Story Photos
 Zenobia Scott student teaches math to third-graders at Columbia Valley Gardens Elementary School in Longview.
Photo by Dave Rubert / For The Daily News
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Destined to teach
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 6:09 AM PST
By Carrie Pederson
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe course to a career is straight for some people. For others, such as Erin Mack, David Provolt and Zenobia Scott, the path is full of twists and turns, short-and-long term pay cuts, frantic schedules and sacrifices -- such as moving back in with mom and dad.
But as students in Washington State University's teaching program at Lower Columbia College, they're zeroing in on a common goal -- to establish rewarding second careers they say, in retrospect, they always were destined for.
Getting the most out of students
Mack, 34, is a full-time student, single mom and manages the Burger King near Fred Meyer in Longview.
"The day starts at 6," Mack said during an interview last week while her daughter Machayla, 7, pranced around the room taking pictures on a cell phone.
A while after graduating from R.A. Long High School, Mack started classes at LCC but "I didn't really know what I wanted to do," she said, saying she considered the medical field and becoming a 911 dispatcher. But she "didn't like the atmosphere."
She held a job at Burger King, where her mom had also worked, but Michayla's arrival made Mack realize she "could not work in fast food for the next 20 years."
So after 10 years supervising burger flipping, she decided to re-direct her "go,go,go" energy and "take charge" personality into teaching. She enrolled at LCC a year ago.
Due to more classwork and student teaching two days a week in a first grade classroom at Wallace, Mack has had to cut her hours at Burger King to one day a week.
She sold her Longview home to raise money, and she and Michayla moved in with her parents in their home on the west side of Mt. Solo. Now they help out with child-care and making ends meet.
Mack, a fan of the Laura Ingles Wilder stories, has always see herself in a teaching role. But before Michayla came along, she never pursued the goal. That's changed, though.
"I can squeeze blood out of a turnip in the fast food environment, but I don't want to do that," she said. "I'd much rather get the most out of my students."
Staying close to home
Like Mack, many the lives of many students in the WSU program at LCC are invested in the community. Older students making a career change say they appreciate a local program that doesn't require them to move, and they rely on each other for support, said June Canty, director of education programs for WSU Vancouver.
Although Canty said there are no specific numbers for LCC's WSU program, 60 percent of students in WSU teaching programs statewide get teaching jobs right out of school. There are 14 students in the WSU program at LCC.
Students who can move anywhere are more likely to get placed right away while being place bound could hurt chances slightly, Canty said. There's an "oversupply (statewide) of teachers with elementary certificates," she said.
Millworker becomes 'softer, nicer' A 1979 Kelso High School graduate, David Provolt took the path many young men took out of high school back in that era. He went to work in the mills.
He had half-heartedly attended LCC year, then, "my dad said, 'Reynolds is hiring. Get in line. ' "
But the aluminum plant closed in 2001, and Provolt, now out of work, found himself back at LCC training to become a teacher's aide. A divorce and brief move to Pullman in Eastern Washington sidetracked him, but now he's back in the classroom -- teaching first graders at Robert Gray Elementary School as part of the LCC program.
When he first lost his job at the smelter, "I wished I could be back making the money I was making" at Reynolds, said Provolt, now 46. "Now I realize it was one of the best things that happened to me."
He's transforming from the rough, say-anything mill worker he once was, he said.
"I've grown a lot in the last few years," Provolt said. "I've become softer and nicer."
Provolt used to watch the clock as days dragged on at Reynolds.
Now, "I get up on a plane in the morning and stay up all day long," he said, to try to match the energy level of his first-graders. "The day goes by so fast."
Never too old to teach
As it does for Mack and Provolt, the excitement of watching a student's eyes light up draw Zenobia Scott, 51, to teaching.
She had a knack for it, even as a youngster, she said.
As the daughter of an Assembly of God minister, Scott she was the leader of "children's church." Good storytelling more than quadrupled her young "congregation" at Kelso First Assembly in the early 1980s.
"I did voices for each character," remembered Scott, who now works with third, fourth and fifth graders at Columbia Valley Garden Elementary School.
Scott brought her knack for working with children to her role as "room mother" at Wallace Elementary School in Kelso, where all of her three daughters attended.
"One day a boy looked up at me and said 'I can read!' and ran to tell the teacher," said Scott, who realized the excitement in teaching through the experience.
"People said, 'You should become an instructor and get paid.' I said, 'You can get paid?'"
It seemed like a novel idea to her, but it became a necessity when here husband, David, suffered a traumatic brain injury when a pipe exploded at Longview Fibre Co. It left him tired and he couldn't keep himself balanced.
"I figured I had to get a job to keep us in a home, pay the bills and put food on the table."
Although special prism glasses have enabled her husband to return to work, Scott has continued to forged down the path she thought she might be too old to pursue. Other teachers encouraged her.
"They said, no way, you're not too old," she said.
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