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New frontiers are exciting to me. I have often felt as the early explorers who made new words to describe the frontiers they reached because no one before them had been there. I, too, find it thrilling to be engaged in "map making" in a new kind of world. I have a vision of living in a far different future than the past where I grew up. While I spent my youth driving a horse drawn hay wagon and riding a partly-broke mustang over mountain ranges, I see my remaining years plowing through mountains of technology. I want to be part of it and use it to reach people. I am loving every minute of my Ricks experience, for Ricks allows me to pursue this goal.
Thirty years ago this past June, my husband and I were having dinner out to celebrate our decision to marry. At that time my husband, Harvey, was working at Thycol near Logan, Utah, as a photographer of the second stage of the Minuteman Missile, and I was working on my Education Degree at Utah State University. Harvey was a little reticent that night, and near the end of the meal he shared that he hoped his preparation for this marriage would be adequate. He expressed that, while he had completed an Aeronautical Technology degree, college had in general been a disaster for him, and that his degree was not specialized enough to land him a very secure or good paying job. I related that to studying General Education in the field of Education, so I understood his concern.
I had considered his qualifications before accepting his proposal of marriage, and since I recognized his deficiency already, I knew we would probably be engaged in improving his earning power in the first years of our marriage. I just had no idea as to how to give him my approval. So--without hesitation and with a twinkle in my eye, I leaned over the table and very seriously asked, "Well, what do you want to do when you grow up?
Now Harvey is a sensitive, but very impulsive, human being who cannot resist battle--especially from a female. He picked up immediately that I had just insulted him by challenging him to grow up. Without hesitation, he answered quite aloofly, "I want to touch Mars."
"So-be-it!" I responded with a slap on the table. "From this day forward, we will both work to help you touch Mars." The challenge had been issued, and he had bit into it. He knew he'd been had. He very meekly came back with, "But there's no way I could do that. I'm too old to be an astronaut, and I don't have an Engineering Degree that would put me in a position to even help build a space ship."
"Tut,tut,tut!" I closed in for the kill. "It's not important what you don't have. It's only important where you go from here, and you are going to touch Mars." He said no more. He had just admitted he needed to grow up.
I didn't hear from Harvey the rest of that weekend or on Monday, but the following Tuesday he called me to tell me "Goodbye". I was stunned. "There's a job opening at Boeing in Seattle for a Tool and Production Planner," he explained. "I'm going to learn all about the parts that go into airplanes and missiles, and perhaps I can move within the company until I learn to assemble them myself. I won't get to Mars just photographing someone else's work. I'll help you with the wedding plans by phone." That was it. He was gone to move toward his new frontier.
A new job, a phone call, night classes, and a relocation move to put Harvey nearer his goal became my lifestyle for the next fifteen years, and I think I probably was as excited about his growth as he was. Through the wedding, the birth of five children, the building or remodeling of four homes, and thirteen major moves from one coast to the other, I followed Harvey every time he found a way to move closer to his frontier. He went from Boeing Bomarc missiles in Seattle, to Vertol, Pennsylvania's Herbie and Chinook twin rotor helicopters used in Viet Nam. Then he went on to Lockheed Georgia's C5A as a Value Engineer where he was accepted into the Engineering Union. He next worked on Ling Tempco Vought's A7S3A in Texas, then was loaned out to Lockheed in California for more work on the antisubmarine airplane, and then was sent back to Texas for Vought where he actually wired cockpits and worked on the folding wing design in a time of layoffs. Finally, he found a job in Waterton, Colorado where he was assigned to the Viking space shot which was sent to Mars. No one in the country had more interest in the soil samples that the Viking Missile picked up to bring back to earth than Harvey and I. He was Assistant Staff Engineer for the mechanism which scooped up these soil samples. This was the first time in the history of mankind that an earthling, by mechanical proxy, had actually touched Mars. My husband had reached his dream.
