My Blog

Winter produces wacky wildness.  At least in adult education. The students who are still coming are either crazy or desperate.  The crazy folks just have nothing else to do with their time.  So they show up to GED class.  They are not coming to get their GED or even to make progress towards this purpose.  They are coming to be somewhere, talk to somebody, and do something.  And at the end  of the day, they go back to wherever they came from.  The desperate folks are signed up for the test in the next week or two and they are willing to do whatever it takes to pass it.  So, in the past two or three weeks, with the change in weather, change in holiday season, and change in sunset time, these are the people i have been dealing with all day, every day.

As a side note, I have decided to embrace the role of being a thorn in the side of the GED office.  They really, really do not like me.   Everytime i go up, I intentionally bring up an application that I KNOW will not fly, but i just have to push the limits.   Most recently, i actually helped one of my students attempt to "modify" the expiration date on his license.  Then i made a copy of it.  And brought it up to the GED office.  They noticed it and they rejected it.  Why did i do it.  Well, my reasoning is that students are working  for a GED in order to move themselves a bit closer to self-sufficiency, and to being able  to get a decent paying  job or go to college.  when a technicality like an expired ID is the only thing standing in between them and the test, I get frustrated at a ’system’ that does  nothing for people.  Most of my students owe some kind of ticket…parking, speeding, whatever.  actually, truth be told, they owe multiple  tickets.  I am not excusing them, but I am pointing out the catch-22…that they cannot register for the GED exam without the license, but they cannot afford to pay their tickets without the better job that will come with the GED credential.

And so I help them to try something,  anything, just to get one step further then they were before.  most of the time it does not work.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.