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Supporting passionately dedicated educators and adult learners who are thrilled there’s an accessible, supportive place to learn and continue their education for a better future.
Welcome to ACE. We’ve supported continuing education in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 50 years, since 1968. Please join the conversation.
Winter Season Brings Hope, Awards and Community to KALW and Audio Academy Members
By Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW, Audience Supported Public Media and Wren Farrell, Audio Academy ‘21 Winter is upon us. Despite the largely dreadful year we’ve worked through, I feel like this final season is one of hope. Perhaps it’s the COVID-19 vaccine that just started to be distributed. Perhaps it’s because I know we can come together to overcome extraordinary challenges. I’ve seen it. Altogether, we’ve seen it all this year, and there’s reason for optimism. I just spent many hours reflecting on the...
read moreLearning English in Oakland International High School’s Refugee and Immigrant Class is a Challenge Met with True Grit
By Martha Sessums, President, ACE It’s not easy learning English, especially if one’s native language has no sound or spelling connections to English. It’s one thing for an English speaker (me) to learn French (I try), a romance language that shares the same alphabet and many of the same words. It’s a test of true grit to learn English if your home country is Eritrea and the language you know is Tigrinya written in Ge’ez script (ትግርኛ). Or from Vietnam where the language is written using chū-Nôm (Tiếng Việt) a script using Chinese and locally...
read moreReflections on The Pandemic from an Oakland International High School Leader
By Carmelita Reyes, Founding Principal of Oakland International High School This year of distance learning has challenged educators, parents, and students alike. A casual scroll through my Facebook feed illuminates a multitude of complaints in posts by teachers in my school district, the parents of my kids’ friends who don’t know how to support their children, and teenagers moaning about boring online lessons. I have a unique perspective on the issue as I identify with all three groups. I became the primary distance learning parent this...
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