Page 6 - RVO What Women Want August 2016

6VV • What Women Want • An Advertising Supplement to the River Valley & Ozark Edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette • Sunday, August 14, 2016
WILLIAM HARVEY/ RIVER VALLEY & OZARK EDITION Jessica Mashburn, 27, stands outside the E. Allen Gordon Library at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, where she started her educational career as a child through Kids College. She earned two degrees at UACCM before getting her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. She taught in the Perryville and Mayflower
school districts and started a new job this month teaching at Dardanelle Middle School.
A teacher of many
BY TAMMY KEITH SPECIAL SECTIONS WRITER
Jessica Mashburn admittedly changed her mind a few times before settling on becoming a teacher, but that shouldn’t be taken as a lack of passion.
(That doesn’t even count the diploma she got in the 1990s from the UACCM Kids College.) When she graduated from Perryville High School, she had already earned 21 hours of credit at UACCM and went on to complete her associate degree in liberal arts at the college. UACCM is near and dear to her heart because of her many family connections to the school.
Her grandmother, Lavern Blocker of Morrilton, worked there at least 20 years as an administrative assistant, and Mashburn’s husband, C.J., attended the college two years before transferring. Her parents, Kelly and Susan McGehee, have degrees from UACCM, too.
Learning has come easily to Mashburn, who started out thinking she’d make a career in health care.
When she was 14, she volunteered as a candy striper at St. Anthony’s Hospital (now CHI St. Vincent Morrilton).
Her first job was as a CNA at a nursing home in Russell- ville; then she went to Conway Regional Medical Center, where she did patient care — while she lived in Russellville and attended Arkansas Tech University.
“It was a good way to make more than the average college student made, ... and to me, it was helping people,” she said.
She considered being a family therapist, but she earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in psychology in 2011 from Arkansas Tech and married her husband two months before graduating.
He was the one who suggested graduate school. Mash- burn laughed when she recalled the interview to get into graduate school. She had just had a tonsillectomy and was on “painkillers galore” when she went to her graduate-school interview. Her “sweet, precious mother-in-law” drove her to the interview. Mashburn, who explained her health situation to the interviewer, was accepted and earned a master’s degree in teaching in 2013 from Arkansas Tech.
She already had experience teaching, though. She taught 10th grade in the Mayflower School District while still work- ing on her master’s.
“I’d leave the house at 5:30 a.m. and get home at 5:30 p.m.,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for a better first year.”
After teaching in Mayflower, she landed a job in Per- ryville, her alma mater, where she taught English to eighth- and ninth-graders. She was there for two years until she landed the job in Dardanelle. That opportunity came about thanks to her preacher, John David Keeling — who is also
“I dipped my toes in a lot of stuff; I changed my major four times,” she said. “I want to be in the
classroom; that’s my calling.”
Mashburn, 27, who lives in the sweetly named but little-
known township of Rose Creek, about 10 miles south of Petit Jean Mountain, has more experience and education already than many people twice her age.
Mashburn started a new job last week teaching eighth- grade literacy at Dardanelle Middle School.
“I always loved reading; Mom read to me,” Mashburn said.
She doesn’t regret her path to becoming a teacher — or the hours and hours she’s spent studying. She almost needs a spread sheet to keep up with it.
Her first of four postsecondary diplomas is from the Uni- versity of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, where she received a certified nursing assistant certificate at age 18.
TALENTS
Degrees stack up for Dardanelle teacher