✈️🎓 Enka High School graduate Karly Presnell showed the value of keeping an open mind when her first choice for a student internship fell through and she fell in love with a new career path.
Karly always dreamed of working with animals, especially livestock, and she planned to become a veterinarian technician. But age and travel requirements made it hard to land a placement, so she talked to her mother, a pre-k teacher, about how she could make the world a better place by nurturing children instead of animals.
“I thought about my previous teachers and how they affected me, and I thought that would be a good career to explore,” Karly said.
She reached out to Pisgah Elementary School and to her first teacher, Beth Myers, who still teaches kindergarten at the school. After a few formalities, Karly began working as a student teacher with Ms. Myers, and she soon felt a sense of purpose and belonging. Between laminating papers, making crafts, tutoring small groups, and learning directly from Ms. Myers, Karly started to respect the teaching profession more and more. And she noticed how much of a difference she could make in the lives of the kindergarten students.
“You realize how much it matters for them to have a teacher who cares about them,” she said. “It’s amazing to feel like their best friend, somebody who can give them love and nurture them in the classroom and in their lives.”
Karly would know. Ms. Myers was more than a teacher; she was a lifeline during one of the hardest moments of Karly’s childhood, when her mother received a breast cancer diagnosis.
“Ms. Myers is also a breast cancer survivor,” Karly said,” and she really stepped in. She called before the treatments and the surgeries. Even now, Ms. Myers will still send my mom resources and information to stay plugged in to the survivor community. She’s just always been there for us, checking up on us and making sure me and my brother are OK. It’s just amazing to see how much of an impact she has had. When you’re little, the word ‘cancer’ is really scary, and the fact that Ms. Myers was a survivor made it less scary for me.”
Karly learned a lot from Ms. Myers, and it shows in her views on teaching. She believes that each child is unique and that it’s the teacher’s job to see them individually, foster their innate curiosity, and leverage the advantages that come with group learning.
“I never thought of it before, but children teach each other,” Karly said. “Being all together, they can help each other understand the lessons and support each other. It makes you proud of them and proud of yourself for being able to be there for them. I realized how critical those early years are.”
Karly is headed to Western Carolina University this fall, where she is majoring in elementary education with a concentration in history. She wants to work with grades K-2 after earning her teaching license.