TEACHER OF INTEREST
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Trends In Education
ed it, he was so excited!” she remembers. “Those opportunities
are so rewarding. When you hear, ‘I did it! I did it!’ I
had goosebumps. So I came home, and I thought, ‘I did this
today. Someone couldn’t add, and he’s adding now.’ How
good is that?”
Steele also taught Spanish full-time at Martin County High
School. Then in 2015, another door opened for her to instruct
English as a second language at the adult learning center
in Indiantown. The only problem was she had no students.
When she began working, there was only a receptionist
and Steele in the whole school. But with a mission to teach
people in need, she reached out to a priest at Holy Cross
Catholic Church in Indiantown to help fill her classroom.
“So, he tells me to come to church the next Sunday and announce
what I’m doing,” she says. “My husband, I, and our
two kids go, and the priest lets me talk after each of the two
masses that Sunday. We were there for a long time. Guess
what? The next day all these people came to the school, and
the receptionist was freaking out saying, ‘What’s going on?
Where did all the students come from?’ They came because
this was a resource to help them to learn English and get
their GED.”
Steele has been happily providing instruction at the school
since then and has no problem finding students. Empowering
them to learn and speak English hits home with her.
It’s personal. She knows firsthand the challenges of learning
English and what it means to help her students pass a
citizenship test, earn a driver’s license, get a library card so
they can passionately read books, pass the GED, and even go
to college. She understands because she knows the power of
education and how it changes lives. Steele thinks of her profession as a divine calling for her life.
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