In This Issue
School Is All in the Family
Single mom juggles studies, family, even if it means bringing all four kids to class
BY ANDREW VOWLES
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| One of the main reasons BA student Karen Tamminga returned to school was to serve as a role model for her children, from left, Jasper, Jobina, Dean and Desiree. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
The school day starts early for second-year BA student Karen Tamminga. By 7 a.m., the single mom rousts her four preteens in their Elora apartment. She drives the kids to two schools in Fergus — middle school for 12-year-old Jasper and primary school for Jobina, 11, Dean, 10, and Desiree, 9. Then she heads to Guelph for her own first class of the day.
By mid-afternoon she retraces her steps. Back home, she prepares dinner, oversees the kids' homework and looks after errands and chores. Lights out for the kids is at 9:30. That's when Mom can finally turn to her own studying, although sometimes it's closer to 11 p.m. before she gets to the books.
She's routinely up past midnight. A few hours later, it's time to do it all over again — and Tamminga loves it. “There are so many positive things about going to school,” she says.
Now 34, she began full-time studies at Guelph in 2006 for two main reasons. She hopes ultimately to land a decent job to support herself and her young family, perhaps in law or police work or teaching. And she wants to serve as a role model for those youngsters.
“This is where I'm going to learn the tools to make a difference.”
For now, she considers her studies as her full-time job.
This is Tamminga's third try at post-secondary education. She spent a year in criminology at the University of Regina in 1993. Switching to Brock University a year later, she started a biology degree.
She gave up her studies after becoming pregnant and getting married. The babies came one after another for the next three years.
Time ticked by.
Several years ago, Tamminga became a volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross, visiting schools to talk to Grade 7 students about violence and abuse prevention under the agency's RespectED program. Then she became a provincial trainer for the program, basically teaching other volunteers how to work with kids.
That work saw her travel across the province, often northward to First Nations communities. It also connected her with her own native heritage — her father, who died when she was five, had come from the Timiskaming First Nation in Quebec — and with the legacy of her own childhood trauma.
Tamminga was raped at age 14. Although she continued high school, that experience led to numerous problems, including an eating disorder. Along the way, she joined a religious cult and left home at 16.
In 2006, she and her husband divorced. Living with their four children, she decided to pursue that long-dormant goal of a post-secondary degree. “I had always wanted to go back to university.”
She used up retirement funds to enrol at Guelph that fall. By the following semester, she'd been approved for financial aid as a native Canadian.
Tamminga is taking a full course load, mostly in social sciences. She's also taken computing and about six math courses. The logic of the subject appeals to her. “I need that in my life.”
Although she normally picks only day classes, she had to attend an evening math class last winter. That was with Prof. Jack Weiner, Mathematics and Statistics. After checking with him, she brought all four children to several evening classes, where they did their homework, amused themselves with colouring or even listened to the lecture.
Weiner has had other students bring their kids to class over the years, but he says Tamminga was exceptional — and humbling.
“She really impressed me,” says the award-winning professor. “When I get home at the end of the day, I'm grateful for two hours to read, relax. Here's somebody who's doing a full-time undergraduate program and working part time and who's a single mom, and when she gets home, she has four kids to attend to. How does she do it?”
Tamminga says all four children do well at school — she thinks it helps them to see Mom studying. She's especially proud of Jasper, who was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder but who received an award at primary school graduation last spring.
She chose U of G because of its proximity to her home, but it's her teachers who've kept her here.
“Every professor has been so accommodating,” says Tamminga, who approaches her instructors early each semester to discuss her mature-student status and schedule.
Last semester posed a particular challenge because she had to take almost three weeks off to deal with a family crisis. By the time she returned to campus in October, she more or less had to start the semester over. By early December, she'd caught up, with only one paper left to complete.
Tamminga is carrying a 75-per-cent average. “When I meet deadlines, that's a huge success for me,” she says. Mention exams and she smiles and says she enjoys the challenge. “I can share everything I know.”
Her schedule doesn't allow for much social time on campus, apart from frequent visits to the Aboriginal Resource Centre. But she's always made friends with students in her classes, despite the differences in age and circumstances.
“Students come up to me thinking I'm the TA and ask questions,” she says. “I often sit in class with the 18-year-olds and say I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.”