The Honolulu community baking course is an informal adult education program meant to offer minority women the opportunity to learn basic skills for improved family and social life. The package consists of 200 women taught by different trainers. Baking is the primary skill learned in the program, with other basic family support knowledge available to the learners. Learning takes place in the Honolulu conference center, unlike other programs on church grounds, making those from other denominations feel estranged. Moreover, the instructors are mature and highly informed about the needs of adult learners, such as the desire for directly applicable knowledge (Housel, 2020). All the participants understand the commonality of their challenges, making them learn with genuine love and understanding.
Several aspects concerning the communal baking class interest me. The first such thing is the program’s ability to bring together people with similar challenges. Most of the persons undertaking informal baking training at the Honolulu community baking class are immigrants formerly leading disintegrated lives. The groups suffered various problems, including a lack of fundamental know-how and illiteracy. English was also a major concern for a large number of immigrant women serving as housewives. Accordingly, the current program’s ability to combine English language training with baking classes makes it outstanding. Furthermore, the absence of a formal curriculum and punitive grading system makes the training effective and freestyle.
Honolulu community baking course’s instructors are highly informed and effective. The facilitators have excellent listening and speech skills to grasp and elucidate learners’ concerns. Offering instructions without a hard-to-understand accent makes learning interesting and promotes understanding. Facilitators attend classes with teaching aids such as mobile writing boards and flip charts to write for the learners, making it possible for the adult students to grasp knowledge via multiple teaching methods. The aspect shows the instructors’ ability to understand and accommodate apprentices’ special needs. Furthermore, offering person-centered training to the adults promotes understanding, making the facilitators unique. However, the availability of a significantly smaller number of instructors relative to the learners somewhat challenges the program’s effectiveness. Honolulu community baking course was highly effective for all the apprentices. The class’s ability to convert inactive immigrant women into socially active members proves its success. Most women graduating from the program lead independent lives and offer better care to their families. A meaningful number of migrant women in Honolulu now operate profitable baking organizations using the skills learned through the informal class. The program helps eliminate solitude among women by giving them the skills applicable in family and public settings, making the suite very prosperous.
Several features make the Honolulu community baking class different from the formal education system for adults. Examples of such elements include learning outside schools and colleges, where formal teaching happens. Moreover, informal training arises from the novice’s participation in undertakings that have not embarked on a learning drive. Additionally, informal learning is experimental based on its involuntary and unavoidable part of everyday life for the involved women. Furthermore, the absence of a syllabus and tests to measure learning outcomes makes the baking class different from the formal adult education structure.
Informal adult education is the way to go for immigrant women languishing in poverty and social disconnection in the U.S. According to Morris (2019), learning is a lifelong activity and can occur at whatever age. However, studying among adults requires basic formulation to make knowledge adoption relaxed. Accordingly, informal adult training programs exhibiting management and knowledge delivery issues should adopt the Honolulu community baking course’s strategies to realize above-average results. Whether the American education system can adopt appropriate policies to recognize certificates granted by the informal adult training program for official employment opportunities is a probing question concerning this program.
References
Housel, D. A. (2020). When co-occurring factors impact adult learners: Suggestions for instruction, preservice training, and professional development. Adult Learning, 31(1), 6-16.
Morris, T. H. (2019). Self-directed learning: A fundamental competence in a rapidly changing world. International Review of Education, 65(4), 633-653.