While my mailing address as a kid said Carlisle, I lived in that lost space between towns – think sprawling cornfields and roads without lines bisecting the lanes – and attended Cumberland Valley High School (shhhh, don’t tell the neighbors). Following graduation, I left for college in Lancaster, but returned to the area in time to start a family and to be close to my own. I wanted to live in a place with a neighborhood school to which I could walk my kids, and so we bought a house on H Street and sent our kids to Hamilton Elementary School. Little did I know, this decision would change my life for the best in so many ways. Over the course of the past two decades I’ve lived on the letter streets, in a haunted house on Hanover Street, atop the hill in Kendor Summit, and now, just a block away from the high school where my kids walked to and from school each day — a cute little ranch where, at one point, a good one third of the kids enrolled in Swartz and McGowan knew the location of my spare key and let themselves in on a regular basis to use the bathroom or pump up a bike tire. Where my son turned an empty parking lot across the street into the unofficial Carlisle Skatepark (we had t-shirts). Where my daughter wrote and published her first book of poetry, so inspired by her hometown. Where my oldest son learned to do donuts in the high school parking lot on a snowy day in the name of safety. This is why I love Carlisle.

When my kids were all in school, I volunteered and then worked and volunteered at Hamilton Elementary in several capacities — and I loved everything about it! The principal suggested I go back to college to become certified to teach. So at 38 years old, I did just that. I quickly returned to Hamilton to student teach kindergarten with an amazing mentor, Jenni Shomaker. However, I was hired to teach…5th grade. Panic set in, as I was acclimated to kids who might pee their pants during carpet time or shout unrelated nonsense in the middle of a lesson, not kids close to my height who cracked wise and, well, shouted unrelated nonsense in the middle of a lesson. And so my passion evolved. Now in my eleventh year, it feels like I first walked into my classroom yesterday, and I can’t imagine a day without my lovely, crazy, funny, kind, frustrating, curious 5th graders! My classroom kids are *my* kids. My extended family. I feel a great responsibility to be part of their success academically, but more importantly, to their success as people of the world. As human beings — which I will always value more in my role as a teacher than being able to shout out the square root of any number from memory. But what I think many of my former students don’t know is they are the ones who shaped me, turned me into the teacher I am, made me want to do better, be better. They are more important to me than they will ever realize.

I have always found Carlisle to have a diverse group of fantastic kids, teenagers, and adults, as well as a constantly growing set of shops, restaurants, and curiosities. I have built a support system of friends here, people who both hold me up and keep me grounded. I have three incredible children to call my own, and countless others who are mine from having spent 180 intense, funny, important days together in a tiny classroom. I love that I can walk to Bosler Memorial Library to grab a book then sit in the window of Helena’s Chocolate Cafe & Creperie and read it over hot chocolate and macarons. That I can check out the free art at Trout Gallery  then head down the block to shop for a new dress at Clothesvine. And ice cream. Have I mentioned ice cream? Carlisle has a lot of ice cream. Ice cream is good.