Home / Arts & Life / Student parents juggle school and family life
Holly Harvey and Alexa Chan / Senior Staff Writer and Contributing Writer
A bald 40-year-old man of six feet sits in the back of the classroom, barely able to fit in his desk. As he surveys the 20-somethings around him, he feels out of place.
?I?m older. I?ve seen more of the world,? Matthew Edwards said. ?I?ve experienced more life than they have.?
A political science junior and Army veteran, Edwards has gone from serving in Desert Storm, Desert Shield and Iraq to sitting in the back of the classroom in Wooten Hall because of an injury. Edwards is a husband and father of four children, ages 19, 16, 15, and 4.
?My wife does a lot of the juggling with what the kids do,? Edwards said. ?[My kids] think that I should know how to do their homework, but just because I?m in college doesn?t mean I?m good at algebra.?
Edwards is one of the many parents enrolled at UNT. Parents have been enrolling at universities at an increasing rate. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of students ages 35 and older in universities has increased from about 823,000 in 1970 to about 2.9 million in 2001.
The reason could be the necessity of a degree in professional fields: according to NCES, 54 percent of households headed by a high school graduate were in the low-income bracket, compared to just 22 percent of families headed by a parent who had at least some college education.
Forty-three-year-old Patty Terry is a mother and education junior. Enrolled in ?Parenting in Diverse Families,? Terry has real world experience with what it takes to raise a blended family of six children, ages 2 to 24.
?Stress is something I deal with all of the time,? Terry said. ?Trying to get homework done and dealing with my kids feeling disappointed when I have to go to class is really hard. I?ve had to miss some of their pep rallies and games that my girls cheerlead for.?
Terry?s husband is gone three weeks out of the month for work.
?He is very supportive of me going back,? Terry said. ?Sometimes he doesn?t understand all of the things that go into a degree, but he still supports me and is proud of me.?
After Terry graduated high school, she got a scholarship and enrolled at UNT, but ?the finances weren?t there so I went to work,? she said. In 2009, Terry decided to go back to school to finish her degree.
?I wanted to go back to show my kids I set a goal earlier and I needed to accomplish that goal,? Terry said.
Both Terry and Edwards want to become teachers. Terry wants to pursue special education, which was very close to home as a young girl.
?I had a neighbor, she was a little girl, and she was deaf,? Terry said. ?I would shadow her in elementary school and ever since then, it?s been a passion of mine.?
?I feel out of place,? Terry said. ?I feel like students look at me and think, ?She can?t do it.? I have to work twice as hard.?
UNT has taken steps to make it easier for parents to go to school with a $792,000 Child Care Access Means Parents in School grant, which was created three years ago as part of the $800,000 UNT received to support the improvement of child care for student parents.
The program will distribute the money over four years and encourages student parents to complete their degrees by providing funding for child care not only at UNT but in child care centers in surrounding areas, said Carol Hagen, director of UNT?s Child Development Laboratory.
About 85 students are qualified and receive the grant each year, Hagen said.
Edwards said his experiences and age separate him from other students, but that is what he hopes will help him to be a high school government teacher and eventually a political science professor.
?Not many high school kids know how government works,? Edwards said. ?A lot of college kids don?t know how it works. I?d like to change that.?
Source: http://www.ntdaily.com/?p=63482
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