Education

Well, when I first arrived here [in Worcester] in 1969…it was like a bombed out World War II city…And so that was my first impression…But over the years, I have come to realize that Worcester is a very great place…We’re members at the art museum and [involved in ] Music Worcester…The restaurants here—you couldn’t find any better in Boston…Every time we have a new person come to the city, or to visit us, we take them on a tour of Worcester.

And I think of the department that I ran as a garden...I think of all the faculty that I’ve recruited as a flower. I could have had all roses…real flashy, but they have thorns, roses do. So you can have all tulips, but I think of the faculty in the department as a different kind of flower. Some need lots of sunshine, some need lots of water, some are going to be okay with benign neglect. They don’t even need you.

I remember in my first English class at Assumption, I had a teacher that was very liberal, and probably a non-conformist, and he wore sandals to class. I thought that was outrageous, and he smoked cigarettes all through the class. One of the first things he said, and I remember this so clearly, and I was so shocked, he said, ‘In order to grow up, you have to figuratively kill your parents,’ and I was…a freshman. I had never been in any situation quite like that…

The fun challenges of being the first women in class ... where there had only been men -- it was fun to go in and earn an A from professors who never -- who rarely gave A’s, who doubted that the women could do it.

When I came [to Worcester], I initiated a State of the Schools annual message to the community, where I talk about what our focus is, what we’re successful in accomplishing and where our greatest needs are going forward, and we know that we have to prepare all of our students for today and tomorrow’s jobs—today’s jobs—tomorrow’s jobs. And so what does the workforce look like? We know also that a higher performing school system is certainly an enhancement to economic development within the city. So we want to be able to showcase our best and brightest schools and students as part of the economic development, but my overarching goal is to ensure that every child is college and career ready, and I say both because when you look at entrance requirement for jobs, and the entrance requirements for colleges, they are very much the same now. So gone are the days of being able to separate the two…....But additionally, you know, I respect the parent’s right to choose, whether, you know, public, private, parochial, or charter. I want to position the Worcester Public Schools at a place where they will want to choose us…

. Like, I think I’ve done the best kind of with what I was given and what I had and what was put before me and I’ve always tried to kind of challenge myself and, you know, try new things. Like going to college was one thing, but then even doing the Peace Corps -- like when I wanted to do the Peace Corps my family kind of flipped out a little bit because--this is a direct quote from my family. This is in no way my--this is my family’s reaction to me going into the Peace Corps: “That’s something only rich white kids do because they don’t want to work.” I was like “Okay,” you know? But, I think my biggest regret in college was not studying abroad, so I wanted a way to do that and I felt like what better time or what--when could I actually have an opportunity to do some kind of work and service has always been a really important part of, you know, my life. I did a lot of service work while I was in college. Also I worked with, you know, I worked at some of the daycares like at – working with children and at different facilities and schools. And then I also did a lot of HIV/AIDS prevention work, so I worked with families affected and infected with HIV and AIDS and--so like I always did a lot of service while I was in college and even before that in high school. But, I think it was a difficult thing to do because my family did not want me to go and there was a lot of pressure and there still is, being the only person in my family who’s gone to college. So, you know, like I think financially my family expected me to, you know, finish college and get a job and help them, you know? That was kind of like the expectation and I think it kinda still is. But, so I think they thought I was being very selfish. Like, I mean, even if I’m thinking like, “People enter the Peace Corps that sounds like the most unselfish thing” but to my family they just couldn’t understand why I wanted to leave. They were like “People need help here; why can’t you just do it here?” and, you know, I think it’s just--they just didn’t understand, you know? But, I was happy I did it and I think they can see it now, like later on, but I think it was difficult and nobody’s ever left the family like that, like for so long. I mean, I didn’t come home at all those two and half years.

