Bringing ohana to the classroom

Three Bennetts describe being in a class with family as positive and lifetime opportunity Grandmother is a professor, grandfather to graduate in June, granddaughter is also a student

When Berklee Bennett tells people she not only goes to school with her grandpa, but she also has a class with him, they don’t believe her. Sitting with her grandparents in the classroom where they meet, she laughed as she described how, “Everyone I’ve told about it has thought I was kidding.”

Every Wednesday and Friday at 2 p.m. Berklee Bennett, a freshman from Oregon majoring in elementary education, and her grandpa, Gary Bennett, a senior from North Carolina majoring in art, head to the school of education building for their science methods class, which is taught by Gary’s wife, Carol Bennett. This is the second time the trio has been in class together. The first was writing methods in Fall 2019.

The first class

According to the family, they loved being in the Writing Methods class together because of the family environment it created, and it gave Berklee Bennett a chance to get to know her grandparents better since she grew up on the other side of the country from them.

Berklee Bennett described how she knew she wanted to come to BYU–Hawaii long before her grandparents moved to Hawaii.

“I visited Hawaii with my family when I was 12. We toured the campus, and I thought, ‘That’s where I want to be.’”

She also explained how she needed this class for her major, but she thought it would be a good experience to take the class with her grandpa.

“I thought it would be really fun and really cool. I’ve never grown up by them, so it’s been really fun to get to know them on a different level.”

Gary Bennett said he needed an elective class for the semester, and Carol Bennett said she suggested this class for him because “writing is not his strong suit, so I knew it would be helpful no matter what he did. I thought it

BY HAELEY VAN DER WERF

Carol Bennett teaches an education classs. Her husband and granddaughter to one of her classes together and she said it was a great experience. Photo by Chad Hsieh

would be good. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to all be in a class together.”

Despite initial concerns about the effect of having her husband and granddaughter in her class, Carol Bennett said it has actually been a positive experience.

“I can honestly say it’s been a huge plus. Other students have really seemed to enjoy it. I think it has made the whole class be more of a family-oriented class.”

Having her husband and granddaughter in her class has helped them all develop a relationship on a new level, Carol Bennett said. Speaking of her husband, she became emotional as she explained how, “We’ve been married 46 years, so we know each other really well. We have always had a really good marriage.

“For me, him being in school has added [to our relationship]. Now, we have an intellectual talk that we can do that we didn’t have before.” Carol Bennett also shared how happy she is to live in a town with her granddaughter nearby for the first time.

She said, “I love having Berklee here. I love seeing her interact with other students. I love walking down the hall and seeing her in another professor’s class.”

Gary Bennett also described how living near Berklee Bennett has helped them catch up after only seeing each other a couple of times a year for most of her life. “She comes over to our house every Sunday for afternoon supper. We really are catching up after all these years.”

Where it all started

Carol and Gary Bennett moved to Hawaii from North Carolina in 2014 after Carol Bennett was hired as an assistant professor of Education. The couple said they met while working in the same grocery store in North Carolina and becoming friends after finding out they have the exact same birthday.

“He was really cute, but we hadn’t talked yet or anything. We had just seen each other. I heard his birthday was Jan. 21,” Carol shared. After asking him if he had looked in her purse, they swapped licenses for proof. “There it was: my birthday on his license. That broke the ice. Then we started talking before he asked me out on a date.”

Gary Bennett, who was not a member of the Church when he met his future wife, progressed through the missionary lessons so quickly she thought he had gotten baptized just for her. “He had four discussions a week for two weeks before being baptized. I thought he just did it for me for a long time. We dated for about a year and a half, and I was seeing how he really had a testimony.”

Gary Bennett said he had done a few classes at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, but he wasn’t committed to college when he graduated from high school. When he married Carol Bennett, life just got in the way of school. “This gorgeous blonde walked into my life. I said I would just pick up [school] later. We dated for 18 months. Next thing you know, 10 years later we had four kids.”

Carol Bennett planned to attend BYU in Provo, but she explained she stayed in North Carolina to help take care of her mother. After having her fourth child, the couple started thinking about the future for their children, and Carol Bennett decided she did not want to be stuck if something were to happen to her husband. They figured out a system where she could go to school at Mars Hill College four nights a week and he worked during the day. “I would do all the normal things during the day,” she explained. “I would get dinner ready. Gary would come home. We would eat. I would go off to class. He would help them with homework, bathe them, read to them, and get them off to bed. I would come home and start my homework. We did that for four years.”

Coming back to school

Gary Bennett tried to go back to school at the same time, but they said life got in the way again. Carol Bennett described how, “He was there almost a year, but life got too hard with both of us in school with four kids. It was too much. We couldn’t make it that way. He didn’t want me to drop out, so he dropped out.” Carol Bennett then went on to get master’s and doctorate degrees in education. After moving to Hawaii, Gary Bennet said he started working part-time at Hawaii Reserves. Then, he found out spouses of faculty could go to school for free. He decided to start school over instead of trying to get credits from his old colleges accepted. It was a struggle for him to learn how to be a student again, he said, not having had math or English since the early 1970s.

However, the hardest part, he said, “was learning computers. I had no training. You grew up with computers in your hands. All I could do is write emails and simple stuff. I had to learn Canvas and go on tutorials.”

Of this struggle, Carol Bennett said, “It took him a while to learn how to become a student, but he is definitely a student now.” Gary Bennett is scheduled to graduate in June with a degree in art and minors in entrepreneurship and social work. •

The Bennetts say they got to know each other more and have a family environment in the classrooom. Photo by Chad Hsieh