Back to School

Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education

Mike Rose

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781595588036
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación de adultos

"Shines a light on institutions that are teaching students, young and old, how to rebuild our economy and put America back to work" (President Bill Clinton). It's a statistic that's sure to surprise: Close to forty-five percent of postsecondary students in the United States today did not enroll in college directly out of high school, and many attend only part-time. Following a tradition of self-improvement as old as the Republic, the "nontraditional" college student is becoming the norm. Back to School is the first book to look at the schools that serve a growing population of "second-chancers, " exploring what higher education—in the fullest sense of the term—can offer our rapidly changing society and why it is so critical to support the institutions that make it possible for millions of Americans to better their lot in life. In the anecdotal style of his bestselling Possible Lives, Mike Rose crafts rich and moving vignettes of people in tough circumstances who find their way, who get a second...or third... or even fourth chance, and who, in a surprising number of cases, reinvent themselves as educated, engaged citizens. Rose reminds us that our nation's economic and civic future rests heavily on the health of the institutions that serve millions of everyday people—not simply the top twenty universities listed in U.S. News and World Report —and paints a vivid picture of the community colleges and adult education programs that give so many a shot at reaching their aspirations. "Thoughtful and surprising." — The Washington Post "Inspiring stories of older Americans attending secondary schools." — Kirkus Reviews

ONE

Adult Education and the Landscape of Opportunity

“AS YOU CAN HEAR from my accent,” the coordinator says as she distributes flyers to the women and men seated at the tables before her, “I came from another country, too.” The fifteen people at the tables are in an advanced English as a Second Language class, and some of them will be moving on to the district’s Adult Basic Education program where a smaller number will further transition into the coordinator’s GED classes to eventually earn a high school equivalency certificate. It will be a long journey.

“I was an ESL student like you,” the coordinator continues, “I sat in these chairs many years ago.” Behind her projected on the white board is a list of the GED subject areas:

Language Arts – Reading
Language Arts – Writing
Mathematics
Social Studies
Science

“Now I am teaching the classes I took. So be patient. You will achieve your goals.”

In the audience are three men: one Ethiopian, two Filipino. Two women are from the Middle East. The rest, all women, are Chinese and Korean. Most of the students are in their twenties. As the coordinator is explaining Adult Basic Education and the GED program, a number of the students are nodding and softly voicing the signals of comprehension, uh huh, mmm. . . . Their ESL course, after all, is focused on speaking and listening. When the coordinator tells her personal story, the murmur of understanding increases in tempo. A young Korean woman in a purple jacket, feathery fringe around the collar, leans forward: the lead in the chorus.

The ESL program is located in an old building along the perimeter of one of the district’s middle schools, not far from the adult school offices and classrooms. On the drive back, the coordinator, Maria, explains a little about the ESL population. Some have done well in the equivalent of high school in their home country. They are fully literate in their native language and know math and science. A few, like her, might have postsecondary degrees—Maria’s is in physical geography—and they will do very well here as their English improves.

Other students had to work or had children early, or were restricted by cultural norms, or were caught up in political turmoil or war, so their education was disrupted, sometimes at an early age. As Maria drives, she leans forward slightly, intent on the road but fluid in conversation, tapping the fingers of her right hand on the steering wheel to punctuate what she’s been telling me. These students, the ones whose schooling was cut short, have years of study in front of them, but, if—a big if, Maria acknowledges—employment and family arrangements work out, they’ll make it. They will make it. She tells me that I will see some of last semester’s ESL cohort in the basic education class in the building that comes into view as we round the corner into the parking lot of the adult school.

There are a little over four thousand adult education programs in the United States. They vary state by state, but the typical offerings include general enrichment classes (cooking and crafts, fitness, computers, local history and geography) and the kinds of classes that concern us here: occupational education and job training, English as a Second Language, Adult Basic Education (typically for people with elementary literacy and mathematics skills), and Adult Secondary Education—typically as preparation for the GED or the high school diploma itself. Maria coordinates Adult Secondary Education in her district. In some states, adult education is organizationally housed within K–12; in others it’s connected to postsecondary education, particularly the community college system; and in yet other states it’s aligned with both K–12 and postsecondary education. It’s a complex mosaic nationwide, but the important thing to note for our purposes is that the particular arrangement has consequences for budgets and for the kinds of programs that can be developed. At a community college in the Midwest that I visited, for example, GED instruction blends with the college’s health sciences curriculum, leading students not only to GED completion, but also to course work for an occupational certificate or an associate’s degree.

