{"id":30175,"date":"2014-10-27T15:19:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T19:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/2014\/10\/27\/necc-helps-mom-find-right-balance\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T16:36:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T20:36:49","slug":"necc-helps-mom-find-right-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2014\/10\/27\/necc-helps-mom-find-right-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"NECC Helps Mom Find Right Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Marie Phillips, a single mom who decided to return to school, credits Northern Essex<br \/> with helping her balance school and life.<\/p>\n<p>Though she graduated from Haverhill High School in 1998 and enrolled at NECC, life<br \/> events, including the birth of her daughter and marriage, interrupted her education.<\/p>\n<p>Over a decade later, Marie found herself a single mother raising her special needs<br \/> daughter alone, delivering newspapers, and needing a change. \u201cI began wondering<br \/> where my life went so wrong, and how I ended up with a job that was worth so little.<br \/> I decided, in that moment, that I would find a way to go back to school at NECC,\u201d<br \/> Marie said.<\/p>\n<p>Once enrolled at NECC, Marie was determined to achieve her dream of being a kindergarten teacher. During her time at NECC, Marie was involved in numerous activities including the<br \/> student support program Pathways to Academic &amp; Career Excellence (PACE).<br \/> She was also a Presidential Student Ambassador, President of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, an international honor society, and a team leader in the JumpStart Program, a national early education organization that helps children develop language and literacy skills.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_9872\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/media-old\/2014\/10\/MariePhillips.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9872\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9872\" alt=\"Early Childhood Education Graduate Marie Phillips\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/media-old\/2014\/10\/MariePhillips-200x300.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-9872\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Early Childhood Education Graduate Marie Phillips<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Without programs such as PACE at NECC, Marie knows she would not have been<br \/> able to balance school and life so successfully. \u201cThe PACE program has taught me many<br \/> important skills and strategies for balancing all of my responsibilities. Being as involved<br \/> as I am at NECC definitely takes a lot of careful planning and time management,\u201d<br \/> Marie says.<\/p>\n<p>Marie also credits everyone she has met at NECC for her success. \u201cThe NECC community<br \/> saw so much more in me than I was able to see and brought it out,\u201d Marie says. She now<br \/> thinks of the NECC community as her own family, \u201cNECC is a place where everyone<br \/> truly cares about one another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Marie received her Associate Degree in Early Childhood Education in May, and<br \/> will transfer to Salem State University to pursue her Bachelor\u2019s Degree in Early Childhood<br \/> Education in the fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marie Phillips, a single mom who decided to return to school, credits Northern Essex with helping her balance school and life. Though she graduated from Haverhill High School in 1998 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":30177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NECC Helps Mom Find Right Balance - NECC News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2014\/10\/27\/necc-helps-mom-find-right-balance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NECC Helps Mom Find Right Balance - NECC News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Marie Phillips, a single mom who decided to return to school, credits Northern Essex with helping her balance school and life. 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