Story by Steve Nash – Special Contributor to BrownwoodNews.com

Even in kindergarten, Amanda Long knew what she wanted to do with her life: become a kindergarten teacher herself.

Long, a 2008 graduate of Bangs High School, is a 13-year teaching veteran who will be starting her second year this fall at Brown County Christian School.

“I kind of always knew I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher,” Long said. “I’ve spent the majority of my career teaching kindergarten, but that was because my kindergarten teacher inspired me.”

Long was referring to Kay Hagood, who “just made learning so fun, the classroom so inviting,” Long recalled. “I just carried that with me all my school years and I really felt the call to be a teacher as well, so that’s where that came from.”

Long graduated from Howard Payne University and began teaching kindergarten at J.B. Stephens Elementary School in Bangs in 2012. It was her “dream job,” Long said.

“I taught there for nine years and then I had my son, so I stepped away for just a couple of years,” Long said. “Then I taught part-time at Kids Day Out for three years. As my son got older and it was time for him to go to school, the door opened for me to teach at Brown County Christian School.

“It’s very different from what I was used to in public school because I actually teach pre-k three now and they’re just barely learning how to be in the classroom.”

Long said her day in the pre-kindergarten classroom begins with a short period of interactive learning. “Their attention spans are not very big, but we do a lot of hands-on learning and then we do some play-based learning,” Long said.

“And then social, emotional learning and a lot of play, where they’re-learning how to get along with one another, and just teaching them just some life skills throughout the day as well. So, it’s a lot of fun.”

Long said her 3-year-old pupils “keep me on my toes, but I enjoy it so much.”

Her favorite part of the job: “Definitely the growth that you see in each child,” Long said. “So, we develop as humans, we develop at different rates and so where one child may hit all these goals at an early stage, there may be some that take a little bit longer, but every single student has growth over the school year and it is just amazing to witness that.”

Long said she loves the environment at Brown County Christian School.

“I get to teach about the Lord as well, not only academics, but about Jesus,” Long said. “We get to pray together over our lunch every day and it’s just a blessing to be there in such an uplifting environment.”

Long and her husband, Charles, were high school sweethearts and are expecting their second child.

“I’m three years older than my husband, so I was a (Bangs High School) senior, he was a freshman, but we had known each other all of our lives, just about. He was good friends with my brother growing up. For my senior prom, I drove us and he had to ride shotgun. We got married pretty young. He was 19, I was 22 and so it was pretty early on in college that we knew that we were going to be getting married.

“We’re both Yellow Jacket alumni from HPU and so we’re very proud to be in this area.”

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BrownwoodNews.com will highlight one Brown County educator per day in the month of July, based on nominations received on our Facebook page, for our Teacher Feature series.