For many adults, the idea of returning to school feels more like a fantasy than a plan. Life, jobs, children, bills, and exhaustion all have a way of narrowing out the possibility. Years pass. The diploma that slipped away at 18 starts to feel like a door that closed for good.
Carolina knows that feeling all too well but she decided to do something about it. That’s where La Casa de Don Pedro stepped in.
When Carolina enrolled in La Casa de Don Pedro’s (LCDP) GED program, she came with both goals and fears. She wanted to finish what life had interrupted butyears away from a classroom had worn down her confidence, and she wasn’t sure she still had what it took. What she found at La Casa de Don Pedro surprised her.
“Returning to school as an adult requires courage, discipline, and support,” she shared. “La Casa de Don Pedro is not only preparing me to pass an exam but also helping me regain confidence in myself.”
For people like Carolina, obtaining a GED changes the trajectory of hardworking adults seeking a better life. For the nearly 30 million adults in the United States who don’t have a GED, the absence of a diploma quietly shapes the entire landscape of opportunities available to them.
Adults without a diploma or equivalent earn, on average, $10,000 less per year than those with one. That gap compounds over a lifetime, leading to a fundamentally different standard of living. But the barriers go beyond wages. Without a GED, federal financial aid for college or vocational training is out of reach. Professional licensing in fields such as healthcare, education, construction, and cosmetology is off the table. Many employers won’t advance a candidate beyond the first screening if they don’t have a GED.The credential isn’t just a piece of paper; it’s a key to opening new doors.
For parents, the ripple effect extends to their children. Research consistently shows that children who watch a parent earn an educational credential are significantly more likely to complete their own education. When one generation finds a way forward, the next generation often starts closer to the finish line.
In a community like Newark, where nearly one in five adults over 25 lacks a high school diploma and structural barriers have long limited access to quality education, programs like this do more than teach; they repair what should never have been broken in the first place.
What sets LCDP’s approach apart is that it doesn’t treat adult learners as students who simply need to catch up on content. Instead, it treats them as real people navigating jobs, families, financial stress, and histories that don’t disappear when they sit at a desk.
Staff and case managers help address practical obstacles, such as childcare, transportation, and housing instability, that so often cause adult learners to drop out before they finish. Perhaps most critically, the environment is one in which adults feel respected, not remediated.
For Carolina, that environment made all the difference. Her academic skills returned. But something else returned too; a belief in herself that had grown quieter over the years and was now growing louder. “I am living proof of the real and transformative impact these programs have,” Carolina exclaimed. She is now preparing for her GED exam andhas started preparing for what comes next, perhaps a healthcare certification or community college. Her children have watched her study. They have watched her stay up late, wake up early, and walk out the door on class days with her head a little higher.
Learn more about our adult education programs by visiting https://lacasadedonpedro.org/esl_ged/.
