Ysleta Community Learning Center

Program Overview

The Ysleta Community Learning Center specializes in helping adult learners obtain their high school equivalency or industry-recognized credential and improve academic skills for the workforce or post-secondary. All of our classes are free.

Courses offered include:

• English as a Second Language (ESL) for Work
• English as a Second Language (ESL) for College
• English as a Second Language (ESL) for Professionals
• High School Equivalency for Work
• High School Equivalency for College
• Texas Success Initiative Academy
• Citizenship
• Digital Literacy

Certification Courses:

• Microsoft Office Specialist (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook)
• Basic Electrical
• CDL Class B
• Security Officer Level II
• Security Officer Level III

Student and Volunteer Success Stories

Ms. Veronica Trejo has been attending Ysleta Community Learning Center for more than 10 years, taking one ESL course after another. This year offered a fresh outlook with the new course, the CDL Class-B Certification IET course. At the time of the IET interview, Ms. Trejo's oral English skills did not reflect her classroom performance. In fact, she had scored in the High Beginning Educational Functioning Level which fell short of meeting the language proficiency requirement. Nonetheless, Ms. Trejo was emphatic about how her level of commitment, persistence, and study skills would help her to be successful in obtaining the Class-B Certification and appealed to be placed in the class. She shared that this opportunity would serve as the catalyst to "finally make a career." That is when we first learned about Ms. Trejo's "driven" passion.

Initially, the IET technical instructor was not convinced that
Ms. Trejo possessed the communication skills to fully understand and collaborate with others in the class. The basic skills instructor incorporated several learning strategies to build Veronica's speaking skills as well as introduce her to distance learning. Her basic skills teacher became her biggest champion! Over the course of five months, Veronica struggled in the classroom but made several attempts to
perfect her understanding of the content and oral communication. Slowly but surely, Ms. Trejo began to thrive
in the classroom. She voluntarily created her own PowerPoint presentations summarizing previous lessons that she would then share and present to her classmates. As part of the certification exam for bus drivers, there is an hour-long oral presentation called "Pre-Trip" where the driving candidate must conduct an
inspection of a bus naming and describing the condition of the entire bus, such as the dashboard gauges, security features, engine components, suspension, brakes, tires, lights, windows, steps, latches, and more – totaling over 300 items! With the assistance of her instructor, Veronica created a monologue explaining and detailing each item. Veronica stated it took her more than two months to learn all the parts before she was able to explain their function and condition. In time, Ms. Trejo became the shining star of the class being among the first to pass the four tests for the CDL Learner's Permit.

In June of 2017, the Far West Consortium hosted a conference, the FWAEC Summer PD Institute, and asked Ms. Trejo to be the keynote speaker. She shared her personal journey as an ESL learner in an IET class and how her persistence, commitment, and positive attitude had contributed to her success. Ms. Trejo passed her driving test with flying colors the last week of August. She was one of the first to get hired as a school bus driver for the Clint Independent School District.