New Teacher, At 49, Finds Some Surprises

Stoughton teacher Ted Mummery works on a home economics project with 7th-grade student Ryan Olson.

By Joanne M. Haas

Shortly after starting his “dream job” of teaching at age 49, Ted Mummery could hardly believe his ears when he went to the local bank for a new car loan.

He was rejected.

“How can you be telling me this?” Mummery said, recalling his reaction. “I know the pay is low, but it isn’t that low. This is an eye opener. The public should know that first-year teachers struggle a lot.”

Mummery began this fall as a first-year family and consumer education teacher after years of private business experience.

He is paid about $26,600 a year to teach the 600 or so 7th and 8th graders of River Bluff Middle School.

Despite his decades of private business experience, the bank rejected his loan based upon his teacher pay and a debt of $35,000 for student loans used to earn his teaching degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Mummery is confident he will secure a car loan elsewhere without returning to the private sector, where his computer skills would easily net a much higher salary. He is certified to teach both family and consumer education and computer science.

While Mummery is not planning to leave the profession he just joined, he is learning just how difficult life is for teachers under school district revenue controls and the Qualified Economic Offer law.

Mummery is raising three children and repaying his $35,000 student loans. He knows it would be much easier making two to three times as much in the private sector, but he is uniquely determined to remain a teacher.

Drawing on life’s experiences
Mummery has been an assembly worker, a supervisor, and a business owner. He even lived off 25 acres of Missouri land for seven productive years in the 1970s. But it was a visit to a nursing home in the early 1980s that eventually pushed this true multi-tasker on another path.

“There was a waste of education just sitting there with nothing to do,” Mummery said of the nursing home residents he met 20 years ago. “Such full lives with so much information, and it just sits.”

So when Mummery hit yet another ceiling in yet another profession, he had something of an epiphany prompted in part by the image of all those residents whose life experiences may have never been tapped by society.

“I wanted to do something with my life that gave me fulfillment, and that would make a difference,” he said. “Teaching is one of the best careers. I had a long life behind me, and that would aid me in being a teacher.”

From high school to the Army
After he graduated from Beloit Memorial High School, Mummery joined the U.S. Army. Then in the early 1970s, he worked for Chrysler Corp. in Belvidere, Ill., until a round of layoffs eliminated his job.

From there, he and his wife moved to Missouri, built a two-story log house and lived a “back to the land” existence. After their three children were born, they returned to Wisconsin where he landed a job as a driver for a cement company and was promoted through the ranks to supervisor.

He then owned and operated his own frozen yogurt eatery called La Claire’s in Stevens Point from 1988 to 1993. From there, he joined a manufacturing company and worked his way into the top manager spot in the woodworking division. Along the way, he did other things such as arts and crafts, stained glass and holiday decorations that he sold.

Mummery never considered college until a little more than five years ago when the time seemed right to become a teacher. After investigating different fields, he settled on family and consumer education.

“It teaches life, parenting, relationship skills, financial skills and all these human growth and development skills.

“And everyone should know how to cook,” said Mummery, who is one of few men teaching in the field.

The skills he learned in business are used every day in the classroom where he enjoys working with young people.

“Connecting with students is very rewarding – to know you’ve made an impact,” Mummery said. “Many of the issues I deal with are life and death -- pregnancy to sexually transmitted diseases. I just enjoy helping people with their lives.

“We don’t get change without learning, and knowledge helps us make better choices.”

Posted November 15, 2002