Brief History

So who is the lady sitting in her computer chair? Well my name is Jeanette. Every since I can remember I have always wanted to work with children. Growing up I was one of those girls who was always trying to babysit and working in the nursery at church. I knew I either wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. In high school I realized I wanted to be a teacher so I could make the school system better for children then it was for me.

I attended Park College (now Park University) from 1994 till 1998. I majored in Elementary Education and Early Childhood Education. I ended up graduating with a BA in Elementary Education, I am two classes short of my Early Childhood degree but did not want to student teach 2 times. My concentration in Education was in the Fine Arts (music, art and theater). The reason for the Fine Arts was because at Park your concentration could be in Art or the Fine Arts and I loved my Music Professor so much that I wanted to take more classes with him so did a Fine Arts concentration.

Since I graduated in December I had a rough time getting my first teaching job, but I found one for the following school year. I was hired as the 5th and 6th grade teacher for the little rural school of Mirabile. Mirabile is one of those towns if you blink you will miss it the entire two roads. It was the perfect teaching job for a new graduate, small class size, great teachers. While teaching in Mirabile the largest my class grew to was 14 kids and the smallest was 6, a public school teacher's dream. However, with this dream came many issues. This sleepy little farming town did not know what hit it when a family moved in from the inner city of Kansas City. This family brought with it all the issues a bigger district is use to, but this little town had never seen. They brought behavior issues, hygiene issues, parental issues, and drug issues. I will never forget one day when I was teaching the young man from this family was so upset with me that he hit me in the stomach, oh did I mention I was pregnant with our first child at the time. When I first started teaching at this school I thought, this is the prefect school I would want my children taught within, until this family. This family shaped the idea that I personally felt I can do better at educating my own children.

Once my teaching contract was up in May of 2001 and Catherine was already a part of our family I never set foot back into the traditional classroom. From that point on I was to make our classroom our home.