From Dependence to Independence: Building Community Outside of Class

This past spring, a couple weeks into my adult ESOL class, a couple students came up to me and said, "We'd like to have a Friday Social every week."  "Sure," I said.  By the next week, a half dozen students were delegating who was responsible for napkins or cutlery and who was on salad duty, lugging in huge plates of food, and hobnobbing with fellow classmates they'd only met a scant few weeks before.

On the one hand, what could be better?  We were building a community for folks who often lacked one.  My students came from neighborhoods high in poverty in violence, from which most families try valiantly to shield their kids, if not just get out.  Some of my students lived in shelters--so they were definitely trying to get out of their communities.  Most of my students toiled to raise their families in relative isolation.

Friday Social was a chance to kick back among a newfound group of peers.  At the bare minimum, they could let off some steam between learning the present continuous and setting realistic goals (woo-woo!).  More than that, the social was a space to share what their lives were like, and learn from each other: What do you do for daycare for your daughter?  What's your son's school like?

But I was faced with this dilemma: the student social started running 10 minutes over the 15 minutes which had always been the allotted time, making it tougher to dive into important material after break.  And the social was happening all in Spanish--while most of the students were Latin American, one was from Africa.  To tackle the language use, I introduced the concept of "small talk," modeling questions you could ask your classmate as you munched arepa: How's your family?  Where do you live?  I then had different students prepare questions for each week ahead of time. 

To tackle the time issue, I brokered an agreement: Social could last 20 minutes (more than the usual 15-minute break), so long as 15 of those minutes were spent speaking English.  While I reveled in the organically, student-created nature of Friday Social, I accepted their gracious invitation to eat alongside them, but maintained a low profile.  It was their space.

In my constant mission to move students from dependence to interdependence and independence, Friday Social was, unintentionally, a great example both of how an interdependent, out-of-class culture can crop up among adult learners, and of some of the dilemmas such a cultural gathering poses in practice.

At the end of the day, for folks living in poverty, especially immigrants, the chance to build a support network was incredibly valuable.  When it comes to moving adults toward relying on each other and on themselves, there are many steps to be taken.  But rather than provide my usual list of promising practices, as I have about gaining independence in language acquisition and classroom culture, I wonder what more I could do.

Imagine if students created working groups outside of class to share ideas about public benefits, education programs, and supports for their children? ...


created parent unions for their schools? ...


protested adult-education budget cuts?

These are just the tip of the iceberg.  Things I haven't gotten to yet.

What ideas do you have?