American Educator

By Ginger L Franklin

American Educator chronicles one woman’s journey from ninth-grade dropout, to university professor and beyond. The novella takes place over a turbulent eleven years of teaching in colleges and even in prison. Franklin helped students from over 50 different countries, many of whom are refugees from war-torn regions. Through their personal, often heart-wrenching stories, she presents some of the complex realities of overseas conflicts that are rarely seen on the news. These people changed her life and perspective, and she feels compelled to share what she learned. Throughout, the author interweaves her personal journey and her own struggle of trying to earn a living as an educator in a system that makes it nearly impossible. She went from making a nice living in the beginning of her teaching career to near homelessness, all while undergoing a personal transformation in her goals and identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387103386

Book preview

American Educator

American Educator

Copyright © 2017 Ginger L Franklin. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by B.T. Franklin

For more information about this work and other projects by Ginger Franklin, please visit:

www.write-the.world

Chapter One: School’s for Fools! Look at Me!

My path towards higher education and becoming a college English instructor and tutor started when I dropped out of school at the beginning of ninth grade. It was at this time in my life that I realized that public school was not the place for me. Don’t get me wrong, almost every kid in junior high comes to the same conclusion at some time or another; however, I, unlike most of those other kids, had the stubbornness and fortitude of will to convince my mom that I would do just fine without a public school education. I know that my mom worried about me, my future, and making the right decision, yet I was relentless in my appeal. Junior high was not particularly traumatic for me. I didn’t get picked on, I was a straight A student (except in math), and teachers as well as my peers seemed to like me quite a bit. Despite all of this, I still knew that I was not supposed to be there. I had a better way, a better idea. I felt like I was an awkward square cog in an otherwise smoothly running machine, and I wanted out.

Eventually, through my continual campaigning, my mom agreed to let me be homeschooled which consisted of buying a few months’ worth of homeschool books and taking classes through mail correspondence. When my mom couldn’t afford to continue that program anymore, I started spending my days painting, drawing, listening to music, and most importantly, reading books at the public library where my mom worked as a reference librarian. Those times spent reading were some of the most valuable I had had in my education thus far, and it was there, in the stacks, in the philosophy, physics, history, religious studies, and mythology sections that, despite my rejection of traditional public education, I decided I wanted to be a scholar. 

What do you want to do once you graduate? That was a question posed to me countless times from multiple people beginning before my first day of classes at Clovis Community College (CCC). Teach and write, was my go-to-answer. I told my uncle, a PhD, that same answer and also said, I just want to earn a PhD. His reply was, There are plenty of unemployed PhDs. Little did I know how right he was and how, over the next ten years, the institutions of higher education would grow more focused on profit and increasing administration positions while decreasing full-time instructor positions and funding for actual education.

When I decided to start taking college classes at Clovis Community College, I first tried to audit a pottery class. The employees at the admission desk treated me horribly because I did not have a high school diploma or General Education Diploma (GED). I felt very small and ashamed. It was then that I promised myself that I would not stop pursuing my education until I got my doctorate. A few months later, I earned my GED. I was in the 99th percentile for writing, and with a little brushing up on my math skills, with an eighth grade public education, I earned some of the highest GED scores in the state for that year. Fast-forward seven years, and I found myself teaching English classes at the very college whose employees had treated me so badly for not having a GED. In fact, I started my career as an educator by teaching GED classes there at CCC. Immediately after earning my bachelor’s degree, I started tutoring and teaching GED classes to anyone who wanted to sign up for them. My first classrooms were a wonderland of educational experimentation for me, which included analyzing Robert Frost poems with drop-outs, felons, people with severe learning disabilities, moms in their 50s and 60s who quit school to work and take care of families, and immigrants from Mexico and Bulgaria who barely spoke English, and all of this in the same classroom. I figured that if I shared what I was passionate about, others, no matter their background, would feel the same fire to learn that I had felt during my years as a student at CCC.

My method worked, and so I built my framework for teaching. I wanted to grow in my ability to share my passion for words and analysis, and so I continued to work towards my goal of earning a PhD by entering a Master of Arts program at Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU). During my time as a student at ENMU, I continued to teach and tutor and was assigned to teach college and university English classes. I earned a Master of Arts in English with a specialization in border and migration literature.

So much useless fodder

After I graduated, I thought I really had it made. There were no limits to how many classes someone could teach. Because I felt the sky was the limit, so to speak, I was teaching eight classes and tutoring at two different schools. Sure, I was working 14 hours a day, but I thought I was in a true state career fulfillment and financial security, earning about $1,000.00 a week. I had worked hard to become a master educator and I had money to spare! At that time, I had no imagination into a future where a teacher with nine years of teaching experience and a master’s degree could be facing unemployment and possible homelessness, and that that situation would not be the exception, but the norm. Nonetheless, try as I might throughout the years, I could never stop being an educator, and my drive to do so has taken me places that I never thought I could go and given me experiences that I never imagined possible.

Chapter Two: Go West, Young Woman!

My opportunity to have these experiences, no doubt, required that I move to a bigger town. I got from Clovis, New Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona through some lucky happenstances, the will to quit, and the desire for sushi! In September of 2010, all of my plans for the future as an educator came to fruition in a very unexpected way. When I was working on my Master’s degree at ENMU, it seemed like everyone was sleeping with either their professors, superiors, or students. Some of these necessarily sneaky couples even ended up getting married and starting a family, or, well, a second family since so many of the relationships were born out of affairs. Not wanting to miss out on the full graduate student experience, I thought it would be a good idea to have a relationship with both a student and a superior. Considering that I was recently divorced, looking for love and a way to gain control over my life, and feeling open to new experiences, the dangers of such a decision eluded me. I thought that I didn't have much to lose, and what I did have, I didn't care very much about at the time. I had reached some important goals, but my dreams of being a PhD and full-time professor seemed lightyears away. I had been working at Clovis Community College since 2006 in the delusional hopes of landing a full-time position. I felt like I was treading water until someone important suddenly seemed to take me under his wing and give me the inspiration I had somewhat lost along the way. The English department had just gotten a new chair, Saul Lackey, and Saul happened to be someone who taught literature at CCC while I was still a student, so to say I looked up to him was an understatement.

Saul and I started meeting off campus to collaborate about classes and curriculum. He implied that we would soon be the king and queen of the English department! Our relationship became less professional and more romantic after one meeting at the local