Community Learning Spaces

Yesterday, I was pleased to accompany my college, Dr. Jinai Sun, and a group of students from North Central College to visit the Ray Chinese School.  The school is a vibrant community.  Between two local sites, they serve approximately 1,400 people.  The school is a weekend school that provides language instruction in Chinese and English, academic enrichment programming, and cultural arts education.  During our tour, we learned that the school opened 20 years ago with just 12 families.  While the school pays their teachers, most of the work of administering the program is done through volunteer efforts.  Classes and workshops are offered for parents at the same time as the children so whole families can attend at the same time.  We also observed other parents and grandparents interacting in the halls, playing with younger children, or completing their own work. 

The Ray Chinese School is a wonderful example of a learning space that has evolved to meet the needs of a community.  Also, the community is highly invested in the experience and appears to take on a sense of group ownership to make sure that the children are receiving high quality educational experiences.  We visited one classroom and saw a very energetic adolescent who volunteers in the class to mentor the younger learners.  This was yet another example of the collaboration that appeared to define this school.

After our tour of the school, we extended our cultural excursion with a lunch at a local Chinese restaurant.  We sampled so many different dishes and all discovered something delicious.

Educational programs created from within the group seem to have a unique way of meeting the needs of their community.  Programming that allows parents and children to simultaneously engage in their own process and an overall commitment of adolescent and adult members of the community to teach and guide younger children is consistent with Vygotskian ideas of socio-cultural learning.  The community defines the content and the path of learning experiences.