We went out to dinner that Friday night to celebrate that Harvey had grown up. In spite of being terribly impressed by his achievement, I have to admit that I was feeling a little cheated at having to carry more than my share of the load in the family all those years just so he could work on his frontier. I remember a ploy for sympathy as I whined a little about my stalemated mind from having almost total care of the five children while he was free to work toward such lofty goals. By comparison, even my good days had become hum drum with only diapers and dinners to worry about, and I felt that the world was going off and leaving me. My children knew more about pushing computer buttons than I did. I sat there a little reticent as I expressed that I felt inadequate even to be a mom in this modern age.
Harvey listened to every word attentively, and then, without hesitation and with a twinkle in his eye, he leaned over the table and said, "Well, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I knew immediately I'd heard this conversation before. This was the very I-dare-you-to-find-your-frontier challenge that I had issued him when he had expressed his fear of inadequacy to be a husband fifteen years earlier. Now, he was baiting me with those exact words as I expressed my feelings of inadequacy. Being a sensitive person, I fully understood my husband had just issued a challenge to do battle. I knew it was 'Put up or shut up' time for me, and if I failed to come up with an answer, I'd hear his 'Touche'!
I really wasn't at as big of a disadvantage as it may seem. I had experienced a life of my own before marriage where I had given much thought to the contribution I would like to make to the world. Even though I had put my dream on hold while I supported his frontier, my dream had never died. It just never had a chance to focus. I didn't know exactly where it was or have words to call it, but the dream was very much within me. I began with, "I want to be a builder."
"Oh," he said remembering the three homes we had just finished and been forced to leave. "You want to start from scratch and build a new home with your own design, and put everything into it just the way you like it--and stay to enjoy it."
"No way," I replied. "I'm burnt out on building homes. I'm sick of living in the middle of messes. I want to be a builder of people. I really don't know how to explain what I want to do, but it must be helping people to improve lives physically, emotionally, and spiritually."
"Oh," he said "You want to be a Relief Society president."
I smiled with the memory. I had already experienced that one.
"No. I don't want to just touch a few people--not just one ward or branch. I want to be involved in some type of program where I can use original ideas to better many people's lives---help them bond to each other through literacy, maybe even do some research that will be valuable to world education."
"Oh, you want me to buy you your own university?" I paused to think about this one.
"...no, bigger than that. I want to work with people from many nations. I want to be the teacher of teachers--the builder that helps build other people into builder's, so that the building goes on all over the world."
My husband fell silent. I smiled, for at least he was thinking. He hadn't been able to say 'Touche'. On the contrary, he very thoughtfully and seriously said, "Well, when are you going to start your new frontier?"
With the gleam gone from his eye, I became sober, too, and said to him, "You know that's impossible. I'm too old to start learning foreign languages, and with the children, I don't even have time to take classes, let alone teach them."
"Tut, tut, tut!" he moved in for the kill. "It's not important what you don't have. It's only important where you go from here--and you need to grow up."
I didn't talk much to my husband the rest of the weekend nor on Monday, but on the following Tuesday I called him at work. "I'm going to open a nursery school in our home," I announced. (Now, Harvey was aware of the difficult time our oldest son, Steve, was having in school. Steve was in the third grade and only able to read a 1.1 level. Steve was very frustrated with himself and felt as if he were the class 'dummy.' I knew Steve was an excellent thinker, but I was concerned because I didn't know why he couldn't read.) I continued to my husband, "I want to understand reading, and how a person like Steve can think in space relationships and not language. I need to know how he can be so cleaver but perform so poorly in school. I want to understand how to bring a person from total illiteracy into literacy even with a learning disability. I want to know what the professionals say about the way the brain works and what compensatory strategies a teacher can use if the student doesn't respond through normal channels. I want to know how we acquire a first language, and a second language, and what we can do to develop language even when kids are deaf, or when others think it is hopeless. I want kids around on whom I can experiment and practice strategies as I learn them--kids besides our own children."
"And by the way, I am having Steve tested at the Denver Children's Hospital. I have arranged to observe every test through a one way mirror, and you will have to come up with three thousand dollars by the end of the month to pay for it. You can have all the income from thee nursery school to help. I am, also, going to be gone two nights a week to study with Columna (Colorado Organization for Underachievers and Math Non-achievers). This organization has a grant to develop tactile teaching methods and consists of persons in the State of Colorado penal system who work with incarcerated criminals who have been labeled "Unteachable". You will have to take over the home responsibility with the children in the evenings." Then I paused...waiting for a response.
