Oral History Program Judean Powell Interviewed by Misty Kirk 20 June 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Judean Powell Interviewed by Misty Kirk 20 June 2008 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Powell, Judean, an oral history by Misty Kirk, 20 June 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Judean Powell. The interview was conducted on June 20, 2008, by Misty Kirk, in St. George, Utah. The interview concerns her recollections and experiences of returning to school as a “non-traditional” female student. MK: The interviewee is my mother, so I may refer to her as mom while I am asking her questions-to avoid any confusion. When were you born? JP: In 1951. MK: Where were you born? JP: In Los Angeles County, in a suburb of Los Angeles. MK: And what were the names of you parents? JP: Wallace Jenks and Nellie Riggs Jenks. MK: And the subject of the interview is about non-traditional female students returning to school, and that's what I'll be interviewing her about this evening. So, in what year did you go back to school? JP: 1987. MK: What made you decide to go back to school and pursue your degree? JP: I already had a degree in psychology and family science from BYU in 1973 and I, my husband took a job in Southern Utah and we came down here. I had been accepted into graduate school in family science at BYU in 1983. Actually, it was in 1985, and when my husband took a job down here, in St. George, then I was not able to go to graduate school 1 at BYU, and so I had to think about what my options were in Southern Utah at the time. They didn't have graduate programs in my field at Southern Utah State University, which is now Southern Utah University. They just didn't have any programs for me. So I had to change my field. So I pursued a bachelor's degree or at least a certification, a teacher's certification, to teach public school. I went back and took education classes. They accepted all of my child development classes from BYU and my family science major as part of my teaching certificate, and then I just had to pick up--I picked up what was the equivalent at the time of five quarters, which turned out to be, 62 more credits, for education, but some of them were transferred over classes that I had taken at BYU, which they accepted, but most of them, five quarters worth, were not...they were education classes. MK: Was it a financial decision then to go back to school or an educational one? JP: Somewhat. I had to, I wanted to, I always thought... I'd helped in my children's Kindergarten classes when we lived in Salt Lake, and I really enjoyed that and I had always thought that if for some reason I didn't get into public, back into graduate school in my field, I thought I could teach kindergarten and be happy because I loved working with the little kids, and so I felt... I always had some kind of part time work and with my children all in school and my oldest child was in High school, I felt the need to bring in some extra money so that I could send my kids to college, and my sons to go on missions for our church. MK: How old were you when you went back to school? 2 JP: Uh, 36. MK: And how many children did you have? JP: I had four children at the time. MK: And what were their ages? JP: Um, you were 15, no, that was when I started, let's see, that was '86 so you would have been 13 when I went back, and your brother would have been 10 and your sister would have been 7 and you littlest brother was 5. MK: How long did it take you then, from start to finish, to get your degree? JP: I did it, uh, I finished in 1989. So I took two years to do it, but I took 5 quarters of school and, because I was teaching at Dixie College in what they called the Academic Support Center at the time, I was tutoring in reading and language/writing to kids who couldn't pass the Dixie College achievement test in order to take college level English. So, I tutored them, classes of about 12-15 kids, and I did it fall and winter semesters every year so I only did school in the spring and in the fall so that I could keep that part time job. They called me back every, every year. They didn't have any spring classes; they didn't offer any spring classes at the Academic Support Center, so I never worked there in the spring. I was the only tutor they brought back every, every winter and then they had other tutors besides me in the fall. But they had the most kids sign up for the class in the fall. So I had that job. I would take, I started out taking just classes two days a week just because I had four kids and a house and a husband and lots of... a big yard, and lots of things going on and so... in my church, I had a big responsibility. So, I just took two classes on Tuesdays 3 and Thursdays, and I drove up to Cedar City with other kids, other people like me, who were going back to school. There were quite a few of us from St. George who would commute up there because we were all married instead of single, we didn't have much of an option to move up there like the single kids did, so we carpooled all the time. We had an hour drive each way and we'd keep each other company and keep each other awake, which was a big issue. And so I started the two classes the one quarter and I just, I, for five quarters I just... there was only one quarter where I actually went full time and that quarter about killed me, but I did it, got through it