Bordentown adult education program encourages lifelong learning | Bordentown - Community News Service

The Bordentown Community District Alliance adult education program runs high school equivalency classes, citizenship exam lessons, and more, summarizes Michele Alperin, freelance writer.

Krista Csapo works during the day as a middle school teacher in Delran, but the Bordentown resident spends evenings in what she says is “probably the most rewarding job I’ve ever done”—preparing adults to earn high school equivalency diplomas in Bordentown’s adult education program. “These adults see changes in their lives that they’ve been meaning to make for many years,” she says.

Students in the program run the gamut in age, motivation and life circumstances, says Darlene de la Cruz, supervisor of Bordentown’s adult basic education, English as a second language, and high school equivalency program. The most common reason students dropped out of school was overwhelming family circumstances, she says, and the people who stereotype these students as having been “too lazy” to complete high school are simply wrong, she says.

Csapo is particularly proud of two students. The first, after doing well in high school, stopped going to school in his junior year, when his mother went to war in Iraq. When he tried to return, the school told him he had missed too many days and couldn’t begin again until the next school year...

Some students just need a brush-up on English, writing, and math to be ready for the test. Others need a few months of preparation and practice. Those who come in at the sixth grade level start in adult basic education. When students test in at a ninth grade level, De la Cruz says, “I tell them it’s like riding a bike. You may not have been in school for a while, but once you’re into it the skills will come back.”

Students use multiple online programs in class to develop their skills, and have the option of also using them at home. “Because they are adults and have so many balls in the air, we want to give them as much flexibility in learning as possible,” De la Cruz says.
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Source: Community News Service