Always More to Learn: Joy, Faith, and Resilience as a Career Educator - Paperback

by Jan Hochstetler (Author)

Always More to Learn is a book about my life as an educator and the unlikely path that led me to becoming the principal of a startup Christian elementary school serving mostly minority and low-income youth in Iowa City, Iowa. It is a book about trusting God amid disappointments and using my experiences to help me better understand others. Because all of us are affected by both tragedy and joy throughout life, I also share hard things that happened to me in hopes that others can benefit from my life lessons.

While I do give details about my childhood and growing up in a homogenous Christian community in southeast Iowa, Always More to Learn mainly focuses on my life during my eight years at Faith Academy.

There were many interesting things that happened along the way that seemed to just be events in my life at the time they occurred. Looking back, however, I can clearly see how certain experiences readied me for my involvement in creating Faith Academy, the remarkable school I was able to help succeed as it got off the ground.

Throughout this book, I acknowledge things that I learned through a variety of ways. In Always More to Learn, I touch on pivotal moments in my life. This was not easy, as I had to reach deep to access painful feelings I had been taught to keep within because they were too personal to share.

I also faced a personal crisis in my professional career as I was turning 50. I had lost my enthusiasm for teaching, and I was exhausted by the experience. After a year, I rediscovered the joy of being an educator when I became directly involved with the unique mission at Faith Academy.

Like everyone in this world, I am a flawed human. I haven't always made perfect choices, and I hope to describe those imperfect decisions as part of my story. If I only wrote about the parts of my life that were honorable or without conflict, it would be a very incomplete representation. In this book, I described the challenges we faced as a school when the Covid-19 pandemic invaded our world in 2020. As a school principal with responsibility for the well-being of all our students, teachers, and staff, this may have been the greatest educational challenge I ever faced. While our main concern was to keep everyone safe, keeping everyone content was a constant challenge during a time of great divisiveness.

Because I was an educational leader in an underprivileged neighborhood, I also look at first-hand accounts of racial injustice my students and staff encountered. These were brought to the forefront of our society and our school following the George Floyd murder.

I am hopeful that the miraculous creation of Faith Academy can speak to our hearts and show there are many wonderful people in this world who are concerned enough about others' children that they will sacrifice their time, money, and skills to help with such an endeavor. It is clear to me that teachers, as well as people in other helping professions such as social work and healthcare, do it every day.

As I describe the experiences I had as an elementary teacher and principal, I hope it is crystal clear that the good has far outweighed the bad. Along with being a parent, being a career educator has been one of the great joys of my life.

I also hope I have demonstrated how God has served as my source of peace and comfort during trying times.