and, and it was also the quarter that my mother died, the quarter that I went full time. The other quarters I usually took anywhere from, it was usually two or three classes and summer school two or three classes. MK: And you continued to work the whole time? JP: No, only, only fall and winter quarters at Dixie College. MK: Did you work to help offset the tuition costs? JP: Yeah, yeah I did, I worked to do that and then I tried to put money aside so that you could go to college when you graduated and, and your brothers and sisters too. I did hope, I actually didn't start working full time until the two youngest kids were in high school, then I went full time. Up until then, I only taught half time kindergarten because I just had too much going on with my family. MK: Did you ever look into any government money to pay for tuition, or were those options available, or did you just not look into them? 4 JP: I don't, I don't think they had... I know they had student loans, but I didn't want to take any. They didn't have Pell Grants in those days that I was aware of. I think those came later and so I didn't, I just, I worked at the college to help me pay, yes, to help me pay for the tuition. I guess I wasn't very clear on that, but I was trying to get a job so that I could help put my kids through college and missions for the church, but I worked at Dixie College to help me, to help me pay my tuition at school and for extra things for our family, like little vacation and whatnot in the summer. MK: And were there any scholarship opportunities or anything that you knew of or that the school? JP: They never told me that there were, I can't remember if I asked or not, I just remember I didn't want to borrow any money so I tried to pay my own way because I did not want to have to pay it back. Dad had taken out loans to get through graduate school and, um, and we, you know, we had to pay that back after we got out, after he finished graduate school, and we were really poor at the time and had a couple kids by the time we got it paid back and it was hard because we weren't making very much money. Dad was a school teacher too, and he worked two part time jobs as well, and so we didn't, you know, I did not want to have to pay the money back, so I hate borrowing and I wasn't aware of a scholarship. They never told me anything. I think they came up with a lot of these things later, Pell Grants and the Utah Teachers Grant that they give, that came later. I had student teachers, you know, that talked to me about those that had them. MK: And as far as women's scholarships and opportunities like that, you-5 JP: I don't think they had anything like that in the 80's that I remember. If they did, they didn't do a very good job making us aware of them. MK: And the term "non-traditional" we determined you had never heard of before? JP: No, they didn't say anything about "non-traditional." MK: And so you felt also, as a student at SUU that there were not very many students that were-- JP: No there were a lot of us. MK: So there were-- JP: There were a lot of us in my major. I don't know about the other majors, but in my major there were a lot because in St. George at the time, and I think this was probably pretty much the case in most of Southern Utah. The Washington County School District was one of the highest, highest paying employers and the biggest employer in Washington County. Nobody employed as many as they did. When they hired me they had over 500 employees which, for a town, well the whole region, there were like, there were 40,000 people in, in Washington County at the time, when we first moved here. 25,000 lived in St. George and then 15,000 in surrounding areas and so for one employer to employ 500 people, that's quite, in fact, it was over 500, that was a lot and because of that a lot of people around here wanted, saw that as a good career, where in a lot of places they saw it as, you know, not a, you know, they thought it was a lower paying job, but here it was one of the higher paying jobs because this economy was so service based. It catered to tourists and there were just a lot of jobs that were restaurants and fast food and, and 6 motels and that sort of thing, golf courses and you know. This was one of the higher paying jobs. MK: And when you say "us" you mean "non-traditional" meaning… JP: Yeah, but… MK: They’re very... JP: Uh-huh. MK: Yeah and-- JP: And actually there were a lot of men that went back to school just as women and I even carpooled with a guy. He'd been an assistant manager at a tire store since he'd come home from his mission, gotten married and he just couldn't stand it anymore. He hated working the weekends and a lot of these people you call "non-traditional," they hated working weekends and they just, and you know he just thought it was a dead end job, so he was going back to school and I carpooled with him one semester. There were a lot of us, especially from St. George, and, in fact, most of the people that carpooled from St. George were all married students with families. MK: So were the professors in your department sympathetic to your situation? JP: Absolutely. MK: Were they easy to work with if you had problems or if you had-- JP: They were great. They were just great because in our department, the education department, so many of those people were married, but like me, they were going back, and so I would say in