All of the items mentioned by Mr. Pickering are indeed needed in Adult Education. On thing that many people seem to miss though is that many of our students are in our programs because they were not successful in the K-12 system. Why were they not successful? Many have severe to mild learning disabilities and just got too old for that system before they were able to complete their studies. While adult ed teachers get some grounding in learning disabilities they get just that - a grounding. Adult ed teachers need more training in overcoming learning disabilities and how to recognize which disabilities the student has. The adult ed administration needs to have an evaluation method for these students and a means the equipment neccessaary for aiding these students. Currently there is nothing of this nature available resulting in great frustration on the part of the teacher and the student. We need to seriously look at this problem and how we can improve this situation.
