Gold.

Working with GED students isn’t always as easy or as fun as I imagine that it is. Sometimes I try to glamorize it to others, so that I remind myself that it is an adventure. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. The people that I work continually find ways to humble and amaze me. But the job is not without its hang-ups.

I’ve become irate when I’ve been stood up for study sessions and irritated for assigning homework that doesn’t get touched, or even thought of, until the next class. That is, if my students make it to class. There are days that the seats are not even half full, and on the days when it rains, the only people there are the ones with cars, who live in the area, or were on the bus before it started raining. Weekly there is a death, someone in the hospital, someone else near losing housing. When I get hungry and I eat my lunch, sometimes I eat a piece of humble pie while I wonder who didn’t get to eat at all that day. There are people who get up at six or six-thirty in the morning, while I drive two miles because I overslept that morning. And the only way the to explain positive and negative numbers is to use a checking account as an example.

All of this makes orientation week exhausting. After testing and a whole week of preparation for the next session comes the day I look forward to with excitement and dread. It almost feels like a reunion of sorts because there are students that I haven’t seen for a six weeks or longer coming in and out of the building, and the new students are getting their new schedules timid, but excited about the next session. But it also means having to explain to someone who made it to the 11th grade, who has fed a family, been a manager, or is twice my age that they have been operating on the 5th to 7th grade level. It’s dancing with reality and optimism and hoping that this session will be the one that gets this students into the world with the education the world says they need. There’s a lot of unhappy faces when the test scores come back. It’s easier to deliver bad test scores to a newer student. It’s the students who have been here for a year or more and still haven’t made any changes that kill me.

But today was a very good day.

Because one of my students got his GED.

I have been with Delgado for a year now, only two months as staff. I know a lot of the people in the program, but there are very few students that I felt were “mine.” Mine in the sense that I taught them from when they came into the program and watched them work through. This particular student started his first session with Delgado in June in the first class I co-taught. We were rookies together. Let me tell you, this man has seen me
flounder. He has seen me grasping for explanations and examples the same when you do when you’re about to drop something special and fragile, and then you watch it shatter wondering why you bothered to begin with. I’ve watched him come to class tired, on his way to or from work in his work clothes. I have watched him put his pen to his paper and heard stories about his life in essays that I’ve corrected and made him rewrite. I’ve worried that he was going to drop out and been annoyed that he left early. But I guess we’ve been a support system for each other without actually really knowing each other. I encouraged him to come to class, and helped with what he needed to study (not much really), and he’s thanked me for working with him and encouraged me, despite my bumbling teaching attempts.

He took his GED about two weeks ago. He was worried about orientation day and getting his schedule. He couldn’t come to get his schedule on the day returning students were supposed to come, so he sent a friend. We were closed when she got there. So he came in today, and he sat down at my desk.

“I’m here for my schedule.”

In my zombie like state from telling people their schedules all morning, I started to pull his name up in the system. Halfway through typing his name, I stopped. “You took the test last week, didn’t you?!”

“Yeah, I just figured I didn’t pass.”

I couldn’t recall seeing his name on the test results list that I checked earlier in the morning. But I couldn’t believe that he would fail.

I pulled up his scores and bursting, I turned to him. “You don’t need that schedule after all.

A slow smile spread over his face, his four gold teeth shining in the happiest smile. “What?! You serious?!” He shot backwards in his rolling desk chair almost taking down another teacher.

He gave me a big hug and thanked me. “I did it! I have a step-daughter and nephew in the 12th grade. And I told them that I would finish before they did. And I did!”

His face glowed when I told him that we would be having a GED graduation in the spring time. I knew that there was no need to ask if he was interested in it, but I did anyway. His smile got bigger, and he said that he’d be there.

“You know, I told you to read my teacher evaluation about you, and you said you couldn’t. Well, I just want you to know that I said and I tell everyone else that you have know choice to fail when they have you for a teacher.”

The best part of the day lasted only for a couple of minutes. But it made for the best orientation day ever.