Letter to the Next Class

Community Co-Lab Spring 2015,

Our time spent working with the Hawthorne Education Center was a lesson in patience and communication. Hawthorne Education Center is a place for adults to further their education in pursuit of a GED or advancement of their English proficiency. Hawthorne students are adults over the age of sixteen who either have not completed high school, received a GED, or are immigrants looking to better their understanding of the English language to move onto post secondary education. The student body at Hawthorne is a diverse group, with students from all over the world, and with many different age groups ranging from teenagers to retirement age students. Specifically our involvement was with the Writing 3 class, taught by Jennifer Spindler, which is one of the higher level courses offered at Hawthorne and is a GED readiness course as well as a college readiness course. Our focus was on computer literacy through the use of Google Docs and Google presentation. Jennifer and the Hawthorne team expressed interest in help with teaching computer literacy because the GED format had moved to a computer based test and college level courses are increasingly moving to computer based circului.

The most important aspect that we experienced within our community work was the use of a communication liaison, a central hub between the students, UMR faculty and the Hawthorne faculty. This allowed for a steady flow of information between all groups, little to no miscommunication, and a professional appearance in our communication. Another key point to this interaction was being receptive to input given by faculty advisors and Hawthorne advisors. Whether it was to incorporate something different into a presentation or to present information differently, it is good to remember that this is a project that they have dedicated more time to and have a different perspective on the goal. That being said it was also important to remember that we came in as a fresh set of eyes on this problem and to not be afraid of thinking outside the box.

As far as the work with the students, whether a new project is used or the same format is followed, it is important to remember that teaching takes time and patience, especially if there is a language barrier. With that in mind, the experience is both fun and educational, learning tends to go both ways and as much as is planned to get through the important part is that at least something gets through. It is best to focus on what the students can take away from the class and how anything you can teach them, however small, can help them on their chosen path. One big takeaway for our group was that small computer tricks, such as copy paste, were new information to some of the students and that the basic skills and tricks were just as important as the big picture lesson. Another surprising point was the background of the students, some had been lawyers, computer programmers and even a pharmacist. This information would have been nice to know at the beginning of the semester because it would have given a background of other types of knowledge that were in the classroom and could have been useful in tailoring the lessons.

As a closing we would like to pose some questions for you to consider. In what way do you think the work that has already been done can be expanded or improved upon? What are some ways to make the curriculum more interesting to the students to get them more involved, maybe using past educational achievements or future goals? What can we do as students to help support the students at Hawthorne in achieving their goals? Is there a way to make a website of our source material to share with the students of Hawthorne?