Tammy Schatz says the Moorhead School District’s adult basic education program serves hundreds of men and women each year, ranging from those working toward their GEDs to others — mostly new Americans — who are taking their very first steps toward English literacy. Teacher Deb Hannestad is one of 20 who work with 400-some students. (Photo/Russ Hanson)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson
hansonnanc@gmail.com

The men and women learning through Moorhead Adult Basic Education are headed in many directions.
Some are studying for the GED, that gateway to greater employability and college. Others grapple with basic English or concentrate on building their skills in reading, conversation and everyday math. Whatever their personal goals, they’re coming to class at the Vista Education Center — these grown-ups, from 20-somethings to grandparents — to take their places in the community around them … to qualify for better jobs, to build better lives for themselves and their families, and to set the best example for their children.
Adult students’ goals may run the gamut, says Tammy Schatz, who directs the consortium of ABE programs that includes Moorhead and four surrounding communities, but they share one quality that sets them apart from their traditional school-age peers: Every one of them is eager to learn.
“This is a happy place,” Tammy says. “Our teachers like the enthusiasm and the flexibility, and they love our students.” While most of the faculty of 20 share backgrounds in elementary and special education, they welcome the opportunity to work with these highly motivated adults: “They get to do all the fun stuff they’ve always loved about teaching … but without any of the behavior issues,” she notes.
Last year about 400 men and women attended ABE classes here and in Barnesville, Hawley, Breckenridge and Wheaton, the multi-district consortium Tammy leads. It’s one of 42 collaborations operated by Minnesota Adult Basic Education, all funded by a combination of state and federal sources. The Moorhead-based consortium’s funding includes $392,000 from the state and $19,000 in federal dollars.
Most of the Moorhead students attend classes in the Vista center at I-94 and 34th Street, the former site of Globe University, while night classes are the rule in the other cities. Students spent roughly 31,000 hours pursuing their education last year.
A substantial majority of the local learners, Tammy says, are not native English speakers. Last year’s classes included 17 other languages. Somalian is spoken by more than one-third of students, followed by Kurdish, Spanish and Arabic. The mix includes a virtual globe’s worth of other tongues, often in ones and twos, from African languages like Swahili, Dinka, Basa, Grebo and Kinyanwanda to Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Farsi (Persian), Portuguese and Creole French.
“Well over half of our students were born outside the United States,” Tammy says. Many, but not all, arrived as refugees – some just a few weeks ago, others in decades past. Two-thirds hold down jobs at the same time they’re attending classes. They can stay with the program as long as it takes to reach their personal goals, from months to years; the average, she says, is probably one year.
Tammy notes her program has no typical student. “Maybe they were professionals in their homeland,” she says. “Now they want to upgrade their credentials to U.S. standards or improve their English.” Many have attended school in the past, but need to obtain an American diploma before they can enter college or vocational training. On the other end of the scale are adults who are truly pre-literate, unschooled in their native languages, much less English. Instruction is highly personalized, with a teacher-to-student ratio of no more than one to ten, often less.
Like many of Minnesota’s ABE teachers, Tammy comes from a background where diversity was a foreign concept. “I grew up in Warren, Minn., and graduated in a class of 49,” she reports. “You could count the number of non-Caucasians I knew on one hand with fingers left over – and a couple of them were exchange students. I did not know a single Muslim or have African American friends.”
That changed when she arrived at Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1987 to major in elementary education. A part-time evening job introduced her to the ABE program … “and I fell head over heels in love with it,” she says. She joined full-time in 1993 and was named director four years ago.
Flexibility is built into the program. The Moorhead classrooms bustle on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; in other towns, night classes are the rule. Students with internet access can also study and practice at home. Mondays are devoted to career-specific topics – computers, health careers, workplace standards, financial basics and how to interview for jobs.
Along with their teachers, dozens of volunteers spend time with students to give them more experience with the language and American culture. Joycelyn Wainwright has met weekly with an evolving group of men and women, now including women born in China, Korea and Iraq, as well as a man from Kurdistan.
“We read a story to stimulate conversation,” explains the Fargo woman, who with her engineer husband lived all over the world while homeschooling their five now-adult children. “We spend a lot of time on vocabulary and colloquial phrasing.” The focus of her two-hour sessions is a freewheeling look at American culture, along with the experiences the students bring to their new home.
Tammy notes that more volunteers are always welcome: “They bring the advocacy piece to the puzzle,” she says. “They’re people who are frustrated that this population of new Americans is being marginalized. They just come out of the woodwork, asking, ‘How can I help?’”
Their devotion helps counteract the social isolation that many newcomers experience in a strange new land: “So many of them are dealing with fear and depression,” she says, “with no one to talk to and their loved ones far away across the ocean. Our teachers and our volunteers bring them out of that loneliness. We often become like family.”
Rahma, a student in her 20s, is an enthusiastic witness to that spirit, as well as a believer in how Moorhead’s ABE helps students excel. Displaced as a child from her home in Somalia, she graduated from high school in Ethiopia before emigrating as a refugee to East Grand Forks. She relocated to Moorhead last year, enrolling in M State’s pharmacy tech program. But after earning her first 16 credits there, she decided to take a semester off to prepare to test for her GED – a choice she believes will help her meet her career goal more quickly when she returns to college.
She describes the positive, optimistic spirit that seems to infuse the whole program: “The teachers encourage me every day,” she says with a big smile. “It’s almost like a family here.
“You can learn so much better when you’re happy.”