Billie Jo Lawrence
I am interested in pursuing my Doctor of Education in order to broaden my influence in my field. I would like to find a faculty position at the university level where I will be able to teach future teachers. The thought of getting published is also a driving factor in my desire to earn this degree. It is something I have considered many times in my career and hope to be able to make a lasting and valuable contribution to my profession through my Doctoral research.
On the home front, my goals align with my professional goals exactly. From the day she was born my principal objective in life is to provide the model for my daughter of working hard and earning a strong education. With those two things you can become and accomplish what ever you wish. I hope to further my earning potential by earning an Ed.D. so that I might actually pay off my student loans some day as well as provide my daughter with the educational opportunities she wants, whatever they may be, after high school. The Working Mothers Scholarship would go a long way toward helping me to provide future opportunities to my daughter as well as my profession.
My decision to enter the field of education and specifically education of the Deaf and hard of hearing was made during high school. Several amazing teachers there provided me with not only a very strong foundation but a burning desire to learn more and to be a strong teacher who passed on the passion for learning. During high school I also had the opportunity to be an intern at the local state school for the deaf where I was saddened by seeing my same age peers not gaining the knowledge or desire for learning I was getting a few miles away. They were no less able than I, but certainly had less offered to them. I wanted to change that.
I entered Kent State Universitys Deaf Education program in the fall after my high school graduation in 1989. I met my husband the following spring. I withdrew from college for four years, got married, and explored the realities of working and living with only a high school diploma for a while. When my daughter was eighteen-months-old I found myself living in a close proximity to Kent State.
I started thinking of going back and was able to get enough loans to provide for our housing in addition to tuition. My husbands physical and mental health were preventing him from holding a long term position in any trade he was familiar with. I was going to have to provide for our family myself. I went back to school and used all available loans to provide our housing and transportation. I got help in the form of sliding fee scale child care and went back to school in the fall of 1994 scheduling my classes on only two days a week whenever possible so I could work and care for my daughter on the other days. I earned my Bachelor of Science in Education from Kent State University in 1998. I graduated *** laude with a professional GPA of 3.7.
I began teaching a month later at Phoenix Day School for the Deaf in Phoenix, Arizona. That fall, in spite of all my lack of planning, my daughter and I started school together. She entered kindergarten and I entered my first school year in my profession. I taught for the next two years in a public school with a specialized program for deaf and hard of hearing students in Arizona, still the single provider for my family.
While living in Phoenix, I did some technology course work at Glendale Community College. These courses were open entry/exit courses that required students to complete all the course work independently and then sign up for a test session when you were done. I did very well there and learned something about myself as a learner; Im a self-starter and intrinsically motivated to learn new things.
At home my husband was getting worse and I was far away from family and support systems. We returned to Ohio during the summer of 2000 after I was hired into a position at the school where I had completed my student teaching; the school where I'm still teaching today.
Shortly after returning, it was time for me to pursue my master's degree. I checked out Walden's program and at the time the most appealing factor was the low cost of credit hours at Walden. I very quickly fell in love with having all the best experts from across the country delivered to my living room and watching the lecture topics implemented immediately in classrooms, not to mention being able to pause and rewind them!
Driving to a local university might provide access to one or two experts in our field but the Walden programs provide access to experts from across the country. During my Master's studies I completed the collaborative action research course. I collaborated with other teachers in my building on the implementation of a writing strategy. I was later able to use that research within the university courses I taught showing all the work samples collected to teach and demonstrate the strategy and its effectiveness. I graduated from Walden in December 2003 with a 3.9 GPA earning a Master of Science in Education.
Since June of 1998, I have been a classroom teacher for the Deaf and hard of hearing. In these ten years I have launched a new reading program for our department, pioneered Deaf Education Family Fun Nights for outreach to the families we serve, authored the Deaf Studies Project Handbook for integration of deaf cultural studies into all content areas, facilitated a departmental study of the Ohio Language Arts Standards, supervised educational assistants, interpreters, volunteers, and practicum students as well as guided future teachers through the student teaching process. I did all of these things while consistently providing quality standards based education for my students who were typical, deaf, hard of hearing, and/or multi-disabled including students with learning disabilities, MR, autism, ADHD, and Tourettes syndrome. I continue professional development activities even currently and have taken all of the courses and workshops necessary in the past five years to meet Ohio's Highly Qualified Teacher Standards for Science, Math, Social Studies, Language Arts, and American Sign Language.
I was also nominated as a Master Teacher in the Join Together Project: A Nationwide On-Line Community Dedicated to Instructional Effectiveness and Academic Excellence within Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education. During my participation in this project I was involved in many facets of the research being done in my field from collecting quantitative data to submit to researchers about my class and the program where I teach, to participating in qualitative evaluations and studies of my classroom via video and mentoring student teachers through the reflective processes and impacts of strategies on student achievement. Some of my work has been published within the Web site for the Join Together Project. I am looking forward to completing an in-depth research study that can positively impact teachers and their students.
My daughter attends school within the district where I teach. She is doing well and we are well supported after eight years there. The encouragement of colleagues and friends we have made here are even more important as my daughter and I struggle through the anguish divorce puts a family through. For more than ten years, I have been the sole provider for my family and now will be losing half of everything Ive worked for. We will be losing none of what I have taught my daughter about hard work, education, or giving your best. I will focus on the future and what else I can teach her and provide for her by working on my next degree.
I want to be the best teacher leader I can be and I want to do that through Walden because of their expert programming in our craft. I know from past successes, beginning with independent study courses in high school and continuing up through my first degree from Walden, that I can be a very successful student in an online, independent study type program. I will make the most of the opportunity provided by this scholarship program and be a positive example of what a working mother and Walden can accomplish together.