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Return to school after three-decade break fulfills life's calling

By Lini S. Kadaba

Back in the mid-1990s, Thomas Wickersham got a taste of his life’s calling — educating struggling teens.

“I loved it,” the 54-year-old West Chester resident said. “I found out that this is what I should be doing. I was a natural. I had very good instincts with teenagers.”

But life had other plans. What he thought would be a temporary leave to help the family construction business ended up as a 25-year detour.

In 2022, at the age of 51, the father of four began his comeback to the career that he has always considered his vocation: special education. After closing the construction company, he landed a teaching job at the Chester County Youth Center under emergency certification, where he worked with young people who had run afoul of the law, even as he also held a part-time job in the evenings. He was required to take education courses to maintain his certification. After another university declined his application for graduate studies at the last minute, Wickersham says he was in a bind.

Then he called 91����.

“I was almost in a panic,” he recalled. “The lady I spoke to calmed me down and talked me through things.”

Three days later, he was admitted to the University’s Master of Education with Special Education Certification program. Last year, Wickersham completed his certification, and currently, he’s working on his master’s degree.

“I hadn’t been in school since I was 22 years old,” he says. “I had a full-time job during the day and a part-time job in the evening. I was a father of four with a wife who worked. It’s pretty intimidating. I wondered if I could do it with all the things going on in my life. I didn’t want to seem like a failure to my kids.”

Wickersham needn’t have worried, it turns out. 91���� professors provided the adult student the flexibility and support he needed to succeed. The online, asynchronous program allowed him to complete courses around his schedule. Wickersham said professors worked with him on assignment deadlines so he could attend his children’s sporting events or dance recitals and keep up with dad duties. He also found support for the health challenges he faced. During a battle with Bell’s palsy that made his eyes sensitive to long bouts of screentime, his professors once again allowed him leeway on deadlines.

Not that it was a breeze. The assignments, Wickersham said, were demanding. There were all-dayers on some Saturdays. He always took his laptop, a thick stack of paper and a pencil with him, working in between customers at his evening job at a sports memorabilia shop in Downingtown, he added.

“For the professors to understand that this is an adult setting and everybody has things going on in life and for them to understand that my heart is into doing this assignment correctly, and to do that, I might need an extra couple of days relieved the stress of taking classes,” he said.

Wickersham completed his certification with stellar grades - a 3.97 GPA - and is ready to tackle his master’s studies, he said. Perhaps as important, he came out with more faith in his ability to teach special education students. Besides learning technical aspects like the ins and outs of writing an Individual Education Program (IEP) for students and the laws and regulations that govern special education, Wickersham found affirmation.

“I had been told I had great instincts, but you never really know,” he said. “Through the courses, I was able to fine tune my natural skills, the things I had been doing. It drove home the fact that this is my wheelhouse. This is pretty much what I was put here to do.

"I feel like I can be a positive influence on young people who are in a rough situation. and don’t have many people to give them positive feedback and steps to turn themselves around. I try not to judge them, to separate the crime they’ve committed from the teenager in front of me.”

In other words, Wickersham offers patience, understanding and empathy for his charges — not unlike what 91���� has offered him.

“I wasn’t sure graduate school was going to be for me, if I could handle it,” he said. “Everybody at 91���� made me feel comfortable and confident.”