Mexico Chamber of Commerce honors St. Brendan School kindergarten teacher
Michelle Crawford felt a longing in her heart every time she drove past St. Brendan School in Mexico.
When a position opened up to teach kindergarten there, she knew she had to go for it.
“It was the wildest moment of God yelling in my ear that ‘this is what you should be doing,’” said Mrs. Crawford, who was recently honored with the Mexico Area Chamber of Commerce’s Teacher of the Year award.
She brings excellence to her role by putting St. Brendan School’s motto — “Know Christ, grow in Christ, make Christ known” — into practice.
“That has to be one of the best things about St. Brendan and teaching in a Catholic school,” she stated.
“It’s what God wants us to do every day,” she said. “That’s why we’re all here on earth: to talk about God, to learn about God, to grow in God and teach other people about him and be united with him.”
The Teacher of the Year award is bestowed by the Chamber’s executive board.
“I take it as a huge honor just to be considered for it, let alone receive it!” Mrs. Crawford stated.
When her students found out about the award, they all gave her “the biggest bear hug I’ve ever received.”
“I felt this immense amount of pure love and pure joy that only kindergartners have,” she said. “They were so genuinely excited and loving.”
She believes that moment was a glimpse of heaven.
“Every day when they leave class, each one of them gives me a high-five, a handshake or a hug,” she said. “I’m just imagining this huge hug and saying, ‘It’s so good to see all of you!’”
Making the grade
When Mrs. Crawford was her students’ age, she wanted to be a ballerina.
“But my best friend said she wanted to be a teacher, so I wanted to be one, too,” she said.
By junior high, she had set her mind on being a surgeon, then a meteorologist.
“I finally set on teaching high school math,” she recalled.
That’s what she went to the University of Missouri to study.
“I did a ton of math there,” she recalled. “Calculus I, Calculus II, Differential Equations, Euclidean Geometry... .”
But she found while trying to share what she was learning with others in a classroom environment, the passion just wasn’t there.
“It wasn’t my strength,” she said. “So, I switched to elementary education. I felt for sure that I was going to teach fifth grade.”
Thanks in part to all the math credits she racked up early in her time at Mizzou, she finished her coursework in three years and qualified for a senior on-site program in elementary education.
That meant getting three weeks of classroom teaching experience at each grade level, beginning with fifth grade and moving down to kindergarten.
“I remember fifth grade just not feeling right,” she said. “Each grade I moved down to, I felt like, ‘we’re getting there,’ ‘we’re getting there.’”
Kindergarten finally felt like the real thing to her.
“I felt so good, so happy,” she said. “I felt like it was my calling, and I’ve been there ever since.”
Her mother died while Mrs. Crawford was student teaching in Columbia.
Mrs. Crawford took some time off and finished her student teaching at another school, where she befriended Mrs. Farnell.
Mrs. Crawford applied for several teaching positions after graduating and landed an interview at Auxvasse Elementary School in the North Callaway R-1 School District.
“I walked through there and immediately felt at home,” she said. “You just feel it. You know that’s where you’re supposed to be.”
Mrs. Crawford befriended a middle school science teacher at Auxvasse who was intent on introducing her to her son, Chris.
The couple have been married for 19 years in March and have three children.
“We fell in love and got engaged and set our wedding date,” said Mrs. Crawford. “About a month later, we found out that my husband’s Mom had about a month left to live. We moved the date up so she’d be able to be there.
“Not everyone can say their mother-in-law picked you out!” Mrs. Crawford noted. “It’s such an honor that she was so adamant about introducing us. She knew that we would be a good fit for each other.”
Mrs. Crawford’s mentor teacher at Auxvasse was one of the finest teachers she ever met.
“I credit her for everything I know,” said Mrs. Crawford. “We taught together for eight years before she retired. And then, she came back to cover for my maternity leave when I had my first child.”
Mrs. Crawford attended a Great Expectations professional development conference for teachers, where she learned insights and techniques she still uses in the classroom.
She’s grateful for all of it.
Something different
About 10 years into teaching, Mrs. Crawford began feeling called to do something else. She thought about stepping away from education for a while to raise her children full-time.
“But the more I prayed about it, the more I realized that I was meant to be a kindergarten teacher,” she said. “My vocation is to be a mom and teach.”
She had decided to return to Auxvasse in the fall when she got a call over Memorial Day Weekend, inviting her to apply for an opening for a kindergarten teacher at St. Brendan School.
