School on Wheels brings lessons to students

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

From the outside, the gray and maroon bus parked in the Target parking lot looks like it could be an RV, if there were any reason for an RV to be there.

Inside, a handful of students are working hard with their tutors, laboriously copying letters, practicing vowel sounds and working math problems.

The students of the School on Wheels are all adults, mostly immigrants studying English and preparing for citizenship or General Equivalency Diploma (GED) tests. The Sisters of St. Joseph of LaGrange bring the bus—actually a retired bookmobile—to six sites in western Cook and eastern DuPage counties each week.

“When we started, we found that a large number of people could not attend literacy classes because they couldn’t get transportation,” said Sister Marybeth McDermott, who has directed the school for all of its seven years. “We decided to bring the school to them.”

Now, with the help of donations and 170 volunteer tutors, the school serves about 300 students at any given time. It stops each week in Woodridge, Hodgkins, Addison, Summit, Villa Park and Westmont, staying each time for a few hours in the parking lots of churches, apartment complexes, or, as in Hodgkins, a large strip mall.

On a Tuesday in Hodgkins, McDermott sat waiting and worrying about a student who did not arrive for his lesson. He had never missed before, she said, and she expected him particularly to come to get his certificate for finishing the first English book.

“He’s never late,” she said. “I hope he didn’t have an accident on his bike.”
Before starting the School on Wheels, McDermott spent 40 years as a teacher in the primary grades; her experience shows. The bookshelves hold volumes from “The Charlie Brown Dictionary,” to “Citizenship: Passing the Test.” But there also are baskets with dolls and everyday household items like egg crates and bottles.

“I know what little children need to learn,” McDermott said. “And it’s the same thing for adults. They need to hold the items in their hands. You can point to the picture and say the word, but it’s not the same thing.”

The other volunteers, all women, bent over folding tables in the narrow interior. Barbara Drai used a basket of dolls and doll furniture to teach Antonia Torres, another Mexican immigrant who works at a Burger King. “Cat,” Drai said, emphasizing the short “a” sound. “We’re working on distinguishing vowel sounds.”

Both Drai and Torres recently started at the School on Wheels. McDermott had to help translate for Drai to find out where Torres works. But both concentrated on the objects in the basket, repeating their names slowly and carefully.

At the next table, Grace Johnson and Ignacio Rivera worked like the practiced veterans they are, naming and writing capital and lowercase letters. Johnson has volunteered in the school on wheels for about five years; Rivera is finishing his second year of English lessons, and has just about worked his way through the first book. Rivera works as a busboy in a local restaurant, but would like to get a better job. Recently, he has been able to answer the phone and take some reservations, he said.

“I want to understand more when people talk to me,” said Rivera, who wants to be able to communicate better not only with his employers and customers, but also with his children’s teachers.

The lessons are free for the students, but they are asked to pay $5 for their workbooks. Funding for the program comes from grants from the Illinois Secretary of State, the Community Memorial Foundation in Hinsdale, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange County, Calif., and Carondolet, Mo., and private donations.

News about the bus travels by word-of-mouth in the immigrant communities, and by Chamber of Commerce newsletter in the business communities where the school stops.

Nearly all the students at the Hodgkins site are from Mexico, but at the other stops, there are immigrants from around the world: Poles, Russians, Serbs, Syrians and others. The tutors need not speak any language other than English.

In the back of the bus, 19-year-old Ar’chille Michel works with Janet Wells. Michel is a native speaker of English, but she left high school in her last year and is too old to go back. Now she wants to get a GED. She tried signing up for a GED preparation class at the College of DuPage, but it was cancelled because of lack of demand.

So instead, she comes to school on the bus, working on science and math—her toughest subject. Over the summer, she will start work on social studies and history. She hopes to be ready to take the test by September, she said.

Like the other students, Michel can come for lessons for as long as it takes until she is ready for her test. McDermott said she encourages the students to keep coming back, even the ones who study for and pass their citizenship tests.

“It’s always good for them to keep speaking English,” she said. “We’re happy to help them practice.”

The School on Wheels is looking for tutors for the eight-week summer session, which runs from June 28 to Aug. 18. Training sessions will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 17 to 24 at the Sisters of St. Joseph of LaGrange Ministry Center, LaGrange Park. Call (708) 354-9200 for information.

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