Maria leaves me at the Basic Education classroom and goes down to her office to prepare for her math class. The room is about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long with off-white walls, and a mix of natural and muted fluorescent light resulting in a soft, clean illumination. Bookcases, filing cabinets, and small stands and tables line the four walls; maps and posters are arranged symmetrically between and above them. The teacher, Kevin, a lean, long-haired, affable guy admits with an apologetic forward shrug of the shoulders that he’s “a neat freak.” The books, and there are many of them, are mostly workbooks and reference books geared toward the middle grades (Reading Power, Breakthroughs in Math, Grammar in Context), dictionaries, encyclopedias, and abridged fiction: Jack London, Kate Chopin, Richard Wright. The room is orderly but inviting. On the teacher’s desk is a small vase of blue and yellow papier-mâché flowers. By the door hangs a skeleton, about three-quarters human scale, a pair of Groucho glasses with black bushy eyebrows resting on the skull’s bony ridge.

Students sit in three general areas of the room: at two rectangular tables in the center before the main whiteboard; at another rectangular table off to the left, facing a whiteboard on the west wall; and, on the other side of the room, at an oval table where one-on-one tutoring takes place. A teacher and several aides—most of the aides are volunteers—provide both small group and individual instruction. On the day Maria drops me off, eleven students sit at the central tables with Kevin, the teacher, and seven sit at the table to the left with an aide who is a retired engineer. Two students receive individual instruction in basic reading (“Which of these words begins with an ‘M’ sound?”) at the oval table.

The curriculum is a traditional one. Today both the main table and table to the left are doing a series of vocabulary-building exercises, although the level of difficulty is different. During the hour, students match words (morale, colleague, gauge) with definitions, then they write sentences containing the words, which the teacher dictates: “My colleague who designed the computer program is responsible for its success.” The students then write the dictated sentences on the board and, as a group, decide whether a sentence has an error and, if so, edit it. I suspect that the majority of Adult Basic Education programs around the country use a language arts curriculum similar to this one, although some programs draw more on creative-writing assignments or on local history and the life experiences of the participants or on employment-related topics and materials.

Most of the students in the room are in their twenties and thirties; several are older, and there is a sharply dressed woman in her sixties who, the teacher tells me, comes for the social contact, to improve her English, and, in her own words, “to keep my mind alert.” Five of the twenty students are native speakers of English, one of whom is a man with a first- or second-grade reading level. Most students are Latino or African American, two are Filipino, and one young woman is from Poland. Some have recently transitioned from ESL, but most have been in the United States for some time and are now at a place in their lives when they can come back to school. Most are here to improve their English, and, as the teacher puts it, they all have a goal: in some cases, they had a job and built skills but got laid off and want to improve their English to get another job. Some want to go all the way through to earning the GED certificate. The counselor, Betty, tells me of a woman who, due to child care and work, could come for only one hour per day but did so for years and eventually took and passed the GED exam. In other parts of the country, the ethnic and racial composition would be different, but the kinds of stories would be the same. As Betty puts it, these are people who are trying to change their lives.

The class seems engaged and the students interact easily—some on the shy side, some outgoing—with the instructor and with each other. In some sense their participation matches the feel of the room. Interaction is orderly, structured by the nature of the curriculum—workbook exercises, questions and answers, dictation and response—but not rigidly so. The instructors have a nice way about them, their voices—from baritone to tenor—have a pleasant modulation, encouraging, respectfully upbeat. And although the discussion is focused, there is ample room for digression. The vocabulary word autobiography leads Kevin to ask what famous autobiography wasn’t actually an autobiography? (The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was written by Alex Haley). To the side I hear an aide follow up on a question about biography versus fiction and explain the genre of historical fiction. The word amateur leads another aide to acknowledge that one of the Latina students speaks French. And a student’s comment about a radio spot on chewing gum as enhancing test taking leads Kevin to speculate with the class as to how they might set up an experiment to test that claim.

I slide my chair over toward the oval table to better hear Jennifer, the aide working with the student on basic reading. He is an African American man in his mid-forties, broad chested, dressed neatly but in well-worn shirt and trousers. “Last week I went to a class on job safety,” he reads slowly as Jennifer helps him. They have been working on this material for a while, and he moves through it with a firm voice. Jennifer tells me that his posture at the desk has gotten straighter over the last few months. He grew up in the rural Midwest, barely went to school, has lived off of basic labor, recently came out of prison, and is determined to learn to read. Though he is still learning to match letters and combinations of letters to sounds, his printing of those letters is perfect. He has wanted to learn to read and write for a long time, and perfecting his script was one thing he could do. You’ll find students like him in Adult Basic Education, but more often in adult literacy programs in libraries, churches, or community-based organizations. In this relatively small district, though, there are few such programs, and none offered through the library. So he started coming to Kevin’s class.

