Henry, who entered adult classes as a brilliant vagrant and a homeless advocate, is extremely vocal about how his adult education experiences turned his life around:

It goes back to how I got changed around by going back to school. How it changed not only my life, but I would have to say it changed everybody around me because they began to see somebody totally different, somebody who went from carefree, didn’t care about nothing, to caring about everybody and everything.

Please, I’m not an angel, I’m not a Saint, but the fact that I went back to school and I worked with some of the nicest people, it made me realize we are only here for a short period of time, let’s make something of it. Even when I was in school, I was a homeless advocate, but that’s all I did… I was probably successful in it, but I didn’t go outside of that. I just stayed inside that little shell. Education has put me on the outside of that. I was able to work on the inside and the outside.

When it comes to anybody for adult education, I think everybody should take a moment and say, ‘what’s in this for me’, and I believe that if they just tried it, they would become a better person, not necessarily the most educated person. Because I don’t know if I retained all of that. There was a lot in a very short period of time. So I don’t know if I retained everything, but evidently I did.

I retained responsibility, I retained trying to work to be a better person, and I would make the suggestion to anybody that wants to try adult basic education to go ahead and do it because even if you don’t learn to be a mathematician and even if you don’t learn all of your geography and history and all of the fundamentals that we were supposed to learn when we were younger, you’ll learn to be a better person, you’ll learn you’ve got something in you that you never knew, you’ll learn that maybe you didn’t get your high school education, but you walk away with your GED and you’ll shock yourself. You’ll find something inside yourself that you never knew you had.

Summary of Adult Literacy Outcomes

To summarize the findings regarding Adult Literacy Outcomes:

• Eighty-five percent of participants suffered disorienting dilemmas prior to program entrance.

• Motives for enrollment included a need for self-sufficiency followed by the encouragement of others, the desire to set an example, self-improvement and selfactualization.

• Over two-thirds of the participants completed their program goals within a two year time span.

• All ABE and GED participants and five of seven ESL students have attained a GED or High School diploma.

• Participation difficulties included child-care, transportation problems, money problems, employment and emotional conflicts, and efforts by spouses to undermine attendance.