The Learning Center offers courses in everything from courageous conversations to jazz

The Learning Center, what its Director Roger Smith describes as a place for “lifelong learning” for the over-50 crowd, might not be the kind of place you’d think would host some of Savannah’s most important discussions on race. But Smith and co-teacher Rossie Norris are now on their fourth iteration of their “Courageous Conversations” series of nine-week courses, with participation averaging at about 25 students.

“Rossi called me [to ask] ‘Would you be interested in talking with me about doing a course that would have systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility as a theme?’” He recalled of the first discussions about the program. “And so, she and I talked on the phone a couple of times, we met in person a couple of times, and she inspired a great deal of confidence in me with her background of managing [and] facilitating discussions like this.”

Norris, who is Black, came with experience leading group counseling and racial reconciliation roundtables at the university level, and she asked Smith, who is white, if he would team up for the endeavor, bringing his longtime expertise as an educator to the mix. The founder and head of The Learning Center was happy to oblige, and the pair have been working together to expand the dialogue on race in the years since.

“I recognized the voice of authority with which she could speak on these issues,” Smith said of Norris.

For the leadership at The Learning Center, however, “Reconciliation and Repair: Courageous Conversations and Strategies Regarding Race” isn’t just a course in their spring catalogue. It’s part of a larger effort, says Smith, to increase diversity among both its programs and its attendees.

“We were nowhere close at the Learning Center to mirroring the demographic makeup of the city,” Smith acknowledged. “And so our advisory council, our board of directors, my boss, our executive director, and I just began being very deliberate about making new alliances with African American organizations, finding friends and allies in that community, and finding out what we could do to put a much more serious and deliberate welcome mat at the door for African American communities in Savannah.”

The outreach effort has lead not only to programs that Smith himself has helped to design, like he did with Norris and “Courageous Conversations,” but also lectures and courses lead by volunteer instructors who have come to him thanks to second- and even third-hand recommendations. Smith described the expansion of the center’s diversity programming as a “wonderful blossoming,” but which is not yet complete.

“It’s not something you do just one time,” he noted. “We publish four curricular programs per year. You don’t just do it once and say, ‘Job well done.’ We’re not done yet.”

Reconciliation and repair isn’t the only thing going on at The Learning Center right now, however, not by a long shot. The 36-page Spring catalogue tantalizes with, by my count, 41 separate opportunities for “lifelong learning,” and that’s just for this quarter. And the subject matter is as diverse as Savannah’s population, with lectures, courses, and discussion groups on jazz, Napoleon, the Georgia coast, and the history of alcohol consumption in America, to name a few.

“Our initial seasons were, of course, a good bit more modest than what we put out now,” Smith laughed.

Additional highlights for the season include an 8-week “Women of Genius” lecture series, with a different lecturer and different subject each week, as well as a talk by Savannah Morning News columnist Bill Dawers called “Paul Goadby Stone: In Search of Beauty,” where he looks to illuminate the unrecognized Savannah artist’s life and work.

Remarkably, almost every program is designed and led by a volunteer, someone like Norris or Dawers, who has expertise in their field and wishes to share that expertise with the community. Many have taught or still teach elsewhere. But even though they may not be getting paid in dollars and cents for their work at The Learning Center, they’re being profoundly rewarded in other, less tangible ways.

“Let’s just say there’s a Georgia Southern professor, who loves his or her job, but man, those 19 year olds who have to be in their classrooms for a grade, they’re looking at their phones, flaking out, falling asleep,” Smith described “Nearly to a person, our instructors leave here energized by the reception that they’ve gotten and the appreciation that they feel.

“What the learning center lacks in currency, we have to make up for in courtesy,” he added.

That courtesy has lead to a growing community of over 600 members and an entirely new wing of state-of-the art classrooms with streaming capability for their programs, as well as the addition of book clubs, yoga classes, and even a rotating art gallery. But more than anything, The Learning Center has become a place where conversations are happening that don’t happen anywhere else, and seats are available for anyone who wants to join in.

“It’s a flowing of those relationships,” Smith said of the ‘lifelong learning’ community that’s been built at the program he founded, “where the sum is greater than any of the parts.”

The Learning Center is a part of Senior Citizens, Inc.. Learn more about the Learning Center and its upcoming programs and events at seniorcitizensinc.org/the-learning-center.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah's The Learning Center offers courses for the lifelong student