The pause was not long. "So-be-it!" was Harvey's reply, and for the next fifteen years, 'Learning about Learning' with me became Harvey's lifestyle, and he became as excited about mapping the way to my frontier as I was.
I went through physiology and biology courses, studied various psychologies and therapies-traditional and modern, learned the reading of body language and neurological linguistics, screened children of immigrant workers for health problems, implemented community programs for these and other health-risk populations which led to a Master's Degree in Health Administration. I incorporated my health training into summer fitness and recreation programs for children--especially my own, and added leadership and management training, a knowledge of emergency action and legal liability through classes in sport's law and sport's medicine which led to a Master's degree in Athletic Administration. Harvey and I shared every class. He needed such information too. He was a scout leader.
Eventually, I found a group from other nations that had the need to become literate in the English language. I became the Educational Director of this Migrant program. I took more classes. I learned to conduct Needs Assessments and write Diagnostic Evaluations, to administer language testing and prescribe the Remediation program. I learned to write objectives for Federal funding for second language students. I helped teenagers come from total illiteracy to literacy, and then watched them return to their homes where I thought they would strengthen their own poverty stricken families. I locked into my mind that his would be my life's work, my frontier---and then some unusual circumstances moved me to Ricks, and a whole new world.
Since the Fall of 1988, my challenge has been to implement help for increasing numbers of International students in writing flow and/or oral communication skills. It surprised me to discover that knowing a language on a level good enough to pass the required Toefl test does not guarantee successful performance when using it in the culture setting. A knowledge of an English word can be a great distance from being able to use it competently, or as the opening words of our text states "...to know another's language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of one's self."
Since I began as part time at Ricks, I had time to return again to graduate school to study Multicultural Communication. I took classes about brain interaction for listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, speech therapy drills to develop muscularity for making the proper English pronunciation, and testing for cultural performance competency. I learned how to evaluate tests and how to write them which led me to an Education Master's Degree with a Reading emphasis.
Most important of all, I learned about perception, and that individually persons or words do not constitute success. I learned that people develop language through their perceptions--making language and culture inseparable, and that this language, spoken or unspoken, is the basis of all communication. People must exist in relationships with other human beings to preserve humanness, and the better the communication skills between humans, the more humanness exists. I learned that International students, even when vocabulary is well developed, need help with their perceptions through accent reduction, language judgement, and building bridges to native speakers. I learned that while most colleges and universities have International Students problems, few have been able to implement helpful curriculum for them. I learned the problem is that texts are lacking.
I have loved building everything I can into the design of the writing and speaking courses for which I have been responsible. Ricks, especially, needs courses that help the International student because Ricks students will be leaders in the gospel as well as their career choices. In the 1992 Summer session, I had two students who are grandsons of kings of their respective countries. In addition, I had one from a branch of 20 in Florence, Italy, several who will return to Hong Kong to teach the gospel to the Chinese when their country is returned to China, and many from various places on four different continents. Some may go to poverty areas, but most will go back into educated circles. All will go back as leaders--with influence and management skills. Ricks builds people on this campus through church activity and classes. Mine is a critical class for the International student because it builds cultural competency. Culturally competent students will be the builders that will build up nations all over the world. What a thrill it is to be their teacher.
While I pursued my dream, my home progressed from nursery school, to learning center, to social center for natives and immigrants alike. I used what I gained to enrich the lives of my own family members, especially my older son, Steve, who now holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, has become Novell Certified, and is encouraging me to use computer technology with my students.
I am so grateful that my husband wanted to touch Mars, and though I have omitted and modified some details to make the story flow, I am grateful to have been able to work toward my goal. Friday night we are going out to dinner to celebrate again. This time we are celebrating thirty years of living together with a mutual idea--that we are grateful for a world where there are still "New Frontiers."