Wallingford Swarthmore Community Classes is a non-profit organization that provides adult education in Delaware County and beyond.
Since 1965, WSCC has provided classes on Mondays and Thursdays at Strath Haven High School, Park Avenue Community Center, Swarthmore Borough Hall, Rutledge Borough Hall, and more.
“We run day classes, and we run evening classes,” on-site administrator Tracy DiBonaventura said. “We run our evening classes at the high school.”
According to their website, WSCC classes are limited to adults over 18, but there are some exceptions for high schoolers.
“That’s the most amazing thing about these classes,” DiBonaventura said. “I see people who graduated from this high school a few years ago. I see people who are grandparents. Sometimes they never had anybody in the school district, but they just are part of the community.”
WSCC pays their instructors a wage that they would receive to teach part-time anywhere else. They also work with the instructors to determine a size cap for their class.
“Our teachers vary from people who are either experts in a certain area to retired college professors teaching for us right now,” DiBonaventura said.
The mayor of Swarthmore, Marty Spiegel, teaches “Soups & Stews,” a course designed to teach adults how to make tasty soups and stews.
“Some people approach cooking like a chore and therefore don’t like to do it,” Spiegel said. “If I can provide them with some hints and tips to make cooking a little bit easier and more enjoyable, hopefully, they’ll go home and do it more often.”
Spiegel shops on Tuesdays and cooks the recipes on Wednesdays. On Thursdays, he cooks it again in front of an adult audience to show them how he cooked it.
“Soups & Stews” is a class that takes patience by requiring students to let food cook. A challenge he faces is keeping people engaged for two hours.
“I don’t have the luxury of being able to stop you from cooking for two and a half hours, something that needs to take that much time on the stove, because the class is only two hours long, and no one wants to sit there and watch a pot boil,” Spiegel said.
Popular classes include stained-glass making, watercolor painting, and their history classes.
“Being around other people and seeing the inspiration from the teacher, [all] within one night has taught me so much that I didn’t know about art,” student and community member Mary James said.
Through these classes, DiBonaventura believes that community members get to see how their tax dollars are spent at the school.
“They [WSCC students] get to see the art on the walls and the band practice. Sometimes in the evening, they get to see kids dressed up, practicing for a play,” DiBonaventura said.
