A Fork in the Road

Springfield College in Wilmington, Delaware, is a well-kept secret. Here, we train the students for work in the human service field. They go on to teach in early childhood education, work in social services, or go on to master's work in counseling. The original YMCA school, Springfield's main campus is located in Massachusetts, but there are ten satellite campuses that serve a population of adults-only students. 

It is here that I spend most of my weekends. While not the tenured position I dreamed of a few years ago, my role at Springfield allows me to make a difference in the lives of my adult students. It was my students, and my own experiences as an adult student, that prompted me to write my first book, Surviving College: The Adults Only Guide. Sales of this book are generally limited to the ones I bought for family members and the twenty or so students who buy it each semester for my Advanced College Level Skills class. No matter. The fact that I am helping these adult students to achieve their dream of a college degree-- a dream I held only twenty years ago--is more reward than book sales.

It was another twist in my road that brought me to Springfield, but it is not time for that story yet. It is time to go back to March 2, 2000, the day that my family will always remember as the beginning of the time we call "After".

Simply stated, our lives changed. Ron was critically injured from the accident and spent, initially, ten months in the hospital. My life became structured around teaching, graduate school, hospital, and home. I had little time to think, but  I did have time to journal. My spiral-bound notebook came with me on my journeys; it kept me sane. When Ron was first diagnosed with clinical depression--and later with Bipolar disorder--I thought the worst thing that could happen would be if he could no longer work. I found myself just where I feared I would be, but in addition to loss of his income, I now had a critically ill husband that needed care.

Westtown School became a haven for me. The faculty and the students were, as is the Quaker way, incredibly kind. Fellow teachers would take over my classes to give me a break and every week the students sent homemade cards to the hospital for Ron. Life was not easy, but it became predictable. I was able to take care of most of our financial needs. I was exhausted, of course, but in times of crisis we are given extra adrenalin that keeps us going.

I became the energizer bunny. I was everywhere doing everything, but even the energizer bunny runs out of steam. in 2002, I was pretty much running on empty and needed to face my own limitations as Ron continued to recover from the effects of the car accident. More of this is recounted in my journals, and if you would like to read further, you can read my book, Crazy: Journal of a Recovering Wife.

One medical crisis followed another, with so little space between them that they blurred together. I managed to finish my M.Ed. in 2003 and was "promoted" by the then-principal of Westtown Middle School to the position of "reading specialist." To be fair, Ian meant well. He recognized, even if parents did not, that not all students came to middle school with a firm grasp on reading. Our most recent PAPAS report had indicated the need for a reading specialist at our middle school and Ian was eager to check that off his list. Literally, he called down the hall to me from his open office one day: "Linda, we need a reading specialist. Want to do it?" I nodded, but we never really spoke of it again.

I have often found myself in the position where no one is really sure what my job is and so I am left to my own devices. Sometimes, it is nice. Other times, I really wish that I had some guidance. I had a degree in reading K-12, but I did not really know how to start a reading program. Whats more, I was told that I could not pull students out of class for interventions; I could only pull them from study halls. I had a few cooperative parents who were willing to bring their kids before school, but I never really felt that I was able to get any "buy in" from the rest of the faculty. In fact, I would hear comments such as "Why do we need a reading specialist? All of our students know how to read." Obviously, these teachers--all of whom were well-trained in their fields--did not understand that reading in middle school becomes more content driven and requires different strategies.

For seven years, I faced the storm head-on. I received training in the Wilson Language System, a program much touted among the administration as the end-all to reading problems. I joined the International Dyslexia Society. I did presentations at faculty meetings and wrote papers for the "Brown and White", our school's publication. I wrote a column on reading for our on-line "In the Middle" weekly report. And I pulled kids from study hall and recess to do what I could on an individual level. I also found a secret weapon, Nancy Weigel, reading specialist at the lower school. Nancy, too, was without counterpart in her school, although she had a much better structured program than I did. We began to meet weekly to discuss reading and life. We became dear friends.

Back at the middle school, I had finally been given some responsibility that felt like reading stuff; I was asked to administer and score reading achievement tests to 6th and 8th grade students. I dutifully score the tests, disseminated the results, and made recommendations. None of which was followed.

Double sigh. My next move astounded my family. I had just gotten the books cleared off the dining room table when I announced that I wanted to apply for a doctorate program. I planned to research critical  literacy and design a reading program for Westtown Middle School that would knock the socks off of naysayers. I planned to somehow, despite the doubts of the faculty, find a way to make reading a priority at Westtown. I wanted to find a way to make a difference.
I enrolled in Walden University more for its convenience than anything. As a totally on-line program, I wouldn't have to find the time to attend classes. I could work from my home whenever I had the time. I could even, as it turned out, work from Ron's various hospital rooms. In 2006, I was accepted in the Ed.D. program and began yet another journey down a slightly different road.

It seemed as if the path kept changing.