I am struck by the diversity of backgrounds and skills in this single room. People with postsecondary degrees from another country and a man who has barely been inside a schoolhouse. People in their early twenties, a lifetime in front of them, and a woman with grandchildren, who comes to school to keep her mind alert. People navigating cultures and languages. People starting over. One of the things he particularly enjoys about the place, Kevin tells me, is seeing an eighteen-year-old African American kid who grew up down the street forming friendships around a common goal with a forty-five-year-old mother from Central America or the Philippines or Southeast Asia. There aren’t many places where that can happen.

“No one can hide from her,” was one of the first things I heard about Maria, and it was meant as a big compliment. She is in her late forties, of medium height, shoulder-length brown hair cut in a simple style. As she says, she speaks English with an accent, and as she talks she looks at you, looking up from a filing cabinet, looking sideways as you walk with her. In addition to coordinating the Adult Secondary Education program, and influencing so much else in the adult school, Maria teaches mathematics, primarily to those preparing for the GED exam or a high school diploma. I understood the “no one can hide” comment during my first visit to Maria’s class. She calls on students, particularly in the last rows where the reluctant sit. She jokes and pleads and hectors them to study, to do problems at home, to come see her. She goes person to person to lock in a meeting: “What time are you leaving today?” “Do you work every afternoon?” “Do you have Internet at home?” “Do you live around here?” Then: “OK, I want you to come see me at three o’clock.” She and the counselor, Betty, will call people if they begin to miss school. “You all can do it,” she says to the class, leaning forward, both hands on the desk. “Even if it is a nightmare, you can do it. But you have to ask for help.” There is no escaping Maria.

In fact, Maria’s identity in the classroom is one of the more complex blends of characteristics I’ve seen. She is a strong, methodical teacher. She is a coach and a cheerleader. She abides no nonsense, taking a young woman’s cell phone (“unless you’re an OB-GYN you don’t need this now”). She is the moralizing aunt: “You’re doing the same thing you did in high school. That’s what got you here.” She is a passionate advocate. She cares deeply. She laughs at herself and jokes with the class, and they joke back. And she works and works. A student sitting by me is close to tears, frustrated as she tries to do a problem that eludes her. Maria sees her, comes over, sets up a time to see her during a holiday break.

Though some of her students did well in school in other countries—and therefore have a solid basic education and a certain assurance about school—many went to school in the United States and, for various reasons, did not do well. School for them is not a pleasant place, and their fear, which can manifest as withdrawal or rejection, is quivering right beneath the surface. Nowhere is that fear more palpable than with mathematics. Given the history of failure and the anxiety that some of these students carry, it’s quite a testament to willpower that they show up. Maria passionately wants to get through those emotional barriers: “It’s a light crust,” she says, “and once you crack it, you can make a change.” I wonder whether that multifaceted persona of hers is the accumulation of all the different ways she’s found to crack that crust.

The GED and high school diploma programs are test driven, and students prepare for the tests through math and English classes and through different levels of individual study in the Independent Learning Center, a large room filled with computers, books, filing cabinets, long tables, and chairs. This is also the place where students take most of their tests—units on science, units on math, all sorts of computer-based tests on language arts. So there is a good deal of back and forth between students at desks or terminals and teachers or aides going to filing cabinets or computer screens to check scores, monitor progress, offer direction. On some afternoons when students from different classes converge, the place is packed.

Given the importance of testing, it’s no surprise that Maria focuses on test-taking strategies. “Read the question,” she repeats. “Watch for what is being asked. Don’t do everything right but forget to really look at the question.” She gives her students problem after problem, making them read the problems out loud and state precisely what the problem requires. “They’ll list answers that make sense if you misread the problem. So, think first!” She gives them tips based on experience: “The GED loves graphs or tables,” or “You can bet there will be a question on scalene triangles.” And she gives them problem-solving routines and shortcuts. Tricks of the trade. Sandra, the woman who teaches the class these students take in English, does a lot of the same kind of thing. They are trying to provide in a few months the academic know-how that students successful in American schools gain over years.

For some time now, Maria has been very much involved in a statewide project that provides instructional technology assistance for adult education. She has mentored other ...