Story by Steve Nash – Special Contributor to BrownwoodNews.com

Ashly Breeding grew up with a love of working with children.

Breeding, a 2010 graduate of Early High School, has worked in education for nearly six years. This fall she will begin her third year at Early Primary School. She previously taught kindergarten and she is moving to first grade.

Breeding also previously served as the assistant director of a Christian pre-school in another area.

“I’ve always had a love for being in any kind of child care industry,” Breeding said. “I just think it’s really important to foster a sense of love and a safe place for kids who don’t necessarily always have it. And I’ve been working with kids since I was in high school. I babysat a lot of kids in this area.”

Breeding, a Texas State University graduate, said teaching kids to read is her “jam” and she wants to foster in them a love for reading.

“That’s my absolute favorite thing to do because I think reading is super important for the future of any person,” Breeding said. “I think it sets it up well for the rest of their schooling career.”

In addition to her love for teaching reading, Breeding said the best parts of her job include “just making connections with the kids. They get really excited at a young age … ‘can you come to my baseball game?’ ‘Can you watch me rodeo?’ So I do my best to make those events and make them feel seen and loved.”

Breeding further explained the origin of her love for children.

“I’m an only child,” Breeding said. “I did not grow up with siblings so I really enjoyed just being with the kids and playing with them.”

Breeding also enjoyed being around her cousins and “sparking their imagination and doing things that aren’t technology based.”

Breeding was just 19 when she started her observation hours as part of her teacher training. She initially thought she wanted to teach high school.

“I think being 19 and walking into a high school classroom was just not really the thing,” Breeding said. “So it kind of scared me away for a little bit and I ended up landing at that Christian preschool. I absolutely loved the littles. I just found a really big calling from God. That was really where I was supposed to be, so I taught pre-k there for a while and then I became the assistant director.”

After being gone from Early for 14 years, Breeding moved back to Early with her husband, Ryan, and children.

“I wanted to step into public education, which was definitely different for me because I’d been in private education for so long,” Breeding said.

Coming from the fast-paced New Braunfels-San Antonio area, Breeding and her husband wanted to raise their children in a more slow-paced environment.

“My husband and I both came from really small town schools. We wanted our kids to be raised in a in a smaller school district,” she said.

Breeding added, “we have three kids total. One lives with Jesus now, and he’s our oldest. He would have been 9 this year. His name’s Garrett and then we have a 7-year-old Kenley and a 5-year-old, Garrison.”

Breeding concluded, “I’m really grateful that I was blessed with really great parents. It’s really made the job more bearable on the hard days when you have a good support system of parents and a good group of kids.”

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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.