Holy Rosary School teacher, alum honored as a Missouri Teacher Leader of Tomorrow
Emma Berry is a graduate of Holy Rosary School in Monroe City.
So is her mother.
Her grandmother went to the former Holy Rosary High School and was a classmate of Dominican Sister Suzanne Walker, who was principal at Holy Rosary when young Emma was a student.
Miss Berry came back to Holy Rosary last year to teach second grade.
“I realize there are so many good things in my life,” she said. “What a good history there is. Seeing that makes it all even cooler.”
Miss Berry completed her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Culver-Stockton College in Canton last year while teaching second grade at Holy Rosary and running varsity track and cross country.
“Her students were her biggest cheerleaders,” said Holy Rosary Principal Nancy Shively.
Miss Berry’s mentors at Culver-Stockton selected her as the college’s nominee for the Missouri Teacher Leader of Tomorrow Award.
She is one of 15 teachers in Missouri to receive the award this year.
The Milken Family Educators of Missouri and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) bestowed the honor on her this past spring.
The people who nominated her pointed to “her passion for teaching, her natural ability and her interactive lessons.”
Mrs. Shively, who hired Miss Berry and was previously her science teacher, can’t think of a worthier honoree.
“Emma has done an amazing job teaching our students about the Sacraments while also encouraging so much academic growth,” Mrs. Shively stated.
The road home
Miss Berry said she tries to help provide a learning environment like the one she had from preschool through eighth grade.
“I want my students to have the same faith-filled experiences that I had, and I think that’s what they’re getting here,” she said.
As a child, Miss Berry played school at home with her friends and always wanted to be the teacher.
She loved her teachers, including Mrs. Shively, to whom she wrote a formal letter of appreciation.
“She wrote me a little note back, thanking me for my kind words and saying she was blessed to be my teacher,” Miss Berry recalled. “I still keep it on my mirror.”
Therese Long was her eighth-grade teacher.
“She always made everything fun,” Miss Berry recalled. “It seemed like she was always in a good mood and brought that into the classroom.”
Mrs. Long took her faith very seriously, “and that just rubbed off on everybody else when you’d see her,” said Miss Berry.
The young teacher was in seventh grade when Holy Rosary School moved from its nearly-century-old building across the road from church to its current location.
“I remember the three flights of stairs and no air-conditioning!” said Miss Berry. “It was pretty wild.”
She aspired early to become a teacher or a speech pathologist.
“I knew I wanted to work with kids,” she said. “I love learning and wanted to share that with others.”
She also wanted to build relationships with children and share the excitement she had when she was in school.
Her dream all along was to come home to teach.
“I’m lucky the way everything worked out,” she said. “This is exactly what I wanted. We get to share who Jesus is in everything we do here.”
She told a friend shortly before graduating that if Holy Rosary ever had an opening, she would “definitely look into it.”
She happened to see an online job posting two weeks later.
“I emailed Mrs. Shivley and asked about it,” she recalled. “She called me in to talk to her.”
The opening was for a second-grade teacher, which Miss Berry said was her dream to teach.
“Mrs. Shivley told me I’d have to get them ready for Confession and First Communion,” Miss Berry recalled. “I said ‘Great! I 100-percent want to teach the Sacraments!’”
As expected, that was her favorite thing all year to teach.
“I got to be there to watch them receive their First Communion,” she said. “I love the kids’ excitement and the joy it brings them. Especially their smile when they walk back to the pew, when they realize they just received Jesus — that was the best thing!”
Fully present
Miss Berry remembers her own second-grade teacher emphasizing the importance of receiving First Holy Communion, “and that it’s a serious time and that you’re actually receiving Jesus, and that’s as close as you can be to Jesus now, by actually receiving him.”
Teaching full-time, finishing her degree and running cross-country and track made Miss Berry’s first year at Holy Rosary a little hectic but also very good.
“I never doubted that this is what I want to do, but the first year is always hard,” she noted.
“Those first couple of months was where I’d feel like, ‘Am I really cut out for this?’” she said. “Of course, it ended up getting better.”
She was always aware of God’s presence, even when she felt overwhelmed.
“I knew he was there,” she said. “I could see it and feel it through my coworkers. When they come to offer you comfort and encouragement, you can feel that he’s there with you.”
Her students were also some of her strongest fans in the classroom and on the track.
“They made me a sign said that said ‘Go, Miss Berry!’ before an indoor track conference meet,” she said.
She steadily grew in confidence, despite the inevitable headwinds.
“Never give up on yourself” she learned while teaching. “Keep giving it a chance. It will get better. You will get better.
“Even when you think you can’t do it anymore, you still can,” she stated. “You have to remember that God put you here for a reason, for a specific role, and you have to fulfill that role.”
Miss Berry plans to continue making learning more engaging and fun for her students through movement and creativity.
That, along with her enthusiasm and commitment, is what earned her the Missouri Teacher Leader of Tomorrow Award.
Seeing her students learn and mature is a tremendous motivator.
“I enjoyed watching my students grow academically and in their faith,” she said. “It helps me realize that this is what I’m meant to do.”
Miss Berry asks for prayers for patience, “not only for teachers but for the kids, too.”
“And pray that they’re able to see Jesus in their peers and their teachers and throughout the Church,” she said, “and that they’re able to take away what they learned and spread it to other people.”
To anyone who’s leaning toward becoming an educator but doesn’t know what to expect, she suggested to “go where your heart is leading you.”
“Don’t overthink it,” she said. “Pray and trust where God is leading you. His plan is better than anything we could plan for ourselves.”
