Sydney's Autobiography

2004-07-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Reply written 7-15-04 by Sydney Abraham

          As of today, I have completed 13 years of teaching Second Grade. My first two years I taught at Silver Creek Elementary, and the remaining years I have taught at Walnut Creek Elementary.
          No one in my family had graduated from college, but some of my brothers and sisters had attended schooling beyond high school. My oldest brother Craig went to welding school, Jay Conway went to Ricks Jr. College and learned about computers, back in the days when they used computer cards for programming. My sister Lynne, went to BYU adult education in SLC and studied nursing for a while before she married. My brother Bob, joined the Navy. So there was some influence to futher my education.
          However, I believe the greatest influence to go to college came from my friends at East High School. Everyone made plans to attend college, like it was just the next step. I credit the school for providing that kind of atmosphere. Of course I had no idea how I would ever pay for college, since my father was on disability and my mother worked only part-time. I just went ahead and applied for acceptance to BYU, just like my friends and we signed a contract to be roomates. There was a scholarship being awared by the Utah PTA, which gave the receipitent $200 every sememster for four years. I decided to apply for that scholarship, and I was very surprised when I was awarded that money. By accepting that scholarship I was committing to them that I would earn a degree in education and teach in Utah. I also applied to BYU for a scholarship grant and received money from that too.
I suspect my Grandma Leah may have given money towards my housing, I never knew how that rent got paid and she never said anything about it.
          So, my decision to become a teacher stems from that scholarship money, even though I did have a desire to teach children. I had done a lot of babysitting of since I was about 12 and my neices and nephews said I was a good babysitter, so I guess I thought I’d be a good teacher.
          My education began at BYU and I had a roomate that also wanted to be a teacher and we both were so scared and worried about college so we just signed up for every class together. She was a lot of fun and sometimes we would just start giggling in the middle of class or in the library and we couldn’t stop. At BYU there would be these classes with 500 students or so in a big auditorum and somehow you were suppose to listen and learn something. Some of out classes were smaller, but I soon found out that college was a lot harder than high school. I attended the next year at BYU also and declared my major as Early Childhood and minor in Elementary Ed.

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          I enjoyed my class on Literature in the Elementary, but I bombed the class on Shakespear I enrolled in. I figured I could breeze through that because I had seen some of his plays, but boy was I wrong. I got a C in that one and thought biology lab was difficult too.
          After two years at BYU, I wanted to save money and work and be
Able to date Michael so I enrolled at Westminister College in SLC and went to classes pretty much for free because my dad had a job as the nightwatchman. That was a totally different experience from BYU, but I did take some interesting classes like World History and Music Appreciation.
          After I got married in April, I wanted to return to BYU to finish my degree. We lived in Granger, so I found a group of students who traveled there each day. I went to summer school and did observation in a pre-school in preparation for a semester of student teaching in Pre-school and Kindergarten. I did my student teaching pregant with Michelle and had applied for a internship for my last year of teaching,something that BYU offered as an alternative to taking classes. You actually teach a class under supervision. Well, when the professor called and told be I had been selected to be an intern teacher, I was excited, but when he told me that day I would be expected to begin I promptly replied that I could not accept the position, because that was the day my baby was due to be born. At that moment I knew that I wanted to be a stay at home mother, more than I wanted to be a teacher. So I had my baby and didn’t give much thought to any more education on the college level.
          After we had Michelle, Michael decided to go to school full time at the University of Utah, so we moved to their student housing. I tended other students babies. I had about 5 kids including Michelle most days. That was harder than I planned on it being and when it was time for Heidi to be born we had moved back to Granger and I didn’t work or tend kids. Michael continued to take classes. We enrolled in one class together while he was at the U of U. It was a class on History of Movie Making. We would go to class and watch old films and learn about the directors.
          The next saga in my college career did not occur until 20 years later. We had moved to Texas and had Adam, Nathan and Jared. Michael had worked construction for 15 years with the same company and they had just shut down and laid everyone off. It was 1997. We talked things over and decided that I could finish my teaching degree, faster than he could get a degree, so the plan was for me to finish school and get a job and then he would get his degree. So armed with my only available bookbag, a left over

