A new teacher for new school year

 

Grace Leonard didn’t look for the job, the job found her.

“After student teaching, I was exploring other avenues,” she said last week. “I wasn’t super set on becoming a teacher and was actually supposed to get a call about another opportunity.”

While in adoration last February at St. Isidore’s Catholic Student Center in Manhattan, she let the Lord know she was ready to accept a position with a Catholic missionary organization.

Emails changes her life’s direction

Instead of getting a call from them, though, she received an email a few hours later about interviewing for a teaching position at Bishop Carroll Catholic High School in Wichita.

“I was excited about the opportunity,” she said. “So I kind of just took it step by step. And here I am! So yeah, I never thought that I would be back here.”
Leonard graduated from BCCHS in 2018.

She said she hopes that, in addition to teaching her subjects, her students enjoy her as an individual.

A personal relationship with Jesus

“I guess I want them to see my life as a life they wouldn’t mind having…having a personal relationship with the Lord, I feel, is the most important thing in this life,” she said. “In my own experience, I always grew in my relationship with the Lord through experiencing other people’s relationships, whether they are sharing their prayer, or walking with me in my own journey.”

Her primary goal as a teacher, she said, is to bring her students closer to Jesus. “I think that’s really all that matters to me at the end of the day, that’s the most important goal I have.”

Leonard is a graduate of Kansas State University where she majored in secondary education with a content area of social studies. She will be teaching Salvation History to freshmen and Christian Morality to sophomores.