Mrs. Jean Gomez

        I am a fifty-two year-old, part-time college student.  I am a full-time wife to Mike, mother to Stephanie, daughter to Mary Jane, and staff member of an elementary school.

I became a student in the fall semester of 2009 with the help and encouragement of family.  I am currently twenty-one hours into a plan to get an elementary education degree.  I have a 3.71 average and I am very proud of that.

        I am wife to Michal Gomez whom I have known since we were seventeen year- old high school sweethearts who married at twenty-one.  We became parents nine years later to our only child, Stephanie.  We got divorced in 1991 and remarried in 2001 at the twentieth anniversary of our first marriage.  He is my best friend and I love him dearly.

         Our daughter, Stephanie, a junior at University of Missouri-Columbia is pursuing a degree in elementary education.  She recently got on the Dean’s list, we couldn’t be prouder.  She is our pride and joy. She wanted to go away to school, and MIZZOU fit the bill as being the two-hour minimum distance.  When she left for college we became part of the “empty nesters” crowd and the separation was a bit of an adjustment for us.  We were then labeled, (although I don’t totally accept this), “Helicopter parents.”  However, shortly thereafter we became part of the “sandwich generation” when my mother, Mary Jane, moved in with us the weekend of her eightieth birthday. 

           At the time of our remarriage I left a position at a local corporation where I was fortunate to have worked for seventeen years and became a full-time mother/wife.  As our daughter entered junior high at St. Agnes Catholic School I decided I needed to help with the family finances and get back in the job world.  I took a job at her school’s cafeteria for a year, followed by working in the office for two years, and was then asked to join the Inclusion Center.  I am a full-time teacher’s aide in the Inclusion Center at St. Agnes Catholic School in Roeland Park, Kansas which is two minutes from our home.  I work with students from Pre-kindergarten through third grade, in math and reading or any other academic need they may have.  There is never a dull moment, and I love it.  I am on a journey that although starting thirty years late, is to end with a degree that will allow me to be called, TEACHER.

            I love music, musicals and any form of popcorn.  I like to do the JUMBLE and occasionally the Cryptoquip in the daily paper.  I am currently reading the third book in the Hunger Games Trilogy.  I am an okay cook, love to watch movies and can be “Martha Stewart” crafty if the need arises.  I have a tendency to talk loudly, have a pretty good sense of humor, and can be sarcastic at times.  I may randomly break into an English/Irish accent which I have been told is both aggravating and sometimes enjoyable, but it is part of me.  I have two sisters, younger - Meg and older - Mary Kay.  I also have one brother, older-Jim.  We recently lost our sister, Eileen as she joined our Dad in Heaven.