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Lucia Rodriguez, a clerical assistant at the Berkeley Adult School for more than 20 years, sometimes has trouble explaining to friends why she loves her job so much. 

“People say, ‘Oh, it’s boring to be in one room all day.’ I say, ‘No, its not a room. It’s the world,” Rodriguez said Tuesday. 

You don’t have to spend too much time in the school’s breezy corridors to see what Rodriguez means. In the school year that just ended, the adult school’s 3,889 English as a Second Language students hailed from, well, everywhere. 

Berkeley Adult School Principal Margaret Kirkpatrick said in some ESL classes their could be native speakers of 10 different languages among just 30 students. 

In the adult school’s total enrollment of 9,480 students for 2000-2001, 27 percent were Hispanic, 22 percent white, 20 percent black and 20 percent Asian. Forty percent of students last year were between 25 and 44 years old, but nearly 20 percent were under 24 and more than 20 percent were over 60. 

While such statistics show how the adult school draws from Berkeley’s different communities in a remarkably balanced way, they don’t come close to telling the story of the school’s diversity. 

Choose the right breezy corridor at the adult school and you could find recent immigrants from Iran, Russia, China and Mexico studying English as a Second Language, high school dropouts of all ages working toward a diploma, homeless men and women learning to read and write and people with graduate degrees mastering the latest computer programs. (All of these classes except the last, which involves a nominal fee at the start, are offered for free.) 

“[The Adult School] is like the Berkeley dream come true,” said Shirley Issel, Berkeley Unified School District Board vice president. “You walk down the hallways and you see not only an international community, but you see people from all different strata of society.” 

Mohammad Reza, 22, moved to Berkeley from Iran a little over year ago. Octavio Flores, 27, came from Mexico about the same time. Both are taking ESL classes at the adult school for three hours and day and busing tables at a Berkeley restaurant from 4 p.m. to midnight. As their English improves, they hope to find higher paying jobs. 

“When you speak English better you can work less hours and make more money,” Reza said. 

Katrine Balan Court, a sociologist from Paris, is studying HTML and Linux at the school, in hopes of acquiring some good, marketable computer skills before moving back to Europe. 

Half a dozen non-profits work off the adult school campus to provide an array of free job training and career counseling services. And the adult school just opened its own job center, complete with a computer lab, to help students search for jobs and prepare résumés. 

The YMCA plans to open a daycare center on the adult school campus, where the children of adult school student are given priority. 

While ESL classes and vocational training together account for over half the adult school’s enrollment, the school also provides a huge array of classes to older adults and disabled adults all around the city. This summer it is offering art and music classes at the East Bay Center for the Blind and ceramic, dance and poetry classes at the North Berkeley Senior Center, to name just a few. 

The school’s fee-based classes include foreign languages, yoga, literature, film, stained glass, sewing and Internet skills. 

In the evenings, the school cafeteria fills up with Berkeley residents off all stripes who’ve decide its time to learn the rumba, the cha cha, and the samba; or the waltz, fox trot and tango. 

“We have such a flexible ability to serve,” Kirkpatrick said. “We’re an exceptional resource. And we’re nice people.” 

Being nice is important, Kirkpatrick said, since many adult school students are nervous about reentering school. 

“They need some assurance that learning is okay at an older age, or assurance that they can still learn,” Kirkpatrick said. 

Once they get past the psychological hurdle of singing up for class, though, Kirkpatrick said adult school students are a delight for educators to work with. 

“The students are so...” Kirkpatrick began, her voice trailing off as she searched the words. “They are dream students, because they are volunteer students. They come to school looking for help, so they are focused on getting what they need.”