Every Thursday following a strenuous day of classes, 20-year-old Georgia State junior Audrey Anugerah undergoes a special transformation. She puts down her books and exchanges her role as a student for that of a teacher.
Her class is not a typical one. There are only 10 students, and many of them are a few years older then her. Anugerah does not have to be there, but she knows it is worth it to not only teach these students English grammar, but also to make sure their way of life is not transplanted thousands of miles away.
Anugerah volunteers her Thursday evenings to Centro Hispano Marista, a Spanish and English GED program hosted by The Marist School, a Catholic university in Brookhaven. Thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), Anugerah and her fellow volunteer teachers have been able to keep their students, and their students’ families, from being deported.
DACA was announced in June 2012 by the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that undocumented students were able to stay in America under a two-year work visa if they met a strict series of requirements. In order to be eligible, all applicants must be under 31, they must have entered the United States before the age of 16, lived in the United States continuously for five years, have no felonies and have graduated high school or received a GED.
This new class of hopeful students has been dubbed “The Dreamers,” named after the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.
This is why Centro Hispano Marista has been absolutely crucial to these Dreamers. When Georgia’s GED classes were getting overstuffed, they enacted a policy that barred undocumented students from entering their classes, leaving tens of thousands of students with no hope of staying in the United States.
The Centro Hispano Marista formed a year ago to help fill the needs of these undocumented students, who were doomed to deportation otherwise. It is the only Metro Atlanta Spanish GED program that has the blessing of the Department of Homeland Security, and all of their classes are offered to students for free.
“I felt empowered knowing that I’m doing something that will affect the students in a good way,” Anugerah said. She originally found about the program when Salvador Arias, the program’s director, asked her father if he knew any volunteers.
Even though she works and attends school full-time, Anugerah still manages to find extra time to prepare her own lesson plans for the benefit of her students.
“I always liked teaching and helping others, so I just kind of jumped into it,” she said.
She often feels nervous teaching students that can be as old as 27, but she explained that they are understanding of the program’s limitations and appreciate the opportunities she provides for them.
Anugerah is one of many student teachers at the program, but many retired professionals teach as well. Lawyers, doctoral students and retired teachers donate their free time to help keep their students’ lives intact.
Recently, Centro Hispano Marista has been hurting for extra funding and volunteer teachers as their student body has grown magnitudes larger then they expected.
“We initially expected 40 students, but now we have over 700 students involved in the program,” Arias says.
Despite receiving all of its funding from grants and benefits, the program has managed to stay cost-effective–each student costs them about $75. Yet an average day at Marist School is still hectic, as teachers try to accommodate the diverse needs of hundreds of students.
Many of them are young mothers who rely on Anugerah and other teachers to keep their families from being deported. Some students drive over 50 miles to attend the school because it is so key to their survival in the United States.
Arias strives to make sure the graduates are not only able to legally work in the United States, but are also able to achieve higher-paying jobs in a competitive marketplace.
He plans on implementing computer literacy classes and online learning tools in 2014 to prepare his students.
“We really want them to pull forward and instead of say, being a busboy or server, they can step
into the management of restaurants,” Arias says.
In order to make this vision a reality, the Centro Hispano Marista is holding a benefit concert, featuring salsa group E.M.A on Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Marist School Centennial Center. Arias hopes to raise over $10,000 and plans to use the funds to buy more teacher books, software licenses and organize more community events.
For more information, check out their website @ http://centrohispanomarista.org/.
