The miracle minute

Arranging your life so you have the time, the energy, the support and the money to go to school can be a full-time job in itself. For women with kids at home this is especially true.

The only thing more formidable than the problems women face are the solutions they've managed to create, usually out of a minute, a nickel and a little bit of space. This chapter is mostly direct quotes from the women I talked to because nobody could give a clearer picture of what it takes than they can.

Getting there

Roxy didn't go back to school until they opened up a college branch in her town.

Norma found a job as close as possible to her home. She found a day care close to her work. She picked the school she wanted to go to because it was the closest. Then she picked the courses that ran for five hours one night a week, instead of courses that met twice a week or more.

Jennie took the kids' bus into town in the mornings and walked over to her college from the school. But afternoons were a real problem.

"I would ask my son to pick me up and he would always be late and sometimes he didn't show up and that was the pits. I have two grandchildren and I get a babysitter after school for about half an hour a day and sometimes they're left there and when I get to them they're hungry. So then I was trying to get sponsored by Manpower (Employment and Immigration Canada) so I could get back pay because this course was already started and I was halfway through. I got the back pay and I got a car. That's a big improvement. Now all the money goes into the car." - Jennie

Nancy never left home.

"I worked for 14 years at one place and my kids were getting into grade 11 and 12 and I was doing a lot of tutoring. I realized that gee I can do this. Even if I don't have a big background in calculus and algebra, I can see what they have to do, and so I tutored them because they were ski racers and went all over the world. They only went to school three months out of the year. I was their tutor.

"I did really well and then I was thinking to myself gee I'm getting my kids their high school. I don't even have it myself. I used to help them with their writing and what saved me was Open Learning (See Distance education, page 44) because I had a nine-to-five job. I had my household to look after.

"I did all my ABE through Open Learning and I flew through it. Like the grade 10, the first math ABE I went through that in about two months. I loved it. I loved working alone. I could work at home very well." - Nancy