a middle-aged teacher has walked into her classroom and begun to greet her students. As she sorted through her handouts and overheads, more learners strolled in, finding seats, and greeting each other. Finally, she began her lecture on The Impact of Aging on Memory by asking the class, "Do you have difficulty remembering things that just happened moments ago? Do you feel the older you get, the poorer your memory is?" Many laughed while nodding their heads seriously. As her lecture proceeded, the learners listened attentively and some started to take notes. This particular class was held at Evergreen Academy, an educational institute particularly tailored to older Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants. Every Saturday morning, the academy offers a morning course followed by lunch, a business meeting and two afternoon courses including ones on contemporary issues, medical and health care, arts and crafts, and English as a second language (ESL). All classes are taught in the students' native language by expert members of the community. These offerings reflect the Academy's intention to respond to the demands of the community by satisfying the senior learners' needs in the areas of personal enrichment, health care, and entertainment. In addition to regular semester courses, the Academy arranges field trips, singing contests, and birthday parties to facilitate social relationships among the community of learners. Beginning with an enrollment of 40 students, the Academy doubled in size within weeks of its inception. Evergreen Academy is only one of the countless adult ethnic schools, located within immigrant communities nationwide. While the concept of an ethnic school is not a recent invention, they only recently came into the public eye. The majority were organized to preserve a cultural heritage in order to pass it down to the younger generation. Many children, especially those of first generation immigrants, were encouraged to attend weekend programs sponsored by Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Jewish, and other ethnic communities. These ethnic schools provided courses in ethnic literacy skills, history, and sometimes religion, with supplementary extra-curricular activities. In addition to these academic subjects, ethnic schools often reinforce participants' cultural identity and enhance social cohesiveness within the ethnic community (Sone, 1994). While the primary participants of the early ethnic schools were children, today many communities have extended their efforts to include adult immigrants. Like many grassroots, community-based organizations that have contributed significantly to adult education, the discussion regarding the organization and development of adult ethnic schools has rarely been incorporated in the mainstream adult education literature (Briscoe & Ross, 1991). As adult ethnic schools become more successful and popular within immigrant communities, it is important for adult educators to pay attention to the ways in which these schools function among immigrant communities. Adult ethnic schools operate in a variety of formats; some are community-based organizations while others take the form of book clubs or forums, depending on available resources and the needs of the participants. Regardless of the structure, the characteristics of most adult ethnic schools parallel the properties of community-based organizations. These schools are primarily community based and controlled in that the programs and services are initiated, planned, decided on, and implemented by members of the neighborhood. Given its participatory mode of operation, the curriculum of adult ethnic schools usually reflect the needs, values, and experiences of the community. As a result, these programs are characterized as learner-centered, community-oriented, and self-reliant (Hamilton, 1992). Shared language is one unique attribute of adult ethnic schools; most programs delivered by immigrant communities are either bilingual or taught in the learner's native language. …