Alternative program just the right path

There is a path through education that the Ward family has taken – and the youngest child in the family, Reid Ward, 17, is perfectly happy to follow it.

Mother Heather Ward is a teacher at the Enrichment Cooperative, or TEC at Bryant, an alternative enrichment parent cooperative. Her daughters Amanda and Ashley attended and now son Reid will be graduating from there this spring.

“The advantage is that there is a more adaptable education here,” said Reid Ward, “which I like because not all students learn the same way or at the same speed.”

He says he didn’t start to read until he was in about the fourth grade, but a year later had jumped to reading at the high school level. “I think in another school I probably would have been held back because of the reading.” Now he reads frequently, especially enjoying science fiction.

At TEC, he participates in the Musha Marimba music group in which he plays marimba and drums, enjoying the choral and thumb piano songs the group performs at Spokane’s Fall Folk Festival and Seattle’s Folklife Festival. He is also taking Running Start classes at Spokane Falls Community College, where he sings bass in the Chamber Choir. Among those classes is physics, a science class he thought would be fun to take.

His first choir experiences were at his mother’s insistence “right when my voice was changing. I didn’t enjoy it at first, but I really enjoy it now.”

Ward is a Boy Scout and has almost earned his Eagle badge. His project is building an up-to-code porch for a disabled veteran. “I’ll be 18 in June, and I have to be done by then, so I will be.”

After graduation, he will embark on a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as his older sister Amanda did before him (though she did so midway through college). He thinks it’s important to do a big thing in life, which a mission will be for him, and also thinks it will help give him a better idea of what to do with the rest of his life. “I know I will gain a good work ethic.”

His sisters are attending Brigham Young University in Utah, and he will follow suit after his mission – again following the family path in education.

“I’ve planned to go there my entire life and look forward to studying some kind of engineering there. I know that will involve some more math, but I guess I can live with that.”