There’s Something About Mary

For Retiring Adult Education Math Teacher, Impact Adds Up Fast

 

Everything to Lose

Isaiah Balenti gunned the engine. The sirens on his police cruiser wailed. The emergency lights flickered and pulsed. Moments ago, he’d been filling out the usual paperwork—evidence logs, arrest and incident reports—for his New Zealand-based precinct. Now he was a comet, careening across the dark city towards danger.

His heart jittered like a woodpecker’s head as it bores holes into trees. What if something happened? What would his wife and 2-year-old daughter do without him?

“Slow down. Back yourself. Break it down into manageable bites and go for it,” Isaiah repeats aloud the mantra he hears in his head whenever he’s facing the unknown. It was a lesson he learned while struggling to get his GED at the Durango Adult Education Center.

He’d gleaned it from his math teacher—an unusual woman whose face appeared incapable of shaping its muscles into anything but a pleasant grin.

 

Losing Everything

The nights when a friend offered Ernesto Leguen a couch to sleep on were the best. On those nights, the teenage boy would be warm. He might be offered a meal. Maybe he’d sleep deeply enough to dream. But those nights were rare. Most people did not want a drug addict in their home.

More often, Ernesto huddled under a makeshift tarp-tent in the Purple Cliffs encampment for the unhoused. People around him fought. Some shrieked, tormented by demons only they could see. Still, this place and the incessant hunt for another hit of fentanyl was far better than going home. Better than facing his father…and those fists.

During a spell of sobriety, Ernesto’s sister convinced him to try classes at the DAEC. She was enjoying a lot of success there; surely, he could, too. He registered. He showed up for classes. His math teacher was a quirky woman who had a way of making everyone feel like their brightest dreams could transform into reality.

But, all too soon, negative voices littered Ernesto’s thoughts. All he’d ever done was frustrate teachers. Ernesto recounts, “When I was younger, I had so much trauma going on with my father and stuff. I could never pay attention. I was always scared to go home or thinking about what I had to deal with when I got home, so I never did any of my work.”

Language barriers caused him to struggle in school from a young age. Navajo was primarily spoken at home, making the English he heard at school fairly foreign.

Detecting a resurgence of these bitter memories, Ernesto quit coming to classes. The next time he saw that quirky math teacher, he was inside a jail cell.

 

Everything Changes

Mary Mullen loved her job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Whereas decades ago, scientists at the lab had labored over how to crack open subatomic particles, Mary labored over how to crack open complex, numerical sets of data in order to make scientific statistical forecasts and predictions with a reliable likelihood.

Mary was a whiz in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) arena. She’d already had a fruitful career in computer programming. She returned to school to get a degree in biology and found enjoyment in a career related to that field before returning to school yet again for a degree in statistics.

Time and again, Mary had proven to herself that she was more than capable of reinventing herself. She relished every challenge—which was good because she was facing a bit of a problem. She now needed to reinvent herself and she neither wanted to nor knew which was the path forward.

“My son was living in Durango and got married,” Mary vividly recalls the pivotal moment nested some 25 years in the past. “I knew what was going to happen after that, and I wanted to be here for it. So, that’s when I decided to give up my career as a statistician.”

But what could she possibly do that a.) was more fun than her current job, b.) would offer the scheduling flexibility she’d likely want as new, doting grandmother, and c.) would offer a deep sense of intrinsic satisfaction?

Maybe she could teach. At the age of 10, Mary was already tutoring classmates from school.

“There was a new kid in my class—Mike Urbana—and he failed spelling. His mom got concerned and asked him if there was a kid in the class that could teach him how to spell?” Mary recalls. “I went over to his house once a week and basically just studied with him for an hour and his spelling came right up to where it should be.” While Mike earned a passing grade, Mary earned a new lifelong friend.

Later, as a teen, she taught tennis to adults. Throughout her careers, her favorite part of every job was training her fellow co-workers. Maybe she should teach.

 

Changing the Perspective

Isaiah did not feel comfortable starting classes at the DAEC. He’d only ever been home schooled, a phrase he puts in air quotes. Then he got a job at age 14. Sitting in an actual classroom was tantamount to a nightmare.

Isaiah explains, “Going into a classroom was tough for me because it felt like I didn’t know what I was doing a lot and I didn’t. And I’d never been in an environment like that. My brain moves at like 2 million miles per hour.”

But he desperately wanted to join the military and needed a high school equivalent degree such as the GED. Luckily, his teachers were patient and persistent. He notes, “The teachers all in all were really good. They tried to find different ways to teach me. It was very helpful.”

He steamrolled along through the different subjects and tests, but then came the math test—a two-hour numeric assault covering everything from basic fractions to algebra and geometry.

“I’m horrendous with maths, so that was always going to be my struggle,” Isaiah attests. “I was one of those people when I was younger that if I wasn’t immediately good at something, I was like f—    that! [Mary] was always happy to take questions, even after hours if I was studying at home. She was like: Honestly, just call me. She didn’t want me to fail and get pissed off. And she knew that when I got pissed off at something, I would just quit.”

