Investing in Education

Listen to Your Mother

by Lory Hough

The 1950s television show may have been called Father Knows Best, but for Caroline Helmkamp, M.A.T.'66, it was really Mother who knew best, at least when it came to her daughter's future.

"My mother always said I was going to be a teacher some day. I said no way. My best friend remembers always playing school as a kid. I never did," Helmkamp said from her classroom in Kansas City, MO. "But my mother saw something in me that I hadn't seen -- she knew I enjoyed explaining things to people. And it's true: I remember teaching her to ride a bike and I taught other people to swim. I've always enjoyed teaching."

This could explain why she's lasted nearly three decades in the classroom -- through budget cuts, school closings, desegregation, changing demographics, and a required switch because of downsizing from teaching social studies (she was a history major in college) to a subject she knew only vaguely: computer applications.

"I was an early user of computers -- I've had one in my home for nearly 20 years -- but being a user and being a teacher is a totally different thing," she said, explaining her trepidation eight years ago when she was asked to teach computer skills to her sixth-through eighth-grade students at Northeast Middle School. "I had to learn on my own. I spent a lot of time on the Internet looking for lesson plans. It was like being a beginning teacher again. I've learned by the seat of my pants."

Luckily, she doesn't have to teach programming, just how to use various applications.

"I'm responsible for helping them learn how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the school's e-mail system," she said.

Asked if she was worried that the students would know more than she about these applications, she laughed and said that everyone assumes that's the case.

"It's not," she said. "I don't see it."

In fact, she estimates that fewer than 20 percent of her highly diverse students, many low-income immigrants from places like Somalia, Afghanistan, and the Sudan, have a computer at home. They spend hardly any time on the computer, and when they do, it's mostly for fun.

"They're really good at playing games, but there's still a lot we can teach them," she said. "I don't have a state-of-art computer lab -- it's cobbled together -- but we make do."

She hopes her efforts, even with older computers and outdated software, are having an impact on her students. It's the same reason why she has been a consistent donor to the Ed School since she first jumped in a Volkswagon in 1966 with a friend and drove to Cambridge to start her master's program.

"I came from a middle class family. Neither parent went to college. I think I had one cousin who went before me. I was always around working class people," she said. "Education has made a tremendous difference in my life. And not just because I make more money than my parents, but because of the quality of my life. I went though school on scholarship and without that assistance, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today. I can't pay back those people who helped me financially, but I can help other students."

About the Article

A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

photograph courtesy of Caroline Helmkamp