The Genesis Center is a community-based adult education center located in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1982 to assist immigrants and refugees from Southeast Asia in their transition to life in the United States, the Genesis Center now provides adult education, job training, and child care services to people who have immigrated from all over the world. The Center has approximately 600 adult students in its day and evening classes each year. These adult students are from the greater Providence area; most are low-income residents, and about half have less than a high school education. In 2005, the Rhode Island Department of Adult Education was reorganized and accountability was given increased emphasis. Programs were urged to increase student hours of attendance so that a greater percentage of students could show learning gains in adult education classes, as measured by standardized tests. Some of the staff at Genesis became interested in the topic of persistence. They wanted to increase the persistence rates of adult learners in Barbara Alsabek's 12-hour-per-week beginning ESOL class. Three main strategies were chosen: (1) democratization of the classroom; (2) adjustment of curriculum to meet immediate student interest and demand; and (3) development of learners' metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness. In this article, the authors describe their strategies, how they were implemented, and how they think they affected learning gains. (Contains 1 table.)