A Change in Paths

 It is already halfway through October and as I hand out pumpkin stickers to my students and wear the Jack O Lantern earrings I have dug out of my jewelry box, I continue to ask myself, "Why am I here?" The answer may seem obvious, at least to the administration. I was hired to teach students at this charter school--all minorities from the inner city--to read. And for the most part, I am enjoying this twist in my career path; I deliberately stepped off the trajectory that was to take me from teaching middle school to being a fully tenured college professor. When I left Westtown Middle School four years ago, it was with the intention to never again take on recess or bus duty but to concentrate on "higher education." I was certain with every fiber of my being that my future lay with colleges and universities. After all, I had already spent five years working as an adjunct for Neumann University, my alma mater, and my doctor of education degree was just a dissertation away.

Sigh. Life is funny. Sometimes the path forward takes you back.

In my case, the path had something to do with the economy. I had been at Westtown for ten years, their reading specialist practically in name only for the parents of students at this upper middle class independent school really preferred to hire outside tutors rather than have their children undergo the "stigma" of having to work with the reading specialist. More sighs. Having spent five years getting the M.Ed., it was disheartening to pack it away in mothballs and spend most of my time teaching math and English, proctoring study halls and snatching kids from recess for "five minute reads." Still, it was a decent job and the pay was good and the benefits were there and I had summers free. If it did not exactly satisfy my desire to make a difference in the world of education, I assured myself that on an individual basis, I made a difference to a few students. Almost every year, I thought about leaving. The problem was that I was comfortable at Westtown.

I should probably insert here someplace that I felt that God had provided the position at Westtown for me at a time when the world as I knew it began to crumble. My husband, Ron, began to experience problems with clinical depression in 1998, the same year I started working on my Master's degree. He had several stays in the crisis center and psychologists began to dot my appointment book. At home, my easy-going husband became sullen and sad, often bursting into anger at the slightest provocation. I tried to shield our three children as much as I could. I was frightened, but I could not let them see it. I became overwhelmed with the fear that one day Ron would not be able to work and that I would be the financial provider. At the time, I was teaching English at a small and lovely Christian school, just eleven minutes from my house. But the salary was miniscule; as a second income, it provided for some extras. As the main income, it would not cut it. Still, I hoped to hang on at The Christian Academy until I had my M.Ed

In June of 1999, I knew that staying at TCA was impossible. Ron had a major breakdown right before graduation, threatening everyone at his work and finally needing to be hauled off to Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. It was with much prayer and sadness that I decided to take the offer from Westtown, which offered me twice the salary as TCA, and take on the responsibility of supporting my family.

Here is the odd thing, though, about the offer from Westtown School. Up until April, I had never even heard of Westtown. I got a call from the principal one night who said that a professor at West Chester had suggested I might be interested in a position as sixth grade core teacher. Would I care to come up and visit? Well, a visit was just a visit and not a commitment, so I went. I was impressed. They were impressed.
The principal, Phyllis, called me the next day to ask me to come up and do a demonstration lesson. Ron was starting to unravel at the time and I was scared. I agreed to a demo lesson and we set a date, but the day before I was to teach the lesson, Ron had an anxiety attack and was taken to Chester County Hospital. I remember calling Phyllis from the parking lot and telling her that I would not be able to come in that day. She was regretful, but understanding. She wished me well.

Two weeks later, Phyllis called me and offered me the position. She told me that no one else they had seen could hold a candle to me and even though she had never seen me teach, she wanted me to have the job. Again, I demurred. But Phyllis was nothing if not persistent; they needed me at Westtown, she said. I could start a reading support program. I could make a difference.

So I tearfully turned my letter of resignation in at TCA, wrote letters to all of the junior students who would have been in my senior class, and packed the classroom accumulation of three years into the trunk of my car. I did not expect to use much of it at Westtown.

Westtown School was and is a Quaker institution founded in 1799 by Philadelphians who deemed the location in Chester County just far enough away from the city to spare their children the Yellow Fever. It has a long, long history, a 400 acre campus, and small class sizes. While there are scholarship students, most parents who send their children to Westtown have the means to pay the $24,000 a year tuition without blinking an eye. For the first few months, I experienced culture shock. Not only did this elite school have all the bells and whistles my struggling little Christian school did not, I also needed to become accustomed to the Quaker way of life and worship. For the most part, the faculty was nice to me, but teaching middle school was vastly different from teaching high school; I spent many evening planning lessons and trying to fit in.

After spending the summer at Friends' Hospital, Ron transitioned to an outpatient program at American Day in Drexel Hill. Then he returned to work and seemed, for a while, to have put his personal demons to rest. I was starting to breathe a bit easier when, once again, our lives shifted. This time, it was the careless driver of a red pickup truck, trying to outrun a red light on Paoli Pike, who changed things. It is ironic to think that someone I have never met face to face has had such an extraordinary impact on our lives. On March 1, 2000, the red Ford hit Ron's Taurus smack on the driver's side door. The rest is, unfortunately, history.