Classes at Clifton Park-Halfmoon library provide path to citizenship

CLIFTONPARK, N.Y. » The instructor stood at the back of the room facing a bright projection screen while the students sat in two rows of desks placed on either side of the projector’s bright light.

There was warm conversation and good-natured ribbing going on between instructor and students but there was also homework to be handed in and questions and vocabulary to be covered for the test.

This was not a middle school, high school or even a college course. This was much more serious. This was a class for those living in the U.S. who want to become U.S. citizens.

The Clifton Park-Half- moon Library offers two citizenship classes that started last month. One meets at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays and the other at 9:30 a.m. on Thursdays. Both classes meet in the library and both are free.

“The last time we offered the classes was in 2011,” said Lou Ann Stewart, the library’s director of Adult Services and Reference. “But the southern Saratoga County community has changed so much since then we were getting requests for it. A lot of those requests were coming from the people taking the English Language Learner classes that are being taught here.”

Stewart noted that GlobalFoundries is still drawing a large influx of people, a situation that didn’t exist the last time the citizenship class was taught.

“With the levels we’re seeing in the ELL classes it’s clear the population has changed and that’s where the demand was coming from,” Stewart said. “We respond and react to the public. That’s why we’re here and when the public asks us for things we try and meet the demand.”

The Wednesday evening class held its first session Jan. 10 and instructor Owen Greenspan admits most of the students, which number around eight, were rather shy and quiet for the first few classes.

By the fourth class they were much more comfortable and talkative. Their lack of knowledge with some of the topics didn’t appear to bother them, at least outwardly, and they worked together to overcome any language barriers. The information poured out of Greenspan and was quickly absorbed by the students.

“Someone tell me what they’ve learned so far,” Greenspan said as he gently moved into the night’s topics.

“There’s three branches of government,” said Robin Fraser, a Canadian. “There’s a Congress and it has a Senate and a House of Representatives.”

When Greenspan asked if she or anyone else knew how many seats there were in each political body, Fraser hesitated and then dove in getting the numbers correct, 50 Senators and 435 Representatives.

Wednesday’s class has two students from Canada, three from Mexico, one from China, one from Venezuela, and one from Guinea. As Greenspan went deeper into the review the questions were more pointed.

“When was the Constitution created,” he asked almost conversationally, “how about the Declaration of Independence?”

Once the questions were answered correctly he asked what the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution were called.

“The Bill of Rights,” answered Guoning Liao, a native of China.

The citizenship test will be based on an interview with each candidate. During the interview the candidate must show they can speak English, read English, and write English. There are also 10 questions, six must be answered correctly.

Since President Trump had given his State of the Union address the night before Greenspan used that to further discuss the Senate and the House of Representatives.

“Which is higher, the Senate or the House,” Fraser asked.

“They are co- equal branches of government,” Greenspan said before

“With the levels we’re seeing in the ELL classes it’s clear the population has changed and that’s where the demand was coming from.” — Lou Ann Stewart, Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library director of Adult Services and Reference