2 minute read
Adult Education
FY2020 started off like any other, but sure did not end up that way. Students showed up ready to learn and to take charge of their lives, but the pandemic upended everyone’s lives including our adult learners.
Students, staff and volunteers all put in extraordinary effort to keep everyone safe while still learning. Many students were working or caring for children and going on WhatsApp or Zoom to speak English with their teachers and classmates, to prepare to take the HiSET test, and to get ready for college. Teachers employed creative ways to reach students including phone, texts, emails, online in Google Classroom or Canvas or Zoom, taking photos of assignments and texting them, mailing books to students’ homes and more. Volunteers worked over the phone with students, reading to them and listening to them read. Staff worked on non-academic help for students as well. Advisors tracked all the possible sources of help for students, from food and diapers and masks to unemployment, healthcare, shelter, and rent assistance, and were always there to listen and offer encouragement and reassurance. One student made hundreds of masks and Adult Ed staff shared them within the VOC community.
As the year wore on, many students and staff were personally affected by COVID, becoming ill themselves or losing loved ones to the illness. And they persevered, despite enormous challenges.
As Laura Dintino, a teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages, writes, “The resilience of my students has been amazing this past year. They attend classes in spite of challenges at home. A Level 1 student works the night shift, but gets up early to attend class after only a few hours of sleep. She knows she needs better English to get a better job. Another attends class while her kids are in their online classes at home. She is a single mom and has to assist them while working hard to keep up in her English class. In Level 2-3, a student from the Ukraine signed onto class from the hospital where she was being treated for COVID-19. Another attended class while caring for his new infant son. His wife had to return to work at the hospital and he is the caregiver, but he has dreams of going on to a career in health care. Similarly, a student who is the full-time caregiver for her mom with Alzheimer’s disease attended class while helping her mom. They all work around their home situations and find ways to attend class and move toward achieving their dreams.”
