Portales couple support each others’ PhD quest

Children at Sylvia Martinez’s school at Lockwood Elementary in Clovis call her Mrs. Dr. Martinez.

“That inspires them to get a good education!” Martinez says. “But for me, the title is not a big thing. It’s the journey that it took to get there. It took a lot of years of focusing!”

Sylvia and her husband, Paul Carlos Anaya, both have new abbreviations before their names. The Portales couple both completed doctoral degrees in education from Kansas State University recently, earning the rights to place a “Dr.” before their names.

Martinez defended her dissertation, “A Survey of Reading Methods used by New Mexico Middle School Teachers,” which focuses on reading and teaching methods in the classroom, this month. Carlos completed his dissertation, “A Case Study of New Mexico Middle Schools: Implications for School Language Policy Formation” this past December.

Martinez and Anaya both grew up during the heat of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and both were first-generation college students who came from backgrounds of poverty. Anaya — who describes himself as a C average student in Roswell, where he graduated from high school — went to college under the new Johnson Administration 1964-65 Civil Rights Bill, dropping out of New Mexico State University after his first year, and then later attending the Eastern New Mexico University branch in Roswell to earn his associate’s degree while working two jobs.

“I was brought up in the streets during one of the most critical epochs in our nation’s history, during the 1960s and 1970s. This has not come without some personal costs,” said Anaya who said he is a former activist turned these days to more of a “conservative activist.”

In 1969, Anaya came to the ENMU Portales campus, where he completed his bachelor’s degree. He then spent several years working in education. When he began taking Master’s in Education courses at Texas Tech University in 1995, he was remarried with six children. While working on his Ph.D., He did a two-year residency at Kansas State and has also worked as a tutor, substitute teacher and with TRiO programs.
Anaya said of his recent degree, “It wasn’t a career launch. I was a young scholar and so I wanted to do this to complete my goal. Since our kids are grown now, Sylvia and I decided to work on our doctorate degrees. It took us about eight years to finish.”

Martinez said that while earning this highest-level degree was a challenge, she feels it will be worth it in the end. It also helped, having her husband go through the program the same time.

“Since Carlos and I are in the same field of education, we were able to sound off on ideas for each other and proofread each other’s dissertations,” Martinez said. “When I would get discouraged and no longer wanted to continue after being ‘All But Dissertation’ (ABD), he encouraged me to finish.”

Martinez — currently an assistant principal at Lockwood — was born and graduated high school in Roswell. Growing up, she said she and her mother and siblings had the experience of living in California and working in the fields during the time in which the late civil rights leader Cesar Chavez was organizing farm workers.

Martinez spent her first five years teaching in Floyd and then spent 12 years teaching in Portales. She then taught six years at La Casita Elementary in Clovis and worked at the Central Office as a bilingual diagnostician for two years and then as an instructional coach/assistant principal at the Arts Academy in Clovis from 2006-2007.

Martinez, who is only a few years shy of retirement, said she is already looking at doing some consulting work and said she may teach on the college level in the future. As for Anaya, he also hopes to teach on the college level.