When I was a very little girl I would sit on my daddy’s lap while he read. I loved to pretend to read myself. Often times I “read” with my book upside down or backwards. As I grew older, my love for reading grew right along with me. I can remember summertime reading the most. Starting the summer of my second grade year my mom got me a library card. She took my sisters and me to the library every Thursday. At our public library you could check out a maximum of five books. My sisters would let me choose two or three books that they checked out for me. This way I could have ten or so books for the week. My mom always encouraged us to go outside during the pretty days. So, I would set up my blue and yellow striped lawn chair in the sun and get to reading. I only came in when the sun went down or mom had dinner ready, whichever came first. I can never remember a time of not loving to read.

I have always known I would work with people learning to read. I know this because of two things. First, I love to read myself. I am interested in reading all sorts of materials and learn best by reading. Second, my daddy has always said, “If you can read, you can do anything”. He said I could be successful at any subject and any business endeavor if I knew how to read a variety of information. He says it is not what answers you know off the top of your head, but if you know where to find the answers. So, I always knew reading was most important and that I wanted to teach it. The only thing I didn’t know was to what capacity. I was leaning towards a preschool degree when I graduated from high school. I wanted to own my own daycare and academy, birth through sixth grade. I decided I would rather go to Lees-McRae College instead of Appalachian State University because it was much smaller and I could live at home. The closest major that Lees-McRae offered was Elementary Education. In my junior year at Lees-McRae I began to question going into the mission field. I talked with my pastor (also known to me as “dad”). We decided together to ask the church to help me listen for God’s direction in my life. I still didn’t have an answer when I graduated a year later. I continued to work as a secretary in a real estate office. I received several offers from other counties, but prayed and felt the time was not right. In August I was offered a higher position in the same real estate company that would move me to Nashville, Tennessee. I wanted it but my dad felt like I needed to pray harder. At the beginning of September a principal came into the office and recognized me from her eighth grade homeroom. We talked and I told her how life had gotten me there. A week later I had a job teaching at her school to reduce class size. This was an eighty percent position that was strictly for one year. I continued to work at the real estate office at night and on weekends. At the end of that school year I packed up my classroom and moved all of my personal belongings back home. Three months later I received another temporary position at the same school teaching third grade. Over the past five years I have changed grade levels, and classrooms, every year and twice last year. I am finally in a position that is permanent as long as I enjoy it. I am teaching a self- contained first grade classroom. I sometimes feel overwhelmed when I realize the huge responsibility we have as teachers. I want my students to be able to read, yes. But more importantly, I want them to love to read as much as I do.