When Yoonhee Kim enrolled in the Adult Career Training Program in 2023, she was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. She wanted to improve her English — which she’d been studying at the Literacy Center of West Michigan — and find a meaningful job where she could help people. Since moving from South Korea to Michigan more than a decade ago, Yoonhee had volunteered at her church and her son’s school, but a career felt unattainable with the language barrier.
Yoonhee poses with her husband Chanho and 10-year-old son Haesung.
At WMCAT, everyone in Yoonhee’s pharmacy technician class was a native English speaker. Despite her hard work and support from the Literacy Center in partnership with WMCAT, Yoonhee was still exhausted trying to translate and keep up. To do her homework, she had to first understand the English vocabulary in her textbook before she could tackle the pharmacy concepts — learning a new career in her new language was incredibly challenging. “I actually cried in the middle of the night, thought ‘I cannot do this,’” she remembers. “It was a lot, and it was so hard.”
Yoonhee’s determination and the staff and resources at WMCAT kept her going. “I thought [WMCAT would] just give a class and books, but they support everything,” she says. “My instructor [Cindy] and [program staff] Renida, Amy, and Rosie, they’re always encouraging me saying, ‘you got this!’ It was amazing.”
WMCAT Adult Career Training Program students in the pharmacy technician track wear their new lab coats, presented at an annual ceremony marking the students’ transition to their externships.
With each good grade received and each milestone completed, Yoonhee gained confidence. Passing her national certification exam felt like crossing the finish line on the goals she’d set but didn’t know if she’d accomplish. Now Yoonhee is carrying that confidence into her new role as a pharmacy technician with University of Michigan-Health West, at the very hospital she hoped to work at since the beginning of her career training journey. “Now I feel like I have confidence . . . I always was shy in English, but now I feel like I can do whatever I want.”
Learn more at work.wmcat.org.
