Updates/News
Teaching is becoming a profession more and more individuals seek as a second (or third) act in their lives, and this has many benefits for students. Teachers who are beyond their early twenties have more life and professional experiences under their belts; they’ve worked in one or more fields of industry and bring their professional wealth to the classroom setting. Not only does Jenn King, a 7th grade Language Arts teacher at Stuart Academy, have a degree in journalism and a career background in health care, she moved to Kentucky from Nottinghamshire, England, making her insights really unique.
Jenn has dual citizenship. She lived in Florida as a young child, but moved back to England with her parents when she was around four years old. Her father was from South Carolina, so Jenn had been back to the US over the years, visiting Nevada and California, and she had always thought she might like to move to the states at some point.
She majored in journalism but found it hard to find a job in that field where she lived. “I fell into a career in health care; I started at the bottom and worked my way up. The job I had was very intense, and I didn’t have a good work/life balance. I was putting all these hours into something I wasn’t passionate about,” she says. “So that made me want to reevaluate. Where I really wanted to be was teaching.” Plus, she didn’t have the economic stability she wanted for herself and her daughter.
When she started to look into teaching, she thought she would get certification in England and then move to the US, but she stumbled across Teach Kentucky’s website and liked what she read about the program. After doing some research, she also discovered she really liked the cost of living in Kentucky. Jenn soon learned that she could move to Kentucky and get her certification here, starting to teach much sooner than she originally anticipated.
Once she was here, she quickly realized the power of community among the Teach Kentucky network and says she is so thankful for it and the opportunity it has provided her. It certainly wasn’t easy, moving across the world, starting a new life for herself and her daughter, going to school at the University of Louisville, and teaching full-time, but she is happy to create a better life for herself and her child.
Jenn saw this network rally for her when her father passed away in December 2021 in England. Because COVID-19 was peaking again and travel shutdown, she wasn’t able to attend his funeral, but she deeply appreciated the support she received from Teach Kentucky even though she had graduated from the program and wasn’t actively involved with mentoring new cohort members at the time.
“I had a phone call from Rowan Claypool who runs Teach Kentucky. He checked in with me, asked if he could help in any way. He offered to help me with flights if I needed that; he offered to help make phone calls. Just knowing somebody has your back on that level when you’re going through a big traumatic event in your life, especially as a new teacher in a new country, it was a different kind of support to anything I had experienced in England,” Jenn says.
In the same way that Jenn took an opportunity with Teach Kentucky to better her own life, she takes the opportunities that technology provides to better her teaching and her students’ learning. While three of Jenn’s four years of teaching were impacted by COVID-19, she thinks a silver lining was the way the pandemic has made it easier to work technology into the classroom to help engage students. Technology allows her to play to her strengths and make her lessons more meaningful. “I’m really engaged in the way that I’m presenting material, and I find that that helps the students stay engaged,” she says. She teaches in 90-minute blocks and uses technology to break up long periods of time or transition from one skill to another. Some of the technology also helps the students who are more quiet participate by answering questions without raising their hands or having to speak in front of a large group.
By Carrie Vittitoe | Photos by Melissa Donald
Hello! I am currently a junior at Spalding University that is majoring in Fine Arts with a minor in Business Administration. I am looking at different opportunities to help me gain experience as a teacher. I am looking at applying to the Teach Kentucky program. I would like to gain more information about the application process and deadline dates. Thank you!