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diaper bag, I headed up to the University of North Texas in Denton. I was nearly 40 years old and scared to death. Surprisingly, the university accepted most of my classes ( except Book of Mormon). I would have to go through two summers, two sememsters, and student teaching to graduate. I drove to school everyday but Friday all summer. I took the kids swimming at the pool in Weatherford every Friday and studied while Jared who was 4, almost 5 would swim in the kiddie pool and Nathan and Adam would swim on their own. Heidi would sometimes come with or go somewhere with her friends, because she was my main babysitter during the week. She would play games and teach the boys songs and put on puppet shows with them. Michelle was gone for a while visiting my sister, Lynne and her family in Oregon. Michael continued to work a construction job that summer. When school started for the boys, Jared stared Kindergarten ½ day, Nathan was in Second Grade and Adam was in 5th Grade. The boys would ride the bus and I would drop Jared off at the Pawlowski house in Azle and she would take him to school each day. I would drive to Denton and be back in time to meet them at home.
I enjoyed being back in school, having friends, listening to the teachers, going to the library and studying.I got great grades in everything but Physics and Physics Lab. Those I prayed my way through. I even took a tap-dancing class, but I only got a B and I was crushed. Didn’t I look as good as all those other girls in my leotard and tap shoes? One fun thing I did was be assigned to Nathan’s Second Grade class as a student doing observation. I learned a lot from his teacher about patience and using a soft voice, but I thought a lot of her teaching was boring and I just knew I could make learning more exciting. I’ve since learned that a lot of learning is boring, and routine and just has to be done, but there can be some fun along the way. Nathan made me feel so welcomed in his class. He didn’t seem to be embarrased that his mother was sometimes being his teacher.
          So things were going along as planned, Michelle was a Senior at Azle High School and played in the marching band. Heidi was a Freshman and involved in choir. The kids were great. We were so poor. We just kept pushing ahead towards the idea of mom graduating and getting a job. Michelle left home to attend Ricks College in Rexberg, Idaho after graduating in May. Heidi continued to help with the boys and Adam was now in junior high school. The unexpected situation was that I became pregnant. You’ve got to be kidding! No, that’s the reality of the scene.

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I was a college student, I was 40 years old, I was scheduled to do my student teaching in August and I would give birth in December 1990.
That summer I drove to Denton to classes, I would have to pull over part way there and take a nap in the backseat of the Mustang before I could make it to the 8:00 lab. Then I would take another nap in the library before I drove home with no air-conditioning in the Texas heat. Sometimes I would buy a bag of ice on my way home and set it on my lap to keep me cool. We kept the truth of the pregnancy from the kids for a while, but it became obvious and the older ones were more upset. They knew they would be ridculed at school for having so many kids in their family. I had to endure some ridcule of my own walking around a college compus older and pregnant. I went to one of my professors that I really like and confided in her. Should I quit?
Should I wait to finish? She was so great, she bolstered me up and went with me to the office of the dean and had them remove my needed PE class from my requirements and got me scheduled for my student teaching as close to home as possible. So the only other class I needed was an Algebra class.
Michael had started taking some classes and we went together to Weatherford College one night a week and he helped tutor me through Algebra. He deserves a medal just for that. My Algebra teacher felt so sorry for me. She knew I had to pass the class to graduate. It was very difficult for me. I must have missed the math gene somewhere. I have always been so proud of all my kids, as they all excelled in math far beyond me barely passing Algebra III in college.
          After more than one episode of me breaking down on the side of the road in the Mustang on the way to or from Denton, we got a new car. It was a big deal for us as a family and it had air-conditioning. I finished up my classes at Denton and did my student teaching in First Grade in Richland Hills driving my black Mitsibushi. My supervising teacher told me I would never make it as a teacher if I continued to be too nice. She told me I needed to toughen up and get control of the classroom. I cried then, but now as I reflect back over my years in teaching and see how “in control” I am, I realize how much you learn as you go, much more than in a college classroom.
          So, I finished up my student teaching at Thanksgiving. I passed my final in Algebra the first week of December and Christy was born December 12th. I didn’t go to graduation in December for obvious reasons, so I just waited and had my graduation certificate mailed to me in the spring.

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When I graduated I had over 200 hours, far more than the required
hours for a Bachlor of Science in Education, but still needed for a teaching endorsemen in Texast. I marvel at how pertinent the classes I took at BYU in 1972 were to the classes in Early Childhood in 1989. Things had come full circle and it was as if I could just continue where I left off. I did also have 20 years of expereince as a parent that contributed to my understanding of how children grow and learn. In order to get a job in Texas, a graduate has to take a final Excet exam. So I paid my $80.00 and signed up to take that test in February. That was another milestone.There were pages of questions and then I had to write an essay on something that we had dreamed about having in our life. I wrote a paper on my journey which took me from wanting to be a teacher when I graduated from high school to obtaining my degree 20 plus years later. I was happy when I received my scores and I had been given the highest number of points. I guess the story had touched the judge or whoever just felt very sorry for this lady who was about to begin a career in teaching after so many years. The thought of walking across the stage and being handed my diploma was too much for me. I was afraid I would have a total meltdown right on the spot in response to the many years, classes, babies, troubles, obstacles encountered along the way. My diploma hangs on my bedroom wall. Now and then, I glance at it. It sits beneath the diploma awarded to Michael in May 1993. But that’s another story. Neither could have done it without the other. Our families are to be thanked also.
          We now go on vacations together in the summer, since we’re both teachers. We try to meet up or take grown up kids along. I suppose we will be making up for all those years when they all lived at home and we couldn’t go anywhere for vacation because their parents were in school.
          The question I began with I seem to have almost forgotten since I wrote so many pages of explanation. I believe I have had two important careers in my life so far, one as a mother and one as a teacher. Perhaps there will yet be another chapter in the story, what happens after retiring from teaching, nevertheless I am satisfied that my dream of becoming a teacher did come true. Somedays I regret it, other days I feel like I’m floating. I am so excited that I had a part in someone’s learning and becoming a better person because I was there in the classroom for them.

Sydney's autobiography

Sydney's Autobiography