March Monthly Summary

Robyn commented on Group 2.
Emily commented on Group 4.
Natalie commented on Group 3.
Meredith commented on Group 4.

Adult and Community Organizations Paper

Assignment	Responsibility	Due Date
Organization 1: Intro, Main Programs, and Implications	Robyn	Tues 3/21
Organization 2: Intro, Main Programs, and Implications	Meredith	Tues 3/21
Comparison of Organization 1 and 2	Natalie	Thurs 3/23
Abstract, Conclusion, and Compilation	Emily	Sat 3/25

The above table highlights how we broke up Project 3, the Adult and Community Organizations paper.

Meredith’s highlight was learning more about Harvard’s online business school; the free aspect if you did not want to receive credit was really cool to her. Robyn built upon this to say how it was cool for adult learners to be able to explore the subject and see if it is the right fit before making the monetary commitment to pursue business. Robyn added that it was a way for older adult learners to see if they can succeed in pursuing online school. Emily’s highlight was working with Robyn after compiling the paper to fine tune the details; her insight and just the conversation itself made for a strong feeling of camaraderie. Natalie’s highlight was speaking with a different classmate, Oscar, about a group he works in. They discussed how it relates to a training she had attended “Showing Up for Racial Justice: White Ally Training”; she was able to relate how frustrating it was studying MOOCs and online education in general when many of these populations cannot connect with the technology to access these education opportunities. As she discusses this, you can hear the passion in her voice for bring not just equality but equity into adult and community education, especially among minority groups. Until this becomes more equal, MOOCs and Harvard just seems hollow.

This shows the challenges not only in our class, but also in the world around us. Thankfully, we do not need to list all the challenges in the world. Here we will highlight the challenges we faced this month in our group project. For Natalie, the major challenge was studying about things she was not necessarily passionate about. A second challenge also came in “translating” to APA when she is so conditioned in using MLA with her students and literature background. For Meredith, realizing the problems and exclusivity in different education programs was upsetting, and a problem she thinks needs to be addressed in our community. For Robyn, the planning was the biggest challenge; while she was fortunate to spend time in California visiting Ph.D. programs with her daughter, she also was balancing an especially busy season at work coupled with school which felt overwhelming at times. For Emily, the biggest challenge was planning; we weren’t quick enough to plan out project parts which resulted in what felt like a very rushed week in putting together Project 3.

For our group, these disparities are a problem we wish to highlight and rectify in our future professional career work. This month our group was lucky to be able to connect for two hours via Skype to reflect on the last month and plan for April. As we all listened to the frustrations Natalie voiced, we began to realize that education inequality is a common theme through the history of adult and community education. Due to our interest in this, this is the “theme” we are going to use to tie together our e-archive for Project 4. We plan to turn our e-archive into a short “movie” presentation utilizing many of the decades, programs, and educators we have already discussed as well as by bringing in a few new sources. We have begun to distribute roles for that project, and this is what we have so far.

Social Justice in Adult and Community Education: The Successes and the Failures

Assignment	Responsibility	Due Date
Era - Each member will highlight the following about their era in a written outline About - What major events happened during your era? What were the major education movements during this time? Main Educators/Programs - Who lead these education movements? With what organizations and programs? Impact - Was the movement successful? What made it successful? How did it fail? What were the lasting effects In addition, each member will provide at least 2 visuals, graphics, and/or tables for their discussion. (Each member will talk about their era for 3-4 minutes. If you were to write out verbatim what you plan to say, this is equal to about 400-500 words)	1860s-1870s: Robyn 1940s-1960s: Natalie 1990s: Meredith 2010s: Emily	Wed April 5, Everyone review each others and add comments by Skype meeting
Looking Forward - After reviewing the information provided about all the eras, each member will answer the following questions in a short paragraph What can we learn from the past? What is the future of adult and community education? What has prevented PoC from fully participating in adult and community ed programs? How do we address these roadblocks in our future programming? These answers will be compiled during a Skype meeting on 4/8 and each member will be assigned a piece to highlight in a recording.	Everyone	Fri April 7
Group Skype Meeting Natalie to create group conversation invite Discuss “looking forward” section and assign parts for each person to record Discuss any questions that came up reviewing each others’ eras Discuss and distribute final jobs	Everyone	Sat April 8 at 10:30AM
Record your sections in iMovie	Everyone	Mon April 10
Splice movie together	TBD	Wed April 12
1 pager with sources	TBD	Wed April 12
Additional responsibilities and roles as needed	TBD	TBD