Literacy for Life: Endless possibilities

Beatriz Britting, 34, is living the American dream.

She and her husband of eight years, Jerome, own a home in Dayton where they are raising their sons Branden, 6, and Jason, 4.

He works during the day as a plant manager in Minden. She attends evening classes at Western Nevada College. They spend most weekends camping as a family.

But at 17, Britting had no idea what her future held. She only knew she didn't have one in Mexico.

"It's very sad to say this about my country, but there is no opportunity there at all," she said. "If you don't have money, you don't have the opportunity for an education or anything at all. It is sad, but that is the truth."

So she and her mother left their home state of Morelos to begin a new life in the United States.

"The first thing on my mind, like everybody else coming here, was money," Britting said.

She got a job working in the kitchen of a

fast-food restaurant where she spoke mostly Spanish to co-workers. After two years, she was ready for a change.

"I realized if I wanted to move on, I needed to learn English," she said.

With self-doubt and trepidation, she started attending night classes in Reno.

In Mexico, she had only attended school up to ninth grade, then dropped out to work, unable to afford uniforms and textbooks. Teachers along the way told her she wasn't smart enough to learn.

When she first started attending classes, her reading was classified at a second-grade level.

But her education soon got a boost when a co-worker asked her out.

"He went to Barnes & Noble and bought two dictionaries," she recalled. "One from English to Spanish for him and one in Spanish to English for me."

Despite a communication barrier, the two married and moved to Minden, where she signed up for English classes being taught by Geraldine Thomson.

"One thing is learning to speak the language. It's another thing to read it and write it," she said. "You guys have one word with different meanings, like the to, two, too word. It's really hard."

When she and her husband moved to Dayton in 2006, Thomson encouraged Britting to sign up for the GED class.

"I didn't feel ready at all," Britting recalled. "I felt so scared."

She enrolled in a GED Boot Camp at the college, with classes held four days a week for four weeks, four hours a day.

The adult education program at WNC, including the English-as-a-second-language courses, is funded by a grant from the Nevada Department of Education through the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act.

Director Teri Zutter said the mission "is to empower people who are choosing educational opportunities that will enable them to reach their life, work, civic, family and personal goals."

After taking the preparatory course, Britting passed the test.

"Once I got it, I realized I cannot stop here," she said. "I'm just going to keep going."

One of her goals along the way was to become a U.S. citizen, which she did in August 2008.

"I never thought I could do that," she said. "It was so emotional."

WNC offers an English Language Transition class that, although it is not worth any credits, is structured like a college class to help students transition into college-level courses.

"It was a big help," she said.

Now, she's enrolled in a keyboarding class that she attends in the evenings in order to stay home with her boys during the day. Her next goal is to get an associate's degree, but said she may end up continuing until she has a master's degree.

She said her oldest son asked her why she still went to school even though she was grown up.

"I tell them I stopped going to school when I was young and if they don't want to go to school when they're all grown up, they have to go now," she said. "I know how important it is. I tell them if they have an education, they can go anywhere in life."

Zutter said that is the true value of the program. It doesn't just help the student, it helps the community for generations to come.

"Her education does impact her children, her community and her personal well-being," Zutter said. "She shines with confidence, and I am certain she will be successful at any goal she sets her sights on, as I have watched her, little by little, change her life with the power of reading and writing."

BKOUT:

To learn more about Western Nevada College's adult education program, call Teri Zutter at tzutter@wnc.edu or call 445-4453.