La Luz Centro Cultural in Hampton is offering its first U.S. Citizenship class. The 10-week course started September 2nd. Participants meet every Tuesday and Wednesday night in English to help permanent residents prepare for their naturalization interview after filing the Form N-400 Application for Naturalization.
Val Gonzalez is the part-time Department of Justice representative and tells RadioOnTheGo News that offering these classes has always been a goal for La Luz.
“I sought out IOLTA funding, so that is Interest on Lawyers Trust Account grant funds that is awarded by the Iowa Supreme Court. And so this is our second year being awarded the IOLTA grant. With IOLTA grant funding, they like to see partnership with outside entities, businesses, nonprofits. And so partnering with NIACC on this was definitely a win-win. And we also partner with NIACC on our ESL classes that we offer at La Luz. And so it was just the next step. We do have students that work one-on-one with several tutors within the area, but this was just a way to kind of get a more organized class if student wanted to do it in a different way.”
The course is taught by Ashley Wilkinson through North Iowa Area Community College Continuing Education. There are currently six students taking part in the class and Wilkinson says students are learning about a variety of topics; from the pathway to citizenship to rehearsing the Oath of Allegiance.
“When I started to come up with what would be covered in the class, I looked at the citizenship test, what it entails, the parts of it, and I kind of break that down in each class. So each class period, we cover civics questions, we cover reading and writing activities because the people that are going to be taking the citizenship test, they have to read a sentence in English and they have to write a sentence in English as well. And then people also have to fill out an N-400 form. It’s really just background information about themselves, everything from schools that they’ve attended, where they’ve lived, if they’ve been out of the United States since they moved here, and they get interviewed in that in the process. So we break down that form so they just feel more comfortable as they go through it.”
Gonzalez says the goal with grant funding is to hold the class twice a year; once in the fall and once in the spring. They are also looking at holding a summer course if funding is available.
