Milestones

The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility goes before honor.  Proverbs 15:33, NRSV

One of our faculty members is celebrating a career milestone as a teacher, in her classroom with her students here at Midwestern Christian Academy.  Mrs. JoAnn Saunders, wife of principal Lee Saunders, first started her teaching career in the 1981-82 school year at the Broadway Baptist School on the far east side of Houston, Texas.  Broadway Baptist was, at the time, one of the oldest Christian schools in Texas, founded as a pre-kindergarten program before the Second World War.  By 1981, when Mrs. Saunders arrived on campus, it had over 600 students in pre-school through 12th grade.  Altogether, Mrs. Saunders has now spent 40 years serving as a classroom teacher, with all but two years of that in Christian school ministry.  

Mrs. Saunders grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.  She says she always knew that she wanted to be a teacher, and got her first experience at age 11, helping out with vacation Bible school in her home church, Lafayette Park Baptist Church, which was known for its summer outreach and ministry programs that included a very large VBS at the end of the summer.  She worked as a volunteer in the church's bus ministry as well.  She served during the summer as a volunteer in the church's "Cartoon Bus" outreach ministry, where the bus would park in a neighborhood, or near the housing projects, and show cartoons and have a puppet show, then teach Bible stories, and have refreshments.  That was how she decided she wanted to teach. 

She graduated from Southwest Baptist University in 1981 and shortly after summer graduation, she and her college roommate headed for Houston, to find jobs and start their teaching careers in Christian school.  They both landed jobs at Broadway Baptist.  While she was teaching there, Mr. Saunders came to Broadway to teach in the high school.  They were married in December of 1989 in the Broadway Baptist Church in front of an audience made up mostly of former and current students.  

After getting married, Mrs. Saunders moved to Ft. Worth, Texas where she enrolled in graduate school at Texas Woman's University to be a special education teacher.  Her teaching career included a self-contained special education class at Springtown Elementary School in Springtown, Texas, resource special education at Irving Elementary School in Cleburne, Texas.  After a short hiatus, she became family resource coordinator at Oakland Elementary School in Oakland, Kentucky.  

She returned to Christian school ministry back at Broadway Baptist in 1995, before taking an elementary teaching position at Fort Bend Baptist Academy in Sugar Land, Texas, a Houston suburb, where she taught first grade for sixteen years.  When Mr. Saunders became lead administrator at Portersville Christian School, in Portersville, Pennsylvania, in 2010, Mrs. Saunders thought she was going to get a break, but when a second grade teacher decided to quit just two weeks before school started, the board convinced her to take the position, which she held for 8 years.  This being her sixth year at MCA, that brings the total of her teaching years to 40, with 37 of those years being in the service of the Christian school ministry.  

She served as the cheerleader sponsor for both middle school and high school while working at Broadway Baptist, and was also cheerleader sponsor for one year at Portersville Christian School.  The number of basketball games she has attended with her husband, who was a coach, are too many to count.  

Having had the privilege of living and working in five different states, former students, the oldest of whom are now in their late 40's, are scattered all over the place.  She still keeps in touch with many of them.  The Christmas tree in her home is a memory tree, with many of the ornaments give to her and Mr. Saunders by their former students over the years.  Every Christmas, when decorating the tree, they talk about the students who gave them the ornaments, and wonder what they are doing.  

Her greatest joy in teaching has been seeing her students come to faith in Christ, and grow up to serve him through his church.