KETTERING ADULT SCHOOL

Adult students buckle down

* Teachers work to create an extended-family atmosphere.

Katie Miller gestured toward the small room, populated mostly by young women.

"Everybody in there is scared to death," she said. "They break down when they're signing their name the first day.

"It's so scary, going back to school."

Miller and the other teachers at Kettering Adult School try to make adult basic education less intimidating by creating an extended-family atmosphere. The school in the D.L. Barnes Center, 3700 Far Hills Ave., has a variety of programs from pre-school to adult education under one roof. Students come from all over Montgomery County and sometimes elsewhere.

In some cases, mothers take Adult Basic Literacy Education classes in one one room while their children attend Pathfinders Preschool. Then parents and children come together for Even Start, a family literacy program for parents who don't have a high school education. The Even Start room looks like a family living room, not like a classroom - "it takes away the fear of learning," said school director Dan Fowler.

JIM WITMER/DAYTON DAILY NEWS

`We say our job here is not about education, it's about learning.'       DAN FOWLER, Kettering Adult School

"We say our job here is not about education, it's about learning," Fowler said. In other words, he said, officials at the school are less concerned about seeing that students go through the educational process and more concerned with seeing that they can apply what they've learned in the workplace.

When adult students begin, they're tested to gauge their needs. Based on their scores, students are placed in either the easy, intermediate, difficult or advanced level. Then they're tested again to zero in on their specific weaknesses.

"It blows their minds when they're tested and they've been in school 10 years or 11 years and they've gotten nothing out of it," Miller said.

But she said the testing prevents people from wasting time on material they already know, and lets them tackle problem areas with individualized attention. "We're trying to put them in an environment where they don't hit those same brick walls" that stopped them in the past, Miller said.

"These are not the (stereotypical) welfare people we sit at home and think about," she said of her students. "They work their butts off."