Adult education offers students basic courses that can start them on important new career paths
Hamilton Adult School reminds its director, Silvia Robles, of a small rural school straight out of “Little House on the Prairie.”
“(It’s) very family-oriented, where we strive to meet their needs as best we can,” Robles says. “And while we may not have the fancy resources other adult ed programs have, we have a lovely school where students feel welcomed and know we will do anything and everything to help them move forward—because we are their teachers, their friends, their moms, their counselors.”
“We have a lovely school where students feel welcomed and know we will do anything and everything to help them move forward.”
Silvia Robles, Teacher and Director of Adult Education, Hamilton Adult School
In fact, Robles remembers early days in the school’s history when there was no permanent classroom and she held classes in churches, resource centers and even the park. “One summer I taught under the sun May through June,” she says with a laugh, adding it was 100 degrees and they gathered under trees for shade. “But students showed up—it was actually quite fun.”
Now the programs are funded by grants, are held in real classrooms, and are offered consistently—“basic core classes the community needs,” according to Robles, including ESL, high school equivalency and citizenship.
It was in a citizenship class that Robles met Fernando Zamora, who grew up in Los Molinos, California, a tiny town that “if you blink, you miss it,” she says. But he knew he had the opportunity to significantly change his life if he could become a U.S. citizen—which he successfully did. Now he travels the country, working on liners for landfills, so that dangerous chemicals can’t leak into the soil or groundwater. “It just took a couple of months to become a citizen,” he says from his current assignment in Atlanta. “You have to be an American citizen to work on [these] government contracts, so it helped a lot.”
His job is lucrative—especially with overtime—and allows him to travel too, and he credits the easy and free Hamilton program for his new career. “The teachers are good and have a lot of patience for people,” he says, adding the evening classes also allowed him to keep his day job. “You’ve only got to show up every Friday. They have good programs for everyone.”
For more information, visit butteglennadulted.org.
Written by Thea Marie Rood
| Regions | Classes |
|---|---|
| Northern California | English as a Second Language |
