News Channel 6 City Guide: Adult Education & Literacy Program at Region 9

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - The News Channel 6 City Guide is a segment that shines a spotlight on local businesses, events, and nonprofits in your communities. In this episode, we’re shining a spotlight on the Adult Education and Literacy Program at Region 9. It is a program that provides in-person and remote learning for GED prep, ESL classes, and so much more to an eleven country area.

“We provide GED prep classes. We provide English as a second language or ESL classes, career pathway classes in partnership with Vernon College, NCTC. We also offer TSI prep classes for students that are going to go onto college. They have to take, a lot of them have to take an entrance exam. So, we’re prepping them for that with math and reading classes,” Janis Heebner, the Adult Education & Literacy Program Coordinator said.

The college and career pathway navigator helps students map out their future, guiding them each step of the way.

“My job is to actually help students navigate from getting their high school equivalency, or, whether it’s an ESL professional, to getting them into a certificate program or a two-year program at whatever college it is that they decide to go to,” Xochitl Pruit, College and Career Pathway Navigator said. “I help them with their paperwork, navigate them and just make sure that things are easy for them.”

We sat down with some students who credit Region 9 and the Adult Education and Literacy Program for helping them succeed.

“A friend of mine came here and did a few online classes with them and I had explained that I had wanted to get my GED and she sent me this way,” Cinda Jimenez, a student in the program said. “One of the reasons why I even started was because of my son. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have done it. He explained to me that he couldn’t understand why he had to go to high school if I didn’t finish high school. So, I said, ‘You finish and I’ll get my GED.’ So, that’s what I did. I proved I could do it.”

During the pandemic, the program switched to remote learning. While in-person classes are now being offered again, remote learning is here to stay.

“It’s been very successful. [...] We serve 11 counties. So, it’s a way for us to serve all those counties. As long as students have a laptop and internet service at home, then they can log into our zoom classes from [anywhere] around our eleven counties that we serve,” Heebner said. “You know, there are students in these little rural towns that don’t have the transportation or their work schedule doesn’t allow them to travel 45 minutes or 30 minutes to class two nights a week. They can work in their own home [and] our teachers are great.”

Classes will begin this fall. For more information, call (940) 322-6928 or visit ESC9.net/AEL. If you would like your business, event, or nonprofit featured on the News Channel 6 City Guide, contact us at CityGuide@KAUZ.com or (940) 757-0691.

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