Dreaming of teaching, Yvonne Sanchez walked from the farm fields to become a graduate of  Barry’s High School Equivalency Program. Follow Yvonne’s journey as described by Ms. Alice Matthews, the Barry University HEP Director

Ms. Yvonne Sanchez and Teacher George Fedorko.

In the last ten years, Barry University’s (Adrian Dominican School of Education) High School Equivalency Program (HEP) served over 1,000 GED students in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Collier, Hendry, and Okeechobee Counties with a total budget of $2,315,976. Many, many stories could be written about the resilient adult migrant and seasonal farmworkers who work long days, and then study into the night to make their dreams and those of their families come true. Below is the story of one such courageous young woman.

At age twenty-nine, Yvonne Sanchez knows where she is going! Persistent, engaging, and focused, she visualizes herself as the Lead Teacher in a classroom surrounded by kindergarten children, reading them stories and giving hugs to those who may not get many at home.

Her passion to teach began when she was a child, but was nearly derailed her fifteenth summer.  It was then that her parents divorced and her father returned to Mexico. When fall came, her mother painfully asked her not to return to school, because she needed her to continue her summer job picking and packing tropical fruit to help support the family. This significant sacrifice allowed her six younger sisters and brother to continue in school. Since that summer, fourteen years ago, the four oldest have graduated from Miami-Dade high schools and the two youngest are still in high school, where her younger brother is an exceptional artist and baby sister is an honor student.

When Yvonne was twenty, her mother pushed her saying, “Salte de campos” (get out of the fields) and go back to school! So working long days, Yvonne enrolled in a local GED night program… and life got in the way. There were still six children (ages 6-14) to feed and clothe. The chaotic classroom where she attended was full of dropout teens who did not have her focus, and were highly disruptive. So although she did learn lessons about classroom management, and how to work very hard on her own, she did not attain her GED. She left the program and worked full-time to help her mother. Again her mother said, “Salte de campos.” So Yvonne tried another GED night class at another institution, which provided a classroom of self-directed computers. She felt so alone, and so overwhelmed. Life got in the way again, when her long work hours kept her out of the computer lab.

Finally, she was able to follow her mother’s advice, left the fields, and found a job with Redland Christian Migrant Association (RCMA) as a part-time teacher’s assistant. She says, “the more I find out about kids, the more I want to learn to be better at what I do.” In the last five years, she has worked her way into a full-time teacher’s assistant position and says that her prayers for God to “open a window” are being answered as He shows her the path to becoming a certified classroom teacher. 

RCMA After-School Director, Marta Avalos, who had earned her GED in January 2005 through Barry University’s High School Equivalency Program (HEP) told Yvonne about her good experience with this program and encouraged her to enroll in one of the classes located in or near an RCMA Center (South Dade Center, Everglades Village, or Redland Center). So Yvonne decided to try “one more time.” The third GED program was the “charm” that provided just the right atmosphere for Yvonne to gain confidence and skill. Thus she successfully passed the GED exam in April 2010. 

Yvonne and George Fedorko, her Barry University HEP GED Teacher at Redland Center in Homestead, talk about her first timid night in his class, where she shared her fear of math. She credits him with calming her fears by telling her that he would repeat concepts as many times as she needed, and work with her one on one as long as it took for her to understand. Yvonne blossomed in this small group academic setting and with “Mr. George’s” teaching style, and earned a GED. She has enrolled at Miami-Dade College to earn her Child Development Associate (C.D.A.) and her Associate in Arts (A.A.).  She dreams of then going to Barry University to get her Bachelors in Elementary Education (B.A.) so that she can remain in the classroom with a promotion to Lead Teacher.

In 1992, when Yvonne’s family returned to their destroyed house after Hurricane Andrew blew away most of their possessions, eleven-year old Yvonne found only one of her cherished stuffed animals, a scruffy panda, with the phrase “ I have a soft spot for you,” embossed on it. Well, Yvonne, we at Barry University have a “soft spot for you,” and an open door when you are ready to begin work on your Bachelors. The road may have had many twists and turns, but we know that you will make it!