So, the most difficult transition, it took me maybe most of my adult life was to—even though I tell you this whole story about how I grew up in a family which truly encouraged me to be myself and had no sort of set idea of what as a woman I was allowed to do, and I went to college in the same type of environment—it was to learn to trust myself. And to not always question whether I was good enough at what I was doing. It took most of my life to figure that out. So that was the biggest learning curve I had to go through. A transition to being a mother was not actually that easy. I mean it’s hard to go from not having a kid to having a kid who is there 24 hours a day and depends on you. So that was a transition but it was okay. The transition to being married was not big once we had decided that we were just done. We knew we were going to be married so…not to say we always got along, but the commitment was such that it didn’t matter if we were fighting. It was, that was it we knew we were going to be together for the long haul.

When I was in high school they were trying to track me into, you know, all the lower tracks and track me to –what do you call that—vocational training ‘cause I really didn’t—I always got really, really, really high grades but that was just ‘cause I worked so hard. I didn’t want to go to college. I thought I had enough of this [laughter] aggravation and enough of this kind of, not feeling particularly confident. But my parents said that wasn’t an option, that I was going to college whether I liked it or not, so that was probably a very good decision. So I went to college. I graduated in the top five and with Phi, Phi Beta Kappa so I guess I wasn’t as dumb as everybody thought [laughter] and then I went to the University of Pittsburgh and got my PhD. I would say that my challenges are also something I really in many ways value because I think that when you sort of struggle to understand something you can really explain it better to other people and I feel like I’m really good at that, you know, that I’m a good teacher, that I have a tremendous amount of respect for other individuals who struggle because I did. And I really do think it’s about hard work in large measure [laughs] and, and really, someone who will support you, people who believe in you, and my family believed in me even though, they thought I was kind of stupid [laughs]. And no one, no one ever thought that I would be the one in the family who wound up with a PhD but somehow I did.

Well, it was when I was in school, actually I was at Clark [University] and I was taking a class on women in the law, and we were reading a book by Eleanor Flexner called A Century of Struggle and I read this section about Worcester and the 1850 Convention and was surprised I had never heard of that before. And it had just occurred to me that—at that time it was like 1992—that 2000 would be the 150th year anniversary and it was only a few years away and wouldn’t it be cool to do something about it! And that was sort of the beginning—thought of it, but I really didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know anything about the women’s movement from that time, or Worcester, or Abby Kelly, or any of these things. And so then I had seen that there was going to be a talk at Abby’s House about Abby Kelly Foster and I went to that talk and met Annette Rafferty who runs Abby’s House, and Elaine Lamoreaux who was also working with her in that, and Al Southwick who was a local historian. I proposed the idea to Annette Rafferty and she thought it was a good idea. Then I went to another event over there later and met Angela Dorenkamp and told her and she was really supportive. At that time I was working as a secretary and going to school and she was just so supportive. She just said, "Oh you can do that,” and I said, “Thanks, well, you know I’m a secretary,” and she said, “Oh you know I think a secretary can do anything.” [laughs] And she was really encouraging and she had actually written an article that was published in the newspaper about the Seneca Falls Convention and so I had read that and I was like, “Oh I have read your article and I would really like to do something like that about the 1850 convention” so that’s when she was like, “Oh do it! You can do that!” And then I ended up going over to the YWCA to look for a space to have a little meeting and from there met Linda Cavaioli who just was totally enthusiastic about it. And she had seen the article that I had published in the paper and from there we just started talking to people and just there was so much interest in it. Right away people were like, “I never heard of that! That sounds like a good idea! I want to do it.” And it was almost like so many people just wanted to jump on and get involved. Yeah, it was like a lot of energy.

You know I’ll kind of explain more. The languages are—have—pretty much the same foundation and Puerto Rican has borrowed a lot from ASL. It’s interesting a lot of the graduates from Gallaudet end up going to Puerto Rico to teach and so they brought a lot of their language there and a lot of the ASL influenced that and then the missionaries would come to the churches and spread throughout the island and they would be using ASL . So they would use some ASL, some Puerto Rican sign language, and eventually they would just blend together.