Photo provided Adult education coordinator Nickie Nolting, English teachers Arlene Parsons and Mayra Rodriguez are shown in this portrait.
Teachers and administrators from a local adult education center were among those who helped refugees at Camp Atterbury learn English and other life skills as part of what state officials called a “herculean effort” over a short period of time.
Educators from the McDowell Education Center were honored at the Statehouse Jan. 24 as part of Adult Education Day, said Megan Shaff, the school’s director. Department of Workforce Development (DWD) officials also presented the school with a certificate of recognition for “outstanding service” in Operation Allies Welcome during an adult education meeting later that day.
More than 76,000 Afghans have come to the United States through Operation Allies Welcome. Aaron Batt, Department of Homeland Security federal coordinator assigned to Camp Atterbury, said that 7,200 refugees came to the base. The final group of Afghan refugees housed there left in late January.
The DWD worked on-site at Atterbury to help refugees in “transitioning to work opportunities in Indiana and across the country,” state officials said.
“This has been a herculean effort to get this done in such a short period of time,” said Department Commissioner Fred Payne.
McDowell is aligned with the department, which provides funding for adult education, and received a call from DWD official Jerry Haffner in early November, Schaff said.
“The governor’s office had reached out to the DWD and said ‘We want to put something together here to work with Operation Allies at Camp Atterbury to serve our Afghan guests, and we also want to include English classes with that. So how can you guys help?’” Shaff recalled. “So, anyway, he (Haffner) gave us a call, and we said, ‘Sure, we’ll help.’ And we were there a little over a week later.”
McDowell’s team first visited the base on Nov. 16. Schaff said that two other adult education programs, the Broadview Learning Center and the Central Nine Career Center, also helped provide education to the refugees. The first two weeks at the base were mainly made up of assessments, as well as learning more about the needs at Atterbury.
Classes then began the week after Thanksgiving. Arlene Parsons led McDowell’s work to teach intermediate English to refugees who had some knowledge of the language. Mayra Rodriguez taught the beginning level. McDowell staff taught classes at the base on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with the last day of classes on Jan. 13.
“We were a part of almost like a one-stop, WorkOne center that was set up there at Atterbury,” added Shaff. “So in addition to our English classes, there were folks that were coming, working on their resumés, getting computer skills, going through some workshops and orientations to learn about what a WorkOne can do to help them find jobs, or an American Jobs Center if they go out of the state.”
McDowell’s work at Atterbury was not without challenges. When the school was initially contacted about helping at the base, the DWD wasn’t sure how many people local educators would be serving, said Schaff. School officials also asked what the budget was for the work.
“And they said, ‘Well, there’s no budget. We’ve already had our allocation, and so we need to make it work,’” recalled Shaff. “And of course, we budget our whole year out, so we didn’t really have money earmarked aside for extra stuff, which is why I ended up teaching some of those classes, as well as Nickie Nolting, our adult education coordinator. … We did move some money and figure out how to get our teachers there and compensate them, also, for their time.”
Additionally, teachers had to coordinate their own personal schedules to make the classes work, and the expected timeframe of the program changed a few times.
Educators also weren’t sure what to expect in regards to their teaching location, said Schaff. It ended up being a warehouse that included partitions, tables and chairs.
“Not exactly the ideal classroom to learn, but everybody adapted, adjusted, helped each other, helped out,” she said. “There were some great volunteers, a couple of linguists who were serving as interpreters on site to help, especially with our folks with the lowest levels of English. And quite honestly, the Afghan guests themselves really supported and helped each other, and it was pretty awesome. But it was a big undertaking with so many questions with very few answers. But we just knew that that part didn’t matter as long as we showed up and made them feel welcome and helped them in any way possible to gain some English (skills).”
