'Hotel High School'

People taking GED classes at Bristol’s Holiday Inn

BRISTOL, Va. – Sometimes, the class takes place in the concierge’s lounge. Other times, it moves to an employee break room.
Week to week, students learn more than what is on the GED practice tests.
They must also find and follow the instructions of teacher Lorraine Heath’s hand-drawn signs, pinpointing “MOUNT ROGERS REGIONAL ADULT EDUCATION” on a post – somewhere – in the hallways of the Holiday Inn on Linden Drive in Bristol, Va.
Just down the hall, hotel guests check in rooms and check out room service.
The GED students at the “Hotel High School,” meanwhile, file into class – often in a spare banquet room – while weddings or reunions happen just next door.
Heath instructs a mixed lot here, ranging from teenage dropouts to 40-somethings, still struggling to reach that once-unattainable brass ring: a high school diploma.
But this is not like high school. Not really.
“I encourage my students to become like a family,” Heath said. “I work with them individually and then encourage them to become a member of our little group.”

‘WORK WITH YOU’
Nobody has a locker. And nobody cares if you chew gum.
You won’t find teenyboppers passing notes or jerks getting into fistfights. No one stands out as a nerd, a class clown or a redneck.
If you have a cell phone, that’s fine. But please try to turn it off.
There will be no prom. And there is no glee club. Forget about finding a marching band.
And the closest thing to a football team? Well, that might be the guys in the hotel bar, cheering whoever’s playing on TV.
Classes are held in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“It’s totally relaxed and totally friendly,” Heath promised.
Make that real relaxed.
A few giggle as one woman, looking up from her notebooks, begins a very public diatribe about her ex-husband.
Heath listens, but she says nothing. Once a high school teacher in Saltville, Va., you might figure she’s heard it all.
Sweet, for sure, this 60-something appears, still, nothing like a schoolmarm. She is short in stature, yet tall in common sense. Heath wears glasses, dresses – and a smile.
Picture a den mother: Heath tutors both young and middle-aged minds to the finish line.
“She actually sits down and takes time to help me,” said 21-year-old Jeffrey Clark, a GED student from Bristol, Tenn. “I couldn’t ask for a better tutor.”
Especially in algebra or geometry.
“I have major problems in math,” Clark said, smiling. “She’s helped me a lot in math. In high school, teachers did not want to work with you like that.”

‘IT’S EXCITING’
But, you know, it really wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Heath came on this job in February 2007, hired simply to help Holiday Inn employees gain their GEDs.
“Then the word got out,” she said. “And other people would come.”
Today, the program remains free.
“The people pay absolutely nothing,” Heath said. “When they go to take the test, all of that [cost] is assumed by Mount Rogers. All the textbooks and everything.”
In little more than two years, the “Hotel High School” has posted 32 graduates, with many marching across the stage at Abingdon High School, picking up their GEDs in a ceremony.
Officially, “Hotel High School” is one of more than 30 branches of Mount Rogers Regional Adult Education, serving five counties and two cities, said program manager Susan Seymore.
“It’s exciting for people to come and say, ‘I’m going to the Holiday Inn to take a class,’ ” Seymore said.
Hotel manager Donna Chailland, still, charges nothing for the classroom space.
“And they always find space for us, no matter how busy they are,” Heath said. “In fact, one time, they put us up in the 10th floor, and we were in the bar section.”
Such corporate sponsorship is needed, Seymore said. “A key factor is that adult education is so poorly funded.”

‘BETTER EDUCATE MYSELF’
One GED student, Nancy Young, serves food at Holiday Inn banquets. Later, at the “Hotel High School,” she tries to figure out fractions.
“I’m trying to get my GED to better educate myself,” Young said.
Originally from Binghamton, N.Y., the 49-year-old Young quit school in the 11th grade.
“I had lost interest,” she said. “I had moved and went to a new school ... I was going to be about 20 years old when I graduated.”
Now add another 30 years.
“So now I’m going to be 50.”
Still, that milestone won’t stand in her way.
“I’m hoping to go to college and take some kind of course,” Young said. “I want to get into photography.”
Young flipped through a workbook, showing how she had been struggling to understand line graphs. “I could pass the test, probably, in January and graduate in May.”
But, until then, she’s going to need help – lots of it.
“Math,” Young said. “I really need help with that.”

‘FEEL REALLY GOOD’
Students like Young – and Sandra Walden – wade through piles of practice tests.
“Math is so hard,” Walden said. “Math is a nightmare ... I’ve been out of school forever.”
Walden should have graduated Virginia High School in 1983. But she quit in the 10th grade, saying her father was sick. “And I just couldn’t learn nothing. I gave up.”
Walden got married, and she got divorced. She struggled, and she juggled jobs, working at Bojangles and Wal-Mart.
Today, she draws a disability check, but she plans to work again.
“Oh, Lord yeah,” Walden said. “That’s why I’m getting my GED. I’m going to work in the medical field.”
Walden plans to graduate in May.
“And I feel really good,” she said. “If you concentrate and pay attention to science, you’ll pass it – easy. The science ain’t that hard. And the history ain’t that hard, if you read the question and pay attention.”
Heath hears all this and says, “We work together and share ideas and methods of studying and mastering that particular subject.”

‘PATIENCE TO LISTEN’
Class time means leafing through practice tests. Students cram a year of high school, maybe more, into as little as three weeks or maybe as much as six months – whatever it takes.
“I realize that the student has chosen to leave school for a reason,” Heath said. “The majority of young people who leave school do so because no one has the time or patience to listen.”
Heath listens.
For her, there is a no such thing as a “Do Not Disturb” sign.
“She just helps you, hands-on,” said 19-year-old Josh Thurston, who dropped out of Sullivan East High School and came here to get his GED.
If a student doesn’t pass a test on their first try, Heath passes out hugs.
And if they do pass? Well, Heath passes the doughnuts.
Party time!
“We know how much it means,” Heath said, sounding choked up. “If someone passes a test, we have a lot of hugging – and crying.”
Heath paused, her voice weak.
“That’s the thing that pleases you the most – the people go on to college,” the teacher said.
“Hotel High School” is like passing through a tunnel.
“You come in,” Heath said, “and you’re going into your new life.”

YOU SHOULD KNOW
What: Mount Rogers Regional Adult Education
Info: (276) 739-2547 or (800) 322-7748