A Noble Profession

As promised I will spend the next few moments reflecting on my days as an Amish schoolteacher. As some of you know and others may not know the Amish only allow their children to attend school through the 8th grade. They feel with the professions that are available to the Amish there is no need for an education beyond the 8th grade. So I was done with school at age 14. For the next 2 years I spent my time reading books when I should have been helping my Mom with the cleaning and dishes and gardening and lawncare and baking and laundry. Of course when she caught me reading when I had instructions for doing other things the consequences were never pleasant.

I am a spring baby so the summer after I turned 16 I decided to pursue a career in teaching. I was almost immediately called upon by several schools looking for teachers. I accepted a position at a brand new school as the 5th - 8th grade teacher. I would be teaching students who were just a year or so younger than I was. The Amish schools only have 2 teachers and each one has 4 grades and they can be divided any way the 2 teachers choose to divide them, but the most traditional way is 1st - 4th in one room and 5th - 8th in the other room. I absolutely loved school so I was very excited about this opportunity, but I was also scared to death at first. I did not know any of my students as this school was located in a different part of the community. It was located very close to my maternal grandparents whom I stayed with from time to time during my 3 year stint at Gates Hill School. My co-teacher was someone who had been teaching for several years already and her and I became great friends even after our 3 year stint of teaching together. I still try to go see her whenever I get the chance to go home. It was time for me to move on so I went to teach at another school closer to my home. I was there for 1 year as the 5th - 8th grade teacher again. From there I went to the school in the district next to my home district and I taught at Scout Ridge School for the final 3 years of my teaching career. While at my final position I taught 1st, 6th, 7th, & 8th one year, 1st, 2nd, 7th, & 8th another year, and 3rd, 4th, 7th, & 8th my final year. I ended up teaching every grade during my 7 year teaching career. I decided after 7 years I needed a break from teaching. I was going to take a year off and then I would consider going back to teaching. I did not expect the radical change God would bring into my life that year. I will write about this another time.

During my teaching I absolutely loved to teach and it is obvious God has given me a gift for teaching. There were many challenges, especially when it came to dealing with certain parents, but overall I would say it was a very fulfilling experience. One I look back on with many fond memories. I still think about my many students and I pray for them. I pray that they will first and foremost come to a saving knowledge of our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ and then I pray their lives would be blessed and that their dreams would come true. I pray that above all they will find truth and freedom. The Bible says "we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free." Praise God for truth and for freedom!!
I have fond memories of dodge ball games when the weather would not allow us to go outside and play. We would play ping pong, dodge ball, card games, & board games during the winter months. At times we would go outside at recess and play in the snow, but most of the time we would play indoors. In the fall and the spring there would be games of volleyball, softball, prisoner's base, kick the can, and many other running games as well.

Our subjects for the younger ones are Reading, Phonics, Math, English, Writing, and German Phonics. For the older ones there was Reading, Vocabulary, Math, English, Writing, Spelling, Geography, German Phonics, Writing, Spelling & Reading. Most of the curriculum was made especially for the Amish schools with the exception of the Geography and in 8th grade the History books.

There is one other memory that I am glad it is only a memory. The outhouses! There were no indoor bathrooms at our schools. There were only outhouses. We also had a furnace that had to be stoked and logs on the fire at all times and the teachers had to take care of that or else everyone would be cold and find it impossible to study. That is a brief overview of my years as a schoolteacher............BK