Teaching Grad Took Long, Slow Path to Degree

MILWAUKEE - Seven years ago, Mary Words wasn't thinking about college. This Sunday, May 12, more than two decades after she took her first college class, she'll graduate with a degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Words left UW-Madison after a few semesters 20 years ago because she wasn't sure exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She married, had three children, and began working as a library aide in the Milwaukee Public Schools. She didn't think she had time to add one more commitment to her life.

But two incidents changed her mind and set her on a long path to college graduation.

While working as a library aide at Forest Home School, she began helping a little boy named Danny with his reading and found the experience of teaching a child both challenging and rewarding.

About the same time, she went to a conference involving large numbers of library staff from all over the area. "I looked around, and could count the women of color in the room on my two hands.

"As I began to see there was a need for more African American teachers, I began to think about becoming a teacher myself," she says. "I didn't know how I was going to do it...I didn't have the time and I didn't have the money, but I wanted to be a teacher."

A priest friend of hers shared a saying she took to heart. "He'd tell me, `if you are able, then you are obligated.'"

"I reflected on that and thought, `íf not me, then who?'"

Words, her husband, Bruce, and their three children, then aged 10 to 15, discussed all the adjustments they'd have to make to add college classes to their already busy family life. Mary Words' decision meant the entire family would have to change their schedules and pitch in on household chores to accommodate their mother's return to college.

So Bruce Words became the household laundry king, and the children took on more chores and helped out with family meals. "I knew she really wanted to go back to school,and it was an adjustment for me," he says. I became `Mr. Mom.' It was a challenge and a sacrifice, but that's what you do in a marriage."

Because Mary Words was going to school part-time to accommodate her work schedule, it took seven years of hard work by the whole family for her to complete her degree.

Words had to overcome other challenges along the way.

As a library aide in the Milwaukee Public Schools, Words was a good candidate for a program called Pathways, designed to help MPS paraprofessionals earn their bachelor's degree in teaching.

That Pathways program, started in 1993, is designed to accommodate the work schedules of those paraprofessionals by offering classes at nights and on weekends, says Marleen Pugach, professional of curriculum and instruction. The program, originally funded through the Helen Bader Foundation and the DeWitt Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation, provides professional support and scholarships to help paraprofessionals who have some college credits become elementary school teachers.

However, because the program required that participants have at least 60 hours of college credit for entrance, and Words hadn't earned that many in her previous semesters of undergraduate work, she started taking undergraduate courses to earn enough credits for Pathways. "My advisors encouraged me and suggested courses, and I just kept going."

The Pathways program gives students the opportunity to do internships and other pre-student teaching clinical experiences at the school where they work, meaning they only have to take time off work to complete student teaching. Words is currently doing her student teaching at Golda Meir School.

Her own children have grown up in the seven years the family has spent helping Words follow her dream. Oldest daughter Camille is heading to medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin in the fall, 20-year-old Tai is at UW-Madison, and 17-year-old Bruce, Jr. is in high school.

It has been a long but worthwhile haul for the entire Words family.

"We are just so proud of her," says Bruce Words.

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