Warsaw Adult Education Offers HSE, ELL ClassesMany of the students seeking their High School Equivalency (HSE) are people who may not have graduated high school for a myriad of reasons and want to go back and get their degree.
Abby - who did not want to provide her real full name - is 39 and is going back to school now through Warsaw Adult Education (WAE) to get her HSE after dropping out of school at 15.
“Growing up in the Amish community, a lot of the times when eighth grade is done, they usually call it a graduation, but the state doesn’t see it as a graduation. And a lot of the jobs now, they ask for that higher education. There are some families in the Amish community who do encourage their kids more now than what they used to, to get that GED (now HSE) as they go on,” she said.
In her life, Abby said not having that high school education held her back.
“I always teach my children that if you’re going to start something, I need you to finish it,” she said. It was her oldest son - who is in college - who told her, “Mom, you always say that, but you haven’t finished school yet.” She said he’s right and he motivated her to get her education.
Abby said she wants to finish getting her HSE and then enroll in college.
“Anymore, with even doing just little things, not only do you need that high school education, but you need that further education,” Abby said.
Diana Clark, WAE coordinator who has been a part of the program since 2015, said the HSE and English Language Learners (ELL) classes are free.
HSE classes meet from 10 a.m. to noon Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at Ivy Tech, 2545 Silveus Crossing, Warsaw. ELL classes meet 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays and Wednesday.
Rochester classes meet at The Learning Center, 1820 S. Park Road, Rochester. Those meet Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m.
“They’re free classes and we can usually cover the testing fee - it’s a $115 testing fee to take the exam at the end to get your HSE, but usually we can cover that,” Clark said.
She said the age range for the HSE classes range from 16 to 60s. A person has to be at least 16 and not attending high school to take the HSE classes.
“It takes so much courage to just walk in here to meet with (WAE Transition Coordinator) Rick (Swaim) for the first time because some of them had horrible experiences in school or it’s been 30-40 years and it takes a lot of guts,” Clark said.
Swaim said they have students who don’t have money for gas or their car breaks down.
“So we have worked with a local group to get some money to pay for a taxi cab or bus. We are trying to get rid of all of the barriers - whether it be for the ELL people to get their diplomas or for the (HSE) people to get their diplomas. So we’ve got funding to pay for the tests, we’ve got funding for them to get here ... and we also do orientation to get people into the program once a month,” Swaim said.
Clark said during orientation, Swaim brings them in and explains what the program will be like. The students then have to take a pre-test, which is just so the WAE staff know the students’ abilities.
“We split them up by ability, so we don’t put somebody who needs to refresh on just multiplying/dividing, word problem stuff into the geometry classroom right away. We start them out at their level and then move them up as they get closer,” she said.
Swaim said, “It really is a teaching to the test, and that’s a bad word in some people’s minds, but there’s no ‘Iliad,’ no ‘Odyssey,’ ‘Scarlet Letter’ - they’re not doing that. We’re teaching them how to pass that test so they can get their diploma and go on.”
One of the people Swaim mentioned who wants to go on was Abby, who wants to go to Grace College, get her education degree and become an educator.
“People from all walks of life. We have former Amish students” and others, Clark said as she greeted students coming in Feb. 15.
Swaim said students have to get 12 hours of class time in before they can take the exam, which has five parts to it. At the most, he said, for some students it takes about a month to complete the classes and test. Clark said the shortest amount of time to earn the HSE can be 12 hours or four to six weeks, while it may take longer for other students.
“It is not a four-year process for most people. It’s usually a month or two,” Clark said.
Swaim said they have had people struggle for years. They came, dropped out, came back, dropped out again, until they finally finish. There are different reasons for that, he said, including family or legal issues. Clark said they go into the jails, too, and work with inmates twice a week.
“It’s amazing the need,” she said.
Moving over to the topic of the ELL classes, Clark said the idea is to always teach the class in English, but it’s hard to get someone started who doesn’t know very much English.
“We have lots of Spanish speakers. We have a couple people here tonight from Brazil, so they speak Portuguese, but they speak English very well. And then we have a student from Cambodia. We’ve had students from Austria, Nicaragua, Columbia and Mexico, all over the place,” Clark said.
WAE teacher Jennifer Burley teaches high school Spanish so Clark said she can be “super helpful.” Clark also has gotten really good at using Google to translate.
There are three different levels to ELL classes - beginners, a second level and an upper level. “Some of them just want to improve to go on to college or something like that, or take their HSE class, that’s what some of them have been doing,” Clark said.
Often, a person will take the ELL classes before the HSE, but a person can take the HSE in Spanish, though it’s taught in English.
Clark said both of the programs have grown immensely over the past year.
“We already have 48 graduates. And last year total we had 71. Usually, the spring is our busier time, so I think we’ll probably surpass that by far. Last year this time, we had five ELL students,” Clark said, and this year they have “way more than that.”
WAE has expanded a little bit over the previous years in other ways, too, she said. “We’ve been able to do a welding class. We do a logistics class in the jail here in Kosciusko County and then in Fulton County also. So there’s just a myriad of things,” Clark stated.
There’s not enough teachers to meet the demand, but Clark said WAE is ran by a grant so they’re limited by how much the grant can pay for. She said they have hired teachers this year.
Swaim said, “The better we do in terms of percentages and getting people to earn certificates, the more money we can possibly get. So, the better we do, the more they will reward us with more money.”
Gateway Educational Center Principal David Bailey said, “I hope my role is to help on that side of things as much as anything, because you’ve got amazing people leading the program here, they don’t need my help there. But maybe working with Ben Barkey in the Area Career Center, he’s really passionate about bringing some people in. Using some of his people to teach some of these other things that we could get people certified in - welding, machining. How could we, you know, help our people make some money but also train our community into doing things that could really grow our local product? So, it’s really exciting.”
He said they want Warsaw to be the light people look to in the state.
Clark said they have a graduation ceremony for their HSE students in June. It seems, right after that, they get all kinds of calls about the program over the summer, she said.
“So it is word of mouth because we ask them on the intake, ‘How did you find out about us?’ And it’s about 50-50 family, friends and word of mouth. Almost all of it is word of mouth,” Swaim said.
For more on WAE, visit the website at https://www.warsawschools.org/o/wae
