{"id":20763,"date":"2014-03-07T11:40:30","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T16:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=20763"},"modified":"2014-07-07T11:43:40","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T15:43:40","slug":"not-too-late-to-realize-the-dream-of-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2014\/not-too-late-to-realize-the-dream-of-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Not too late to realize the dream of teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once a week, as soon as Ginger Estes \u201908 had finished her route and parked the school bus at 4:30 in the afternoon, she\u2019d hop straight into her own car for the 50- mile, twisting drive over two mountain ranges to Harrisonburg from her home in Rappahannock County, Virginia. Rain, shine or snow, she made it to her ADCP<\/a> classes every week for 15 months, graduating with a bachelor\u2019s degree in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have been able to [earn my degree] if it wasn\u2019t for this program. We had been out of school for almost 20 years,\u201d said Estes, gesturing at her colleagues Joyce Wharton \u201905 and Linda Welk \u201905 seated beside her in a classroom at Rappahannock County Elementary School.<\/p>\n

The three women all worked in the county school system before and during their undergraduate studies at ADCP: Welk and Wharton were substitute teachers, and Estes was a bus driver and aide. Since graduating from the program, however, they\u2019ve all become teachers within the same school division, earning significantly higher salaries.<\/p>\n

Wharton now teaches fifth grade, while Welk and Estes are both special education teachers. (Wharton\u2019s and Estes\u2019 working lives together go back considerably farther, to when they were both employed at Aileen, a textile plant in Rappahannock County that shut down in the mid-nineties.)<\/p>\n

A fourth Rappahannock County school employee, Pat Lawler \u201905, is also an ADCP graduate, now working as a special education instructional aide, and together, the group is encouraging various other colleagues to consider the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was such a diverse group of people [at EMU],\u201d said Wharton, who enjoyed the encouragement and energy provided by younger classmates in her ADCP cohort.<\/p>\n

As part of their final projects for their degrees at EMU, the three women completed research projects related to their interest in teaching: Wharton looked at substitute teaching, Estes researched special education teaching strategies, and Welk finished a project on a technique called \u201cmastery learning\u201d that attracted the interest of administrators at the school. All three women said the program\u2019s flexibility, and the instructors\u2019 respect for the demands of full-time jobs and family obligations, were key to their success.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Brandy Jenkins ’07 went from working in a bank to her dream job of schoolteaching, boosted by ADCP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c[ADCP] is a really good opportunity for people who have to work while they\u2019re taking classes,\u201d said Brandy Jenkins \u201907, an eighth grade English teacher at Page County Middle School, where she is 20 minutes closer to Harrisonburg than the Rappahannock teachers \u2013 she had just one mountain range to cross to get to EMU.<\/p>\n

Though Jenkins had worked at a bank rather than in the school system while she earned her degree from EMU, like Estes, Welk and Wharton, she went on to a career in teaching after graduation. Jenkins said she\u2019d always been drawn to education, even while she worked in the business world. \u201cI took the long and winding road to reach my destination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins, who began a family and worked full-time during her transition to teaching, said the structure of ADCP, designed for working adults, was also ideal for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flexibility of the program made it possible for my life to continue while I finished my degree,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While these graduates of ADCP finished with bachelor\u2019s degrees in management and organizational development, all of them required further certification to become licensed teachers in Virginia. Jenkins completed licensure at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, while Welk and Wharton were licensed through a program offered by the Virginia Department of Education. Estes is currently finishing her licensure requirements through an online program of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.<\/p>\n

And now, looking back, all of them \u2013 Estes, Welk, Wharton and Jenkins \u2013 say the late nights and long drives were worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was the epitome of a non-traditional student,\u201d said Jenkins, who grew up in Page County and once took ninth grade science in the very classroom she now teaches in. \u201cEven though I took the long and winding road to reach my destination, I would do it all again exactly the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once a week, as soon as Ginger Estes \u201908 had finished her route and parked the school bus at 4:30 in the afternoon, she\u2019d hop straight into her own car ... read more about Not too late to realize the dream of teaching<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":20764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4515,12546,5730],"tags":[15741],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-20763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-adcp","category-undergraduate-programs","tag-ginger-estes"],"yoast_head":"\nNot too late to realize the dream of teaching - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2014\/not-too-late-to-realize-the-dream-of-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not too late to realize the dream of teaching - 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