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Kristi Carreon Pursues College Dreams, Refuses to Become Statistic
5/5/2008
 Teen mother, high school dropout – for the last 17 years, Kristi Carreon has lived with labels. Now she is proud to have a new label: college graduate.
Carreon, a 34-year-old mother of two, will graduate from the University of St. Thomas with a degree in education on May 17. Throughout the hard times, there was one motivating force behind her determination, “I will not allow myself or my children to become a statistic.” She now serves as an inspiration to her family, especially her 16-year-old son Joshua and her 9-year-old daughter, Jordan.
Pregnant at 17, a mother at 18, Carreon dropped out of high school her junior year. Both Carreon and her mother had children at a young age, and were raised in single-parent homes. She feared it would be a never-ending cycle. After she had her first child, she became a stay-at-home mother while her husband worked. She had her second child at the age of 25, and decided to get her GED when she was 30. She accumulated the maximum credits at North Harris County Junior College, and then applied to UST.
“Statistics pretty much called for our failure right from the start, and being pregnant at 17 meant I was falling in line with what the numbers predicted,” Carreon said. “I wasn’t a formally educated person but I knew and understood the value of education. I read to my son every chance I got, and I made sure I taught him everything that I could possibly teach him. Statistics seemed to follow me throughout my entire life, and I wanted more than anything to make sure that my son wasn’t just another drop in the ‘I told you so bucket.’”
That value of education influenced her choice of majors at UST. Carreon said she always knew she wanted to be a teacher. She did her student teaching in a Montessori classroom which consisted of Preschool, Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten students at Reece Academy. In the fall, she will teach Pre-Kindergarten at Aldine Independent School District’s Nadine Kujawa Early Childhood Pre-Kindergarten Center. She plans to teach for a while, but eventually hopes to return to UST to pursue a master’s degree in education.
Carreon said she was inspired by the individual attention she received by her professors, including one of her mentors, Dr Terry Brandt, associate professor of education.
Speaking to members of the UST Kappa Delta Pi International Education Honor Society about the importance that choices play in our lives, Dr. Brandt referred to a line from the movie the “Dead Poets Society,” in which a teacher, Mr. Keating, challenges his students with a quote from Walt Whitman, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” He then asks them, “What will your verse be?”
“For many of our students, attending the University of St. Thomas was not the next, logical step in the progression of their education, but rather a difficult decision that often entails considerable sacrifice on their part and on the part of others in their lives,” Brandt said. “They have decided what their ‘life’s verse’ will be, and have chosen to come to a university that celebrates the individuality of life’s experience.”
Carreon recalled swallowing her pride to make the hard decisions, but the best decisions for her family. Following her example of success, Carreon said her sisters have also set on a collegiate path and have enrolled in North Harris County Junior College.
“My children and I sacrificed a lot for me to be here today, but it was worth it. When I walk across the stage in May I will be the first person in my family to graduate from college. I will have looked statistics in the eye and I will have proven them wrong,” Carreon said. “My children started their lives out as the children of a high school dropout, but I refuse to let the choices I made in the past determine the kind of future my children will have. By taking the steps I have taken, I hope that I have given my children a reason to be proud, and I hope that I have shown them that anything is possible.”
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