Stacey Owens Howard
My name is Stacey Owens Howard and I am a first generational college graduate. Now I start with that very important statement because according to statistics the odds of me completing college were suppose to be slim to none.
Both my parents are high school drop outs reared during a time when providing for your family came first and education was second. My mother has a tenth grade education and spent her life working in a factory making parts for vehicles. My father has an eighth grade education and has spent his life building a janitorial business. At the age of five my parents divorced and my mother began the profound task of raising four small children as a single parent. Of my siblings two received a high school degree, one dropped out of school and I was the first to attend and graduate from college.
Although my parents did not complete their educational journey, they both knew that it was the ticket to a better life and always encouraged all of their children to strive to obtain an education.
During my fifth grade year, I encountered a teacher who inspired me to want to become a teacher. Mrs. Moore made learning fun. She was passionate and compassionate about her job as a teacher, building relationships with her students was important and she taught me that you can do anything that you put your mind to. I still remember days when Mrs. Moore would let me stay after school and help her with different classroom tasks after she helped me with my work. She even gave me a ride home knowing that my mother did not drive and we did not have any transportation.
I made a promise then that one day I would teach and pay it forward by touching the lives of the students that I taught. I graduated with a BA degree in Elementary Education and began to accomplish my goal of helping students. During my eleven years of teaching I was blessed with two beautiful children and a wonderful husband.
My oldest child struggled through school and was identified with ADHD/ODD. School was not a safe haven for him. I often had to fight for support and for his needs to be met. I was often faced with teachers telling me that ADHD was over diagnosed and that his problems were just him being lazy. Despite the fact that I had evaluations from medical doctors and was receiving community support from mental health, and the fact that I too was an educator, my child suffered for many years. Many doors were closed and he grew to hate school. After several years of marriage my husband could not handle the daily stress of raising a child that had severe outburst, violent behaviors, and defiant behaviors so I soon found myself divorced and in the role of single parenting.
I can go on for hours describing the financial struggles of dealing with medical expenses, tutoring expenses, medicine expenses, and the adjusting to a single income home but instead I will focus on the frustration of watching my child go through years of bad educational experiences. Countless meetings with teachers who flat out said no to intervention strategies who would actually say things like, "I have 30 children in my class and I don’t have time to do anything extra." So when I asked, "Well he has been tested and proven not to have a learning disability, and he continue to show up so what are you going to do with him?" They would often respond that it was his responsibility to want to do better. This was the turning point for my career goals.
I started in Education with the goal of providing children with great educational experience that would touch their lives forever. Now I wanted to be in a position where I would continue to touch the lives of students on a broader basis by being in the position to touch the lives of teachers. I wanted to take the experience with my child in be in a position where I could create environments that were conducive to learning for all children. To do this I enrolled in a Master of School of Administration program and completed my Master's degree.
Now I am in a position where through leadership I can have a positive influence on situations similar that what I have experienced as a parent. But this is not enough; my ultimate goal in life is to continue to find researched based alignments between good practical teaching strategies and the effects of positive student/teacher relationships and student success with a focus on ADHD students. I then want to take on the role of Educational Consultant and share these strategies with school systems around the world. I know that by the time I accomplish this goal it will not help my son directly, but hopefully it will prevent other students from growing up thinking schools in the twenty first century are bad places.
Online education is right for me because of the flexibility and ability to complete the program while remaining close to home. My son will be a senior next year and still require a great deal of my time to help him complete the first stage of his educational experiences. My daughter will be a freshman and will require my time in helping her to adjust to the transition from middle school to high school. Receiving this scholarship will be a great financial help considering that I am still paying on $28,000 worth of student loans and my son will be in the position of starting college in the near future. It will also allow me to complete my doctoral degree and afford me the opportunity to use this time to research what I have learned through my years of parenting.