A celebration is certainly in order.
Before she began studying Elementary Education at UNCG, Laura Hooten had attended 5 colleges, with 3 different majors, over the span of nearly 4 decades. This degree is the one she will finally finish in the summer of 2009. Her husband Joe, two grown sons, and four grandchildren will help her celebrate the completion of a long academic journey. A celebration is certainly in order; she has a perfect 4.0 average for the 27 courses she has taken at UNCG.
Laura attended college after high school as a traditional student, first at Mercer College and then at the University of Georgia as a Business Education major. When she got married, her husband earned his Engineering degree at Georgia Tech, but she went to work, raised her children, and did not finish college.
She worked for 20 years in physicians’ offices in South Carolina, where she took classes toward a medical coding certificate, and later the prerequisites for Nursing. She had been accepted into a Nursing program at Trident Technical College in Charleston, but she could not attend classes during the day and her hard-won spot went to someone else.
Laura came to Greensboro in 2005 when husband was hired for the Proximity Hotel construction project. She had actually lived here once before. She had worked in customer service and claims for an insurance company and had even applied to attend UNCG in 1998. But before she could enroll, the family had returned to South Carolina for her husband’s career.
All I could find was retail
Back in Greensboro, she looked for a job before thinking again about college. "All I could find was retail," she recalls, "selling on the floor, with nothing to feed your brain." That boring job led her back to school. "If you can find the money, you can go to school instead of to work," her husband said. "I didn’t think I’d be able to get a loan," Laura recalls, "but I did."
She considered Nursing, but felt discouraged by the long process of having to qualify for another program. She looked at fields without a foreign language requirement (which she’d had trouble with as a young student) and went back to Education, this time at the elementary level.
"I must really want to do this; I can’t believe I’m riding the bus," she remembers telling herself at 7:30 a.m. on the first day of class in January, 2007, as she rode to campus from UNCG’s commuter parking lot. "I was like a deer in headlights," she recalls. She had signed up for a daunting 16-hour course load, starting with "Introduction to Poetry" at 8 in the morning.
"That class was one of the hardest things I had to do here," she remembers. "I was used to technical information and fact-based courses. There was nothing to interpret about a skeleton. But poetry, oh man! I agonized over interpretations and essay tests." But she made her A (as she has done in all her courses) and loved the class, looking back.
Bought back her textbooks because she enjoyed them so much
Another class she took her first semester was Political Science. "That was an excellent class, with an excellent professor," she recalls. After she sold her textbook, she decided to buy it back, she had enjoyed the class so much. She made 3 A’s and 3 A+’s that first semester and knew that she could meet the challenges of being back in school.
Asked what she has found most valuable about being in college as an adult student, Laura replies unhesitatingly, "the information, the knowledge." Classes she has taken for her General Education requirements have certainly increased her store of knowledge in areas like Theatre, Anthropology, Geography, and Environmental Biology.
To qualify for admission to student teaching, Laura had to complete the General Education Core requirements with a 2.75 GPA and pass the Praxis test of general knowledge. She took review courses offered by her department to prepare for the Praxis and found them very helpful, especially for math, which she had not studied since the 70’s.
Do exactly what the professor asks
Once admitted to the teaching curriculum as an Elementary Education major, she had a rigorous set of requirements leading to licensure. The Education classes include a four-semester sequence of internships in the schools, culminating in student teaching. There are additional classes to prepare for teaching special subjects to elementary students: Music, Art, Physical Education, and Dance or Theatre. Further, Elementary Ed majors complete at least 18 hours in an approved subject area; Laura’s academic concentration is Environmental Science, incorporating classes taken at UNCG and ones transferred in from her Nursing prerequisites.
"All I do is study," Laura admits. "I read and reread the material." Another adult student once told her, "Do exactly what the professor asks for," and she has found this to be good advice. Her husband says, "I’m the only one who knows how hard you study." When he is traveling for work, as he does frequently since he now works for a company based in Charlotte, she studies single-mindedly. Her two dogs and cat keep her faithful company.
Spring, 2009, finds Laura doing her student teaching in a third-grade classroom at Cash Elementary in Kernersville. It is a class she knows well, since she did her third-semester internship there the previous fall in preparation. She has full responsibility for teaching the class for six weeks (and partial responsibility throughout the spring term). She has particularly enjoyed teaching Environmental Science and even welcomes the chance to work with children who have behavior problems. "Give me the behavior problems now," she says, "while I have a teacher to guide me." She feels she benefits in the classroom from her extensive life experience: raising her own children, taking care of her grandchildren, and even seeing patients all those years in doctors’ offices.
Her reconnection with the elementary classroom also helps her to encourage her oldest granddaughters to excel in school. Laura sends books to all her grandchildren, aged 2 to 10, and is eager to set a good example for them. "I just don’t want them to wait as long as I did to finish college," she laughs.
Laura will have completed her major requirements for Elementary Education when she finishes her student teaching. Her final classes in summer school will fulfill the last of her General Education requirements, for courses that carry a "Global" marker to explore the world beyond U. S. borders. They are a fitting finale to the education that has brought her "information and knowledge," along with the teaching credential she needs to look for meaningful work. "I might not have stuck it out," she says, "except for that boring job."
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Page updated: 06-May-2009
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