SPANISH GED PROGRAM
WHY THE COMMUNITY NEEDS THE SPANISH GED PROGRAM
Students who take Centro Romero’s GED class have often dropped out of school well before achieving a high school diploma. This happens for many reasons…
Economic Reasons:
- Students have to leave school to support their family. Families often can’t afford the price of books, uniforms, transportation and other fees required to attend high school.
- Many youth leave school in order to immigrate to the U.S. in search of perceived opportunities. Students are discouraged pursuing further education when even college graduates in their home countries have few opportunities for good jobs.
Cultural Reasons:
- Young women often leave school when they are married.
- High School diplomas from other countries are not valid in the United States.
- Very few GED programs are offered in Spanish while the Latino community’s need for the GED remains high.
WHAT IS OUR PROGRAM
We have individual classes for each subject of the GED en Español:
● Mathematics ● Science
● Grammar ● Literature
● Social Sciences ● the Constitution
- Our classes are held Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights from 6:00pm to 9:00pm as well as Saturday mornings from 9:00am to 1:30pm.
- All classes are taught by community volunteers whose first language is Spanish.
- We adjust our classes to meet students needs, pushing students who are ready to learn quickly and moving at an appropriate pace for students who are coming back to a school setting for the first time in a long time.
- We teach the strategies and skills students need to take the GED test and to educate themselves beyond their GED.
WHAT WE’D LIKE TO DO IF WE HAD MORE RESOURCES
- Spanish GED is a crucial educational step for many Spanish-speaking students. We want the state to recognize the importance of Spanish GED and to provide funding for frequent volunteer teacher trainings as well as funding for paid staff teachers. These are assets that our other classes can find funds for, but currently Spanish GED relies entirely on our strong core of motivated volunteers who prepare and teach on their own time.
- There are currently not enough sites to offer the GED as often as it should be offered. We’d like to open Centro Romero up as a site for administering the Spanish GED so that there are closer and more frequent opportunities for Spanish speakers to take the GED.
- Costs for our GED students rack up: they have to buy books and pay $30 every time they apply to take the test. We’d like to someday be able to subsidize those costs.
- We’d like to bridge the gap between our Alfabetización (Spanish literacy) classes and our GED classes. We believe that with some intermediate (pre-high school) courses that all our students can achieve high levels of education.
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