After dropping out of high school at 16, Lisa Swan is now climbing the ladder of academia and taking her family with her.

A remarkable story of persistence and success, Mrs. Swan has made the impossible come true when, after graduating with a bachelors degree, she is now close to achieving her masters.

Mrs. Swan left the Whitney Institute as a teenager, but later achieved her General Education Degree.

Later, married and pregnant, she decided to continue her studies by taking night classes at the former US base.

Numerous courses and three children later, Mrs. Swan began fostering dreams of going abroad to college.

"I had a lot of friends that thought what I was doing was crazy,'' she recalled.

"They didn't realise that what I was doing was gaining more than material things.'' She noted that Robert Horton, who was with the Department of Education at the time, was one of her biggest supporters.

"When he heard I had three kids and wanted to go back to school he couldn't believe it, but he encouraged me 110 percent. "I looked at what was going to happen in four years -- the long term benefits.

"Eventually, my husband and I decided to pack up everything and go for it,'' Mrs. Swan said.

So, with three kids aged two, three and five, the couple headed to Alabama where Mrs. Swan was enrolled at Alabama A&M.

Ironically, she graduated on Mother's Day, four years later, with a bachelors degree in Special Education.

Mrs. Swan was quickly offered a job at a middle school in the Hoover City district in Alabama, one of the most influential areas of the state.

"I must have had something they wanted because they offered me a job at my interview,'' she said.

Mrs. Swan said working there has been the best academic experience in her life.

But she maintains her home connection in her classroom with a "Bermuda corner'' that has Island posters and pink sand.

And she has set up a "penpalship'' with her class in Alabama and students at Berkeley Institute so they can learn about each other's culture.

She is also hoping to bring a group of teachers from the Hoover City school system to Bermuda to hold some workshops for Bermudian teachers.

This summer she shared some of her experiences abroad when she opened up Camp Swansong for the month of July with her mother.

The camp taught middle school kids the skills to be successful in the classroom.

Mrs. Swan said eight kids participated and the outcome was "extremely successful''.

"Camp Swansong was my way of giving back to the community. I was exposed to a lot of resources abroad that I wanted to bring to Bermuda,'' Mrs. Swan explained.

She has a five-year plan for the camp in which she will teach it until the students are able to take it over.

Last year, Mrs. Swan taught seventh grade in Hoover City and this year she will be teaching sixth grade while taking night classes at the University of Alabama.

She is working to achieve her masters degree in Psychometry along with a specialist degree in Education Psychology.

She said: "I could never have done this without the support of my mother and my husband.

"My husband has been very instrumental in this process,'' she elaborated.

He is also going to school at Jefferson State College in Birmingham to obtain a Culinary Arts Degree while being a father to their three children who are all under the age of 11.

Mrs. Swan said: "It has definitely brought us closer together as a family.

"We have had to sacrifice a lot, but what we have acquired is much, much more,'' she added.

"I think when you have a goal, and you plan for it, anything can be achieved.

"I'm just an ordinary person who had a dream and went for it,'' she concluded.

Lisa Swan EDUCATION ED