To become a teacher would mean to join the family business. Both of Wright’s parents, as well as a handful of her mother’s relatives, worked in education.
Lest you guess that they all forced her to follow in their footsteps, she relays that her father, who taught biology and physical educa- tion at the local high school, actually tried to talk her out of that career path plenty of times.
“He would say, ‘I think you should do anything but teach. It’s just going to get more difficult for teachers,’” she remembers.
Wright realized the truth of her father’s prediction years later.
By that time, she had completed both her bachelor’s and master’s in education, taught at the K-6 level for several years, and just started her first year teaching high schoolers. Assigned to teach a dual-enrollment elective course in child development, Wright was delighted when the class filled up with students eager to work towards earning college credit, so she thought. When she walked into the classroom for the first time, she learned they had a much different motivation.
“Nearly a third of the students were pregnant. Te reason they were taking my class was because they wanted to know, ‘What is happening inside of me right now, and what do I do after I have the baby?’ So I knew they were scared. Most of them were 17 and found themselves facing hard decisions. Tey had to grow up quickly,” she realized. “It was at that moment I knew my purpose was much greater than instruction: I would become a mother figure to some, a mentor to others, and a prayer warrior for all of them.”
In fact, some of Wright’s students were still debating about whether or not to get an abortion. When they confided in her for advice, she encouraged them to consider other options.
“Trough this experience, I began to see the desperate need for teachers who could bring the Christian influence into the class- room and help guide their students,” she says.
Wright calls this revelation her “second calling”: the experience sparked her passion for preparing aspiring teachers to focus not only on “getting students to excel academically from one year to the next,” but also on helping them to “grow as a person, as a citizen, and as a contributor of the community where they live.”
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