Carol Crouch This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. 'Oldest student on campus' wraps up 'Galesburg' education

   www.register-mail.com/news/top - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/8/2003   Last Visited: 6/8/2003

   GALESBURG - Carol Crouch is an unofficial marketing tool for Galesburg schools and a role model for taking a non-traditional approach to education.
   
   She attended elementary through high school here. She was a teacher's aide for 17 years in Galesburg schools. At age 48, she began attending Carl Sandburg College. And now, the self-proclaimed "oldest student on campus," graduated Saturday from Knox College.
   
   "It just really ties you in to your community," said Crouch, 51. "I always felt like it was someplace I really belonged. ... I lived here my whole life, and I felt I've been a pretty happy person and successful in the ways I like to be successful."
   
   Though bound to the 'Burg, she had a touch of the world outside the city limits while staying inside of them.
   
   "Going to Knox makes it a worldly experience by all the people you meet there," said Crouch, who said Knox provided scholarships to make the education financially feasible.
   
   She never had envisioned herself at Knox, however, but being there opened a whole new area of the community. And, she fit right in after convincing her fellow students she was indeed a student and not a faculty member.
   
   Crouch, a single mother of two grown daughters and a grandmother of one, decided in 1999 to try higher education, something she's always wanted to do. Completing a bachelor's degree in elementary education would mean having her own classroom, rather than helping in them as she had done for years.
   ...
   Heading back to school was not easy for Crouch, who started when her youngest daughter was in her final year at Western Illinois University. Crouch's children were grown, which helped, but she hadn't been through formal education in about three decades. Plus, she had to fight feelings about leaving a job she loved.
   
   "I loved my job and it took a lot to walk away from the kids and people I worked with," said Crouch, who was a teacher's aide for many years at Silas Willard Elementary School.
   ...
   Professors love to have you in the classroom because you add so much more because of experience," said Crouch.
   
   "I'm not going to lie to you and tell you it's a piece of cake and you can dance through it," said Crouch, admitting being exhausted after several weeks of late nights and early mornings. "You have to be committed to it."
   
   Commitment is what it took for her as she learned life doesn't stop when school starts - several events in her life, including final projects and exams of her first year of college, her mother's death and her daughter's college graduation, all happened within weeks of each other. She also has had to overcome the challenges of new technology and changes in terminology since her young school days.
   
   Crouch has 10 weeks of student teaching this fall and then will take an exam to become certified. She'd like to teach upper elementary.
   
   "There are a lot of classrooms where they (the special education students) aren't as welcome as they should be," said Crouch, who wants a regular classroom for that reason. Her education has given her ways to to make them welcome.
   
   Crouch would like to teach in Galesburg. Where else?