She and her husband discussed the idea and prayed about it.
“We both decided that if I got offered the position, I was going to take it,” she said.
She searched for a copy of her resume, which was saved on an old computer floppy disk.
“I pulled it up and tweaked it up the best I could,” she recalled. “Two days later, I had an interview.”
Her husband stayed up all night praying for her. The next morning, she found him asleep on the sofa with a Bible at his side.
She was offered the position at the interview and accepted on the spot.
Sowing seeds
On Mrs. Crawford’s first day at St. Brendan School, she felt “totally at peace.”
“I was a little nervous about fitting all my stuff into the classroom, but I never thought twice about my decision,” she said. “I had not felt more strongly about something in a long time.”
Her first professional development goal was to get comfortable drawing faith into every lesson.
“Now, it’s just part of what I do,” she said. “It comes naturally. It’s a little trickier in some lessons than others, but I do bring faith into my teaching, multiple times each day.”
Once, she was teaching her students about different kinds of seeds and how sunflower seeds will only grow into sunflowers and acorns will only grow into oak trees.
“A few of them asked, ‘How do they know to do that?’” she recalled. “I said, ‘That’s what God made them to do!’ That’s how it is. We can stop and say those words and incorporate faith into everything we do.”
Mrs. Crawford’s own relationship with God has grown stronger.
“I get to go to church with my students every day,” she said. “And I work in an environment where it’s not only okay, but it’s expected that you pray throughout the day. All of that changes you in a powerful way.”
So does having her own children at St. Brendan and getting to be their teacher.
“Any parent will tell you that having children changes you,” she said. “But having my kids here at school and knowing they’re being prayed for by their friends and their teachers, that they get to go to church everyday — there’s nothing else like it.”
Back to basics
One of Mrs. Crawford’s first lessons each year involves the class making a poster that says, “I can’t.”
“Then, we take out all the letters and turn the ‘T’ into a cross,” she said. “Because Jesus takes all of our stress away and is with us through our best and worst moments. As long as we follow him, WE CAN!”
Her first kindergarten students at St. Brendan are now sophomores at Mexico High School.
“It’s humbling,” she said. “Time goes by so fast. You forget how long you’ve been teaching. But even when they’re older, they still call me Mrs. Crawford.”
Once a year, each member of the Mexico Bulldogs varsity football team selects a teacher who influenced him the most and invites him or her to dinner.
“One of my former students asked me,” she said. “That was one of the best honors of my life. Just sitting there and listening to him talk about all of his high school things.”
A few years ago, Alex Stuckenschneider, a fellow St. Brendan parishioner who was a first-grade teacher in the Mexico public schools and is now a Title 1 teacher for students with special needs, received the Mexico Chamber’s Teacher of the Year award.
“She’s a fantastic educator,” said Mrs. Crawford. “I remember being so happy for her. And I’m so honored to be receiving the same award as her.”
Mrs. Crawford enjoys reading to her students and to their own children, just for fun.
“We do read all the time for our curriculum, and there are comprehension tests,” she said. “But it’s also wonderful to be able to just read to them and see them soaking it in and laughing and informally connecting to each other and the people in the stories.”
She’s convinced that the ever-present screens, social media and other technology in most households has changed the way children view the world.
It has also made them more anxious.
“I remember when I was student teaching, there was a big push to use screens and computers,” she said.
She’s now convinced that moderation is key.
“We use computers and we have them out some of the time,” she said. “But there is a lot to be said for using a pencil and paper, crayons, a book and a printed nursery rhyme that they’re pointing to rather than watching on the screen.”
“Pouring that grace”
Mrs. Crawford prays every day for her students, and she asks people to join her.
“I want them always to have a place for God in their life,” she said. “I want them to grow up always being kind and showing grace and knowing Christ and having the discernment to go to God in times of trouble throughout their life.
“I can just imagine the Holy Spirit washing over them in that way,” she said, “just pouring that grace on them, and having them just feeling the love — his love — and I can visualize the freedom that will bring them.”
For herself and her fellow Catholic school teachers and staff members, Mrs. Crawford asks for prayers to always remember that “we are all children of God.”
“We also need prayers for patience and love and understanding and the gift of helping our students be the best they can be,” she said.
She agrees with the well-worn adage, “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten.”
“Some of these are academic skills, some are people skills and some are life skills, and all of them are important,” she said. “Which is why kindergarten is the best and why I’ve been teaching it for 21 years!”