Actually, his math teacher, Mary, had a different perspective on his capabilities. “I’ve had many students like [Isaiah] who are highly intelligent and school was easy for them for so many years. And then they finally reach a point where they can’t just get it. They think they’re stupid and they don’t want to admit it and then they quit school.”

 

“Mary was the one who invested more time to try and figure me out,” Isaiah affirms.

He went on to pass the GED math test and soon left Colorado to live with his brother in New Zealand. He worked various odd jobs until joining the police force at age 27.

“I’m right at home! I love my job! It’s definitely going to be a career. But! I had to pass a math test to get in!” he laughs. “I passed it and I was like: Thank you, Mary!”

His gratitude towards Mary extends beyond math skills. He notes, “She set me up for a life that I love! It’s meant a lot to me and my family.” Additionally, Isaiah is grateful he found the DAEC. “I never had the chance to go to school and be like a normal kid, but the Education Center gave me a chance to get the same qualifications and do it on my terms. I definitely wouldn’t be where I am now or have had any of the adventures in life that I have had without getting an education.”

 

Hindsight Is Everything

“When I was in La Plata County Jail, I had Mary always coming to study for my GEDs and stuff,
Ernesto explains. “And she pushed me to get my GED. I kept pushing it off, pushing it off, and pushing it off. And she was just like: No, let’s get it done. She didn’t give up on me.”

Mary describes the experience of teaching Ernesto this way, “I could tell right away that he was highly intelligent. I wasn’t really sure what his motivation was at first. We got to know each other and I realized that his motivation comes entirely from within. He just wanted to learn. It was really fun working with him once I realized he just wanted to learn.”

“I’ve always been really good at math,” Ernesto confirms. “It’s the only subject I’ve ever been good at. It just comes natural, you know.”

Soon after Ernesto passed all his GED subject tests, he was released from jail. After nine years of being what he calls “on paper,” meaning he was either on probation or incarcerated, he is now completely at liberty to rebuild his life and pursue a meaningful future. To that end, he works almost full-time at a car dealership while taking college classes at Pueblo Community College where he’s pursuing an Associate’s degree in business. His wife is also working her way through college. They juggle hectic schedules, as well as all the cuddles and chaos that come with having a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old.

In hindsight, Ernesto believes that had he not met Mary, he would not be on a pathway to a meaningful life. “She’s amazing for sure,” he says.

Although Mary concedes all people need a really good teacher or mentor at pivotal moments in life to succeed, she points to an often-overlooked factor in the equation, noting, “The other half, of course, is the students themselves. And our students are amazing human beings. Their values are just good, basic values like take care of self, take care of family, be part of the community, be kind to people. It makes it so easy to work with human beings like that.”

Ernesto agrees with this stance, saying, “I still have to be the one to do it, but it took me nine years. I did get sober. It was a big step for me that I needed to overcome before I could do anything else.”

And although he only studied at the DAEC briefly, he wholeheartedly recommends the school to anyone struggling to finish their education and make the leap to the next chapter of their life. “They’re very helpful. They’re very kind. You can work at your own pace.”

 

Everything Adds Up

Mary’s decision to move to Durango and become a teacher proved to be a crucial one. Over the span of two and a half decades, Mary has likely helped hundreds of students overcome their fears of pi, n, and exponents, or fed their innate passion for sine, cosine, and tangent. At least, that is how she would characterize her work.

Her students tell a different story—one where she played a key role as the one person they could rely on, the one person believed in them, who never gave up on them, and never let them give up on their dreams. For many, Mary saved their lives, the same way a firefighter carries people out of deadly infernos.

The students also saved Mary by giving her life renewed purpose. She notes of teaching, “It’s made me like myself better than I’ve ever liked myself before in my life. It’s made me realize that when I choose to occupy myself doing something that I love, that I can become good at it. And even better at it than what I think I deserve to be.”

Evidently, everything added up to love, which perfectly encapsulates Mary’s experience as a teacher. First, she fell head-over-heals in love with teaching. Then she fell madly in love with learners. As she puts it, “Now with my students, I love them all. I just do. I see their potential and I want to work with that. I love them all because they motivate me and make me feel purposeful.”

In early 2025, Mary officially retired from teaching and the DAEC. Although she was facing yet another crossroad in life, this time, she knew exactly which was the path forward: training the next generation of teachers. After working at the La Plata County Jail with incarcerated students and seeing how effectively education cements recovery while shrinking criminal recidivism, Mary is now a fierce advocate for education in the correctional system. In the coming weeks and years, she’ll attend conferences where she will teach teachers how to succeed with students learning inside jails.

And yes, she’ll also enjoy the free time to take long walks, spend time with her family, and generally relax. But in the end, she says, “I’m not done helping students.”