a lot of my classes up to half the kids in class, our classes weren't 7 that big, not compared to like BYU where you have upward to three-hundred people. Like in my major at BYU they did pretty much have 30-35 kids in a class, sometimes as low as 20 and that was pretty much what we had in the education department, in my education classes at SUSC, at the time, the state college... I haven't called it that in such a long time. I forgot that it was a state college. Anyway, they, um, I didn't have very many classes that were over about thirty kids there, and up to a third or half of them were generally men students and non-traditional students with families and the professors there were really good about it, uh, about working with us on things, on assignments, you know and sometimes giving us extra time if we needed it, so, on things. MK: So what would you consider, what were the greatest barriers you faced as you strove to get your degree? JP: Uh, just trying to keep up with things at home. That was sometimes hard. I did try to protect myself by taking only a few classes most of the quarters I went, and because they accepted so many of my classes from BYU, I didn't have to take as many credits as a lot of the other kids that were with, that I was carpooling with, and so I was lucky that way and I did protect myself. When I was, um, education has a lot of work. The classes, most of the classes aren't terribly hard, they're just very time-consuming, and so the projects and that, a lot of them, you know, I just really had... the only way I was able to make it through is because I only took two or three classes. I don't usually take...the first quarter I took only the six credits, after that I took usually around ten credits a quarter and that's how I did it, 8 was, I couldn't of done it, I had four kids and a big house, and a big church job and I could never have done it if I had taken so much. It would have taken me longer. MK: The semester you did take the full load, how did you manage, especially with the death of your mother? JP: I can't even tell you. I can't even tell you, but, um I don't know... it was awful. That's all I remember is that it was awful, because I was in school from 8am- 4pm every day, five days a week. It was called the block, the education block and we had, um, we worked in schools. Every three weeks we worked in a different school for an entire week with a, in a classroom with a teacher and, um, and in between we had five classes that we went to every day. MK: In Cedar City? JP: In Cedar City, five classes, Monday through Friday and it was a killer, it was a killer. Each one of those classes had projects too and like I say, it was almost like student teaching. It was like what they call now the cohort program, um, that some of the colleges have, um, where they just, like a student teacher, but not a student teacher. Not quite as much responsibility, but having to be with a teacher all day, every day for a whole week, in a different school and we did have responsibilities, we did have to teach as teachers. MK: How did you manage your family, school, and other daily life activities? Did you come up with a plan or-- JP: I can't remember what my plan was, it was what, twenty-one years ago... that was a long time ago. I can't remember what I did, but I just remember that when my mom died it 9 about put me over the edge. Just because my mom died and then because I had to... all this company came here because mom died in Utah and they had a funeral here and we had to go for another funeral down in California and all the relatives came here and they all needed and were needy and, um, my sisters, everybody, and it was just a really hard time and I, when I went back to school the following week I, we were assigned to a school and I was assigned to a first grade teacher for a whole week and she gave me an evaluation that went in my job resume, that, and she marked me down for enthusiasm for my job assignment the week after my mother dies so I thought it was pretty cheap. MK: Was she aware of your situation? JP: Yes, I told her when I first went in. I said, "I'm really sorry, I'm not myself and blah, blah, blah.” I explained it to her right up front. It didn't make any difference to her and I tried to have a really good attitude and I really did enjoy the kids, it's just that I was just so, I was just so depressed about my mom being dead so... MK: If you had to choose one thing that was the single most difficult hardship about being a non-traditional female student with children returning to school, what was probably the hardest thing that you had to deal with? The single hardest thing? JP: The single hardest...um, probably making sure that I had enough time for them. I was trying to keep up my house, I cooked every night, I cooked meals every night, I did my own house work, all my own wash, um, and you know, made sure my kids went to piano lessons and at their soccer games and I was at their swim meets and um, that was just... and helping them with their homework, it was just probably making sure that my kids had 10 everything that they needed. I packed their lunches every day, it was just a lot of um, I was trying to be a good mother and I didn't want my family to have to suffer at all. Sometimes I didn't get enough sleep, um and the driving back and forth to Cedar City was so awful. It was all we could do... we had to