Giving school a second chance
Courage and determination bring 24,000 adults
back to classroom each year
LUISA D'AMATO
The Record
(Jan 12, 2004)
"I want to have my
own house. I want to take my children away on vacations." Deirdre
Scullion (left) with St. Louis Teacher Brenda Steffler |
They're a quiet group, and they don't usually attract much attention.
But each year about 24,000 adult students pass through Waterloo
Region classrooms that offer high school courses for adults, English and
career skills classes for new immigrants, and job training offered by
the public and Catholic school boards.
"It's mammoth," said Ken Lepard, principal of adult and continuing
education at the Waterloo Region District School Board.
There are about as many of these adult students as there are high
school students among the region's 19 regular high schools. They easily
outnumber the undergraduate crowd at busy University of Waterloo.
The difference is that in adult and continuing education most
students have struggled to get back into these classrooms.
Perhaps it's a single mother who got pregnant as a teenager and
dropped out of school. Or a man who spent his teenage years in refugee
camps abroad. Or it could be an educated professional immigrant who
needs help learning English and getting some job experience here.
Jeanna Dawson, who quit high school at 15 when she got pregnant,
remembers how it took all her courage to go back to classes nine years
and two children later.
That first day, on the bus to the St. Louis adult education facility
run by the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, "I cried all the way
to school," she said. "I was so scared. I didn't know anybody."
Now, with just two more courses to go before her diploma, Dawson is
confidently planning to apply to university for a bachelor's degree
program in social work.
And she wants other single moms to know that it's not so hard to go
back.
Dawson said she's grateful for the second chance she was offered at
an education. Without it, "I'd probably be working for the rest of my
life in a minimum-wage job," she said. "Education is what gets you
anywhere right now."
Deirdre Scullion is a 25-year-old single mother of three children who
said she "didn't like school" as a teenager. "I didn't think it was
important," she said.
After dropping out of school at 16, she lived part of the time on
social assistance and part of the time on her wages from a job making
and selling popcorn in a shopping mall.
Then she felt as if she'd "hit bottom." She hated relying on social
assistance. The father of her children wasn't contributing child support
and is no longer in the family's life. And she knew she would have to do
something.
"I want to have a car one day," she said. "I want to have my own
house. I want to take my children away on vacations."
She went back to St. Louis last September, discovered she had earned
some equivalency credits recognizing her life experience as a mother and
employee, and realized she could finish her diploma within a few months.
A couple of weeks ago, she wrote her last exam for her last course.
"Oh my goodness, I'm happy," she said.
Now Scullion is thinking about taking a hairdressing course, or
training to work with elderly or mentally challenged people.
The adult and continuing education departments of both school boards
put 8,600 adults a year through high school classes in day and evening
sessions.
Another 2,500 take correspondence courses in which they work at home
on their own.
Then there are the English programs for immigrants, which attract
about 8,300 a year.
And on top of that, there's a cornucopia of job-training programs
including computer courses, hairdressing, office skills, construction
work and a "personal support worker" program that trains its students to
work in places such as nursing homes.
Some of those programs offer, for free, the same courses that are
also offered at local private and publicly funded colleges for a price,
said St. Louis principal Tom Forestell.
The students are a diverse group. Some are over 50, and some even
have university degrees, but want that extra edge of job training.
"St. Louis has evolved from an adult high school that offered the
traditional secondary school credit programs to becoming an adult
learning centre. We've become a school-to-work facility," Forestell
said.
There are many differences between adult and children's classes, he
said. Adults don't have bells or buzzers to shoo them into classrooms,
though they are expected to have a professional attitude about
attendance. There's not a gym, extracurricular activities or a library
at St. Louis -- students use Kitchener Public Library instead. And
courses take just seven weeks -- 10 at the public board -- to
accommodate the more focused attitude and brisk pace these students
prefer.
The number of students rises and falls with the economy: when times
are tough, more people enrol in school because their job options are
more limited. But Lepard also predicts he'll be seeing more of the
students who are struggling with the demanding new curriculum in high
schools.
Meanwhile, he said, he's concerned about the fact that the province,
which pays $6,700 to educate a regular, adolescent high school student
for a typical year's worth of education, allocates only between
one-third to one-quarter of that for adult students.
Educators are expected to use continuing education courses -- for
which they may charge a fee -- to subsidize the other offerings
"It's unfair," Lepard said. "Every day we fight to keep our head
above water."
Not all school boards even offer adult education -- it isn't
mandatory and isn't provided by the public school board in Brantford,
for example -- but both local boards strongly believe in its importance.
"You owe them that second chance," said Lepard. "That's what
alternative education is all about."
ldamato@therecord.com
