EIU Rural School Initiative

Leonard Bryant
Grow Your Own Elementary Education Cohort Program

My name is Leonard Bryant, and I am a Home Interventionist Program Coordinator. My job is being a resource to students as well as parents to help with whatever they are struggling with or things they may need. I provide resources for internet problems, laptop issues, replace laptops, and also find resources for hotspots for those who don't have internet. I also reach out to parents whose kids are having issues logging in to class regularly with bad attendance, or grades that have fallen tremendously. I also deal with kids who feel anxious or have anxiety and just need someone to talk to and we have small interventions to set small goals and to reach them. My job is also to find answers or ways for the kids to be successful, and to be there for the parents as well. I do home visits, I call parents daily, and I am now thinking of ways to do interventions with kids online as well as in person. I have dealt with some situations where parents work during the day and not able to get their kids up for class and causes them to fall behind. Since Covid, the education system has been totally flipped where we don't have answers and is learning day by day. Being a resource, I have notice that parents are beginning to show a more appreciation for what we do as educators.

I am 30 years old, my wife and I have been married for 9 years but been together for maybe 13-14 (high school sweethearts). I have a beautiful girl name Aubrey who has definitely changed my life for the better. I am also a musician who have been playing piano for 20 plus years where I started playing in church. I decided to get into the teaching profession because in high school I figured it’ll be easy for me to get a job being an African American not knowing that it is something that I really enjoy doing. After high school I finished with my associates at DACC in education. While I was taking classes I was also working full time as a head start teacher before I started working in District 118. My journey has been different, and some may seem unorthodox, but I learned that its my path and this is what I’m supposed to be doing to complete my purpose. I want to be able to help kids who think no one is on their side. I want to be a voice for those who are afraid to speak for themselves.

Megan Yager
Grow Your Own Secondary Education Cohort Program

My name is Megan Yager. I’ve always been a small town girl and, except for a brief rebellious period in college, I’ve always wanted to stay a small town girl. I’m married to a farmer, Levi, and we have two young sons, Barrett and Dallas. We do not have livestock, but we do have dogs, cats, a rabbit, and fish. I completed my bachelor’s degree in environmental biology from Eastern Illinois University in 2012. While there I worked as a research assistant in the fisheries laboratory. After graduation I briefly worked for the Crawford County Health Department in the environmental health office, which means I inspected restaurants for sanitary conditions. Then I landed a job at the local ethanol plant working in the laboratory doing quality control tests. I put my scientific background to work there for six years. Laboratory work is very monotonous and it is almost always the same every day. After doing the same tasks every day for so long, I decided I needed a change and I wanted to do something that was always different, exciting, and would actually make a difference in the world. So I sat down and asked myself what I really wanted to be when I “grew up.” As a kid I never had a set answer to that question, but I knew I loved science. My favorite place in the whole world was my Grandma Jude’s junior high science classroom at Oblong Grade School. It was the coolest place with pickled everything in jars, and hornets’ nests, and plants, and skulls, and bones, and snake skins and all sorts of other stuff that I was fascinated by! So as I was contemplating what I really wanted to do, I considered teaching. It would definitely be exciting, and it would never be boring. I could make it my own every day and make decisions for my classroom that could really impact the lives of my students. So I decided to make the jump and become a junior high teacher myself, just like my grandma.

I recently completed the Post-Baccalaureate Accelerated Secondary Teaching Licensure program at EIU. It was the perfect program for someone like me who already had a bachelor’s degree, but wanted to get those extra requirements in order to become a teacher! The program allowed me to earn an income as a long-term substitute while doing my student teaching and online classes, which was necessary for my family. I plan to advocate for this program in the future in order to help more people become teachers!

When I was introduced to the Grow Your Own program, it was a perfect fit as well because the local areas for the program were already my home town areas! The school where I am doing my student teaching is a junior/senior high school with only about 400 kids total. It is in a small town and I love the community feel that the school has! I currently do not teach all of the kids in the junior high hallway, but over the course of this school year I feel like I know everyone who walks by my classroom. Next year, when I am a fully licensed teacher in my classroom, I will be teaching 7th grade Earth Science and 8th grade Life and Physical Science classes at Red Hill Junior Senior High School.

My family has been a huge support of my radical career change at the age of 30. Everyone tells me that I seem so much happier as a teacher than I ever was a laboratory technician, and they are absolutely right! Anytime I need a babysitter because I have to have grades submitted by 8:00am tomorrow, someone is always willing to help out! Maintaining the work and family balance can be difficult sometimes, but some days everything just comes together and it always works out in the end. My 4 year old loves to ask me “what did you do at school today Mommy?” and I am always ready to tell him what we are learning in hopes that he will love learning and science the same way I do!