try to keep each other awake all the time and it was all we could do to keep ourselves awake, let alone to keep someone else awake. It was really hard. So, I think that was it, just mainly trying to keep up, keep things, make my, have it, my family be where they didn't think that I was... where it didn't change much for them. I was trying to keep it where it didn't change much for them and that wasn't easy. MK: So this group that you, that you worked with, that you guys almost, did you kind of, it almost seems as if you guys had, were a little support network. JP: We were. MK: For one another? JP: We were. MK: So if you, because one of my questions was, um, was there something, someone, a technique that made it a little bit easier for you or helped you along so that you were able to achieve your goal? A technique or something, or someone maybe? JP: Um, it... MK: Your little support group or? JP: Our little support group, absolutely, our little support group made it possible. We helped each other because all of us were education students that rode together and we would 11 talk about our assignments and give each other ideas and help each other that way and then we'd also give moral support like, there were two of them that were, that I rode with all of the time, that both of them were in the middle of getting divorced and they had, had lots of issue and they needed support, they just needed somebody to talk to and so I talked to them all the, you know, I listened to them and we tried to give them moral support and just, we would eat our lunches together and we do... you know it was almost like we sometimes would try to slap each other to keep each other awake while we were driving so the person that was driving didn't fall asleep. It was just, there were times it was crazy just trying to stay awake. I don't think I had a technique, but we did, we had good conversation and usually there was only about three of us, but it seems like there was up to five of us that were riding together in the same car so we had to work around each other’s schedules too, because we didn't all have class at the same time, but nobody wanted to drive themselves alone back and forth up there. It was too far. It was too hard to do it alone. We would hang out there longer than we wanted to just so we could ride with other people. MK: Did most of the people in your group end up graduating or finishing that you know of? JP: Uh-huh, all of them did. MK: All of them did? JP: All of them did. Yep, all of them are teachers in the district. I see them all the time except for the one that moved to San Francisco. One of them was your counselor at Pine View High School, Liz Haines. She and I kept each other awake a lot. 12 MK: I didn't realize that she went to school with you. JP: She and I graduated at the same time. MK: My last question, kind of a double question is, um, in the end did it, do you feel like it made you a stronger person and was it worth it? JP: Um, it definitely toughened me up. I remember the first time, the first class that I took when I had just two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I went in there on Tuesday morning and it was a great class, Educational Psychology, it was right up my alley from my major at BYU and I went in there and loved it, wrote down, you know, took all my notes, went home, promptly put on my "mothers" hat and totally forgot about being a student. I came to class on Thursday morning and the professor said "pass in your assignment" and I thought to myself "what assignment, what assignment?" I looked in my notes and there it was. I had an assignment. I had gone home and had just been being mom and totally forgot that I had an assignment. So, I said to myself at that point, "that is not going to happen to me again." From then I made sure that I never was never unprepared when I arrived. It was a big, it was a big shift for me to have to do this. I realized that I was going to have to start, just make some new habits for myself and change my schedule somewhat so that I could come to class prepared. I got an A- in that class because of my, I had an A on all of my other assignments, but I got an A- because I was missing the first assignment. So, anyway, um, yeah, so it made me tougher. It made me organize myself better. It made me know that I could do hard things, and I was proud of myself when I got my certificate and yes, it has been worth it. I can't think of a career 13 that, that, there are a few other careers that are probably as rewarding as teaching children, probably some health care professionals and social work people, but, it certainly has been rewarding. It has been satisfying and I'm up to a pretty good pay salary level now where, um, I feel like I'm well paid for what I do and so it has, it has definitely been worth it. It was a good choice to go back and do it because up to that time I had just been doing little part time things, little businesses on my own because I could not, except for the job at Dixie College, which I could have kept doing for a long time because I loved that, it was also teaching, I loved that, but it wasn't, it didn't pay that well, it didn't pay anywhere close to what I made in the public schools, and so, since I couldn't get my degree, my masters degree in my original field, it was a really great option to, to go back and get my teaching certificate. MK: Okay, thank you. 14