By Dan E. Way : The Herald-Sun
Apr 16, 2008

DURHAM -- With a pearl-sized tear dancing in her lively eyes, Melissa Spivey vowed: "I ain't trying to close any more doors. I've closed too many in my life."

The 25-year-old working mother of three is one of 56 adult students who enrolled in the pilot project Breaking Through at Durham Technical Community College with limited academic skills. On Tuesday, some of the students earned cash incentives for leaps of learning on their journey toward a high school diploma.

Spivey's achievements made her a cover girl on the college's brochure touting the Breaking Through program. It also won her a speaking spot on Tuesday's program at Durham Tech's Phail Wynn Jr. Student Services Center and generated a wild chorus of whoops and hands of adulation pushing skyward as she was called up later to receive her financial rewards and textbook funds.

"It felt good to see everyone rooting for me," Spivey said later. "I never achieved anything like this."

Christine Kelly-Kleese, dean and department head of Developmental Education and Instructional Support, who supervised creation of the program, said Spivey's reaction was typical of students who have not had much support in life and suffer from self-esteem issues.

"For many students, it was the first time they've had anyone clap for them," Kelly-Kleese said. "It was almost painful to get up and walk to the front to be recognized. But they won't forget it."

Spivey can relate. Her story is an American tale of pain and perseverance.

"I was in the ninth grade when I dropped out" at age 15, she said. "I was always a quiet person, and I got picked on all the time" by students who would taunt her with names and try to fight her.

"I just wanted to stay home because that was the only place I felt safe," Spivey said. So she tried homeschooling for a while. Then she attended an academy on Driver Street for dropouts but didn't believe she was learning anything.

"That's when I started working," she said. Then a friend who also was a dropout approached her about going to Durham Tech to work on getting a GED.

"I was skeptical," Spivey said. "I just didn't want to go through the same thing [as high school] because people are so cruel."

She had to start in adult basic education classes -- for students who have not mastered ninth-grade skill sets.

"I was ashamed because here I was 20-something trying to get my degree" and still struggling with basic reading, Spivey said. "I thought I was dumb because I couldn't get the work."

Admittedly, she had "a lot of stops. One of them was due to my pregnancy."

But she plugged along knowing that with three children, now 2, 5 and 7 years old, "I cannot survive off a minimum wage job" on her own, and because she wanted to be a good role model for her babies.

So each day she goes to class from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., gets in some homework time, works from 5 to midnight at the Armadillo Grille on the Duke campus and heads home to her mother's house to start it all over again.

She credits her mother for pushing her, and the Durham Tech staff for helping to pull her through the dark moments of contemplating dropping out again.

"They motivated me," Spivey said. "They wouldn't let me do it." They helped her in class, tutored her on off days and always had an encouraging word, she said.

Now, just 10 credits shy of a diploma, which would be awarded at a ceremony at Duke next May, Spivey is thinking about a bright future and a college degree.

"I'm going to do something in the medical field. I'm just a caring person," she said.

And she couldn't make her mother happier.

"I'm very proud of Melissa," Deborah Spivey said after the ceremony.

"At one time in her life she didn't really know where she was headed. She was at a standstill," her mother said. "Now she knows the sky's the limit."

"Nobody ever reached out to me and said, 'Hey, I'm ready to help,' " Deborah Spivey said. Seeing the level of compassion among the Durham Tech staff, she said she is now considering going back at the age of 56 to get her high school diploma.