Response to "Creating New Directions with Story: Narrating Life Experience as Story in Community Adult Education Contexts"

     Story telling seems an appropriate place to start the learning process for adults because it is likely a practice they already engage in.  The pervasiveness of story-telling connects all cultures together and identifies a common trait shared throughout humanity. Our stories are different, perhaps, but we all have them.  Perhaps the most important aspect of story-telling is that in telling and re-telling stories about life experiences, the story becomes an object available for analysis by the story-teller. The story-teller is then able to use perceive their own experience in a more analytic way which could lead to a better understanding of their “self” and their “self’s” relationship to the larger context of the world. It is a way of reflecting, from a distance, on events that you have lived.  That reflective process is integral to the kind of transformational learning that allows people to objectively view and, perhaps, alter the circumstances of their lives.

     Story-telling also has a way of evening the field between the members involved in the group. Students who might be reticent about participating in learning practices in the group for affective reasons, or because perceived unequal power dynamics make them seem vulnerable to judgement or ridicule, could become more comfortable and open to the learning environment once they have gotten to know the people in the group through stories.  The commonality among experiences of diverse groups of people never ceases to amaze me. Everyone has loved someone; lost someone; has a story about their mother, father or children; everyone is from somewhere and has stories connected to that place. Of course, story-telling as a learning event must be connected to the reflective process in order for it to be effective. It’s not really about the story; it’s about what you can learn from your story and how that learning relates to the learning experiences of other people in the group.

Response to "Older College Students as Tutors for Adult Learners in an Urban Literacy Program" by Daphne Ntiri

     The program described by Daphne Ntiri in “Older College Students as Tutors for Adult Learners in an Urban Literacy Program” is of great interest to me personally both because I was both an older college student and a tutor of adult learners. Of particular interest to me were the differences in “norms” between older and traditional college students. The article states that, “norms more characteristic of adults than traditional age college students include good class attendance, attentiveness, active class participation, motivation, completion of assignments, self-reliance and academic honesty” (49). This quote bears out my personal observations with regard to the older students I’ve encountered during my long and sometimes sporadic pursuit of post-graduate education.      I think that older students have experienced more obstacles with regard to attaining higher education and it is, therefore, perceived as something more valuable to us. In addition, because we have experienced difficulty in reaching standards we’ve set for ourselves we can better understand the experiences of adult learners generally. Perhaps, we offer a kind of support that traditional students can’t. We can say things like, “I hear you. I understand your situation. I know it’s hard, but you have to keep working. If I could do it, you can do it.” These things we say combined with the help we can provide offer both academic and emotional support for adult learners. Adult students might also feel more comfortable sharing their perceived inadequacies with tutors who have perceived inadequacies in themselves. Perhaps, they don’t feel judged as someone who has ever lacked anything except the opportunity to learn.