I love teaching. I love working with kids.
Danielle Layne
GYO 4th grade teacher
Springfield, Illinois
I’ve always been a kid person. After graduating high school, I got a job working at a daycare. I went to community college and got really close to earning my associate’s degree, but was not able to finish.
I got married kinda young and I got a job working for the Springfield School District 186 daycare. In five years, I was promoted to director of the program. By then, I wanted to take my work in education to another level. I heard about Grow Your Own and it sounded like a fit. I applied and was accepted, but I was in the middle of adopting my daughter from China. The timing wasn’t right then, but a few years later I signed up.
I started attending classes at Benedictine University at night and I kept working all day. For two years, I went to school year round until I graduated. By then, the school district had shut down the daycare program.
When I was younger, there were so many obstacles that stopped me from completing my education. Grow Your Own really helped me navigate those obstacles. They were a huge help. There was always someone at the monthly meetings who had already had gone through something that I was dealing with, or someone who needed my help with something that I had already gone through. At first, I thought these meetings were just one more thing I had to do, but pretty quickly I realized that these gatherings were really valuable.
It’s been four years since I graduated and landed a job as a teacher at Jane Addams Elementary in Springfield. I love teaching. I love working with the kids. The staff is amazing. We’re all friends. I was 36 years old when I started teaching and it was a long time coming. But it’s everything that I thought it would be. And I can still call Grow Your Own if I need help.
I’ve taught kindergarten and 4th grade, and for the last couple years, I have had 1st graders. Half of my students this year are African American and another 20 percent are mixed race. I have a diverse background. My daughter is from China. My father is from Morocco. I can talk to students about diversity and understand some of the issues they face.
Grow Your Own had a big impact on me as a new teacher. A lot of new teachers are quiet and keep to themselves in their own classrooms. Grow Your Own taught me to seek out support when I needed it. The program really made a difference for me and for the children I worked with that year.
Without Grow Your Own, I wouldn’t be a teacher today. Without Grow Your Own, I wouldn’t be the teacher I am today.