Christian Teacher of the Year: Jayme Reese radiates empathy, love, inspiring it in students

Popular PBS painter Bob Ross had his “happy little accidents,” but for Jayme Reese, teaching includes intentional projects that sometimes pay off in a big way.

Reese, who teaches middle and high school classes at Prodigy Leadership Academy in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, recently discovered one of her “favorite projects,” pairing her students with nursing home residents.

It started innocently enough – a friend called with an overgrown flower bed and Reese volunteered her students to come pick it. This “project,” or hands-on activity, was intended to emphasize serving – one of Prodigy’s six core values – but it ended up touching on the other five: learning, pursuing God, innovating, exploring and valuing relationships.

While at the flower patch, Reese decided to have the students take their pickings to a local nursing home. She called her father, a hospice chaplain, who agreed to meet them and bring his guitar so they could sing to the residents.

“So, we all go to his nursing home and basically it was really uncomfortable for some of the students,” Reese says. “I was watching them so closely. They’re just standing there like, ‘what are we doing?’ ‘It smells in here.’ I could just tell.

“So, we leave and I try not to be frustrated with them. I’m like, ‘OK, what’s going on in their heads?’ I really wanted to get to the bottom of it. So, we pulled over to a park and I just had them all sit in a circle. And I was like, ‘tell me what you’re thinking.’ And I made each one of them talk.

“I was like, ‘we’re just going to go around and I want you to tell me what you’re thinking and what did you think when you walked in?’” Reese says, before describing students’ reactions: “’Well, it smelled.’ ‘They’re just lonely.’ You know, all of these things were going through their thoughts. And so, then over the next week, we brainstormed because we saw a problem.” 

Reese and her students decided to make the nursing home experience more enjoyable by creating “grand-buddies,” in which students paired up with nursing home residents they visited every other week. 

The students interviewed their grand-buddy on topics ranging from marriage to the meaning of life, an idea they got from the book Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom, which they were reading at the time.  

“We came up with our own list (of interview topics) based off the book,” Reese says. “The cool part was we were also doing philosophy, so we started to develop our own philosophies of life. It just all intertwined so beautifully, and the students started to form bonds with these grand-buddies.” 

The project culminated with the students creating a book and video montage from their conversations, which they had been recording, and presenting it to their buddies at a “Dappers and Dames” event that included snacks, karaoke, and everyone getting dressed up.

Now students were calling the visits their favorite part of the week.

Local media covered the party, which was a far cry from the students’ first nursing home visit – something that wasn’t lost on Reese.

“I was so proud of my students because they came from the ‘it smells in here’ to ‘how can I sit down and have a conversation with this person?’ And they really developed that intergenerational skillset of talking to somebody and being thankful for that person and not being like ‘oh, they’re old.’ 

“They call me old, and I’m like, ‘Hey, watch it,’” she adds with a laugh. 

Reese radiates an exceptional love for teaching and love for people that fuels the passion for her work. And that’s one reason why she is one of 12 educators around the country to be named 2024 Christian Teacher of the Year by the Herzog Foundation, which publishes The Lion. 

“She is not motivated by accolades but aims to inspire and impact those around her,” Laura Strand, co-pastor of The Bridge Church where Reese serves on the worship team, in a letter of recommendation for the award. “Her love for her students is evident, and her work as a teacher is a calling, not just a job.” 

Prodigy founder and executive director Russell Grammer agrees. 

“Mrs. Reese takes a ‘whole person’ approach to supporting her students,” Grammer says in his letter. “She quickly develops and maintains positive rapport with them, guides them in learning and service opportunities, and helps them develop compassion. It is my professional opinion that she is committed to excellence in all facets of life and that she is gifted in bringing out the best in her pupils. She is also an influential leader among her colleagues. 

“Jayme lives what she teaches. For her, life is a mission to serve God and teaching is her calling.” 

Reese wasn’t always a teacher. Her resume shows she graduated from Hannibal La Grange college in 2000 with a B.A. in education, but from 2008-10 worked as a police dispatcher in Cape Girardeau. She later held jobs including thrift store manager before becoming an elementary classroom assistant at a public school in 2016, and then a teacher at Prodigy the following year. 

Teaching at a Christian school allows her to “share the deepest part of who I am with my students,” which was not the case when she worked in public school. 

“When you’re able to come out of that and you are in a Christian school setting where you can focus on them as a whole child, their mind, body, soul and spirit, then you can meet them where they are,” she says. “And when they feel loved, seen and known by their Creator God, they flourish in all aspects of their life. 

“They learn at a deeper level, they experience growth in all aspects and they chase after their passions, which helps them to become the better version of themselves, and that’s why I chose Christian education.” 

She understands the challenges parents face when deciding whether to put their children in Christian school, but has a unique way of framing their choice.

“I will often ask (parents) ‘what is success to you? Does it look like them becoming a person who loves God and makes Him known?’ If we can get to the heart of that, then I can say, ‘Here they are going to be loved by somebody every single day that is going to not only push them in rigor and grit in education, but also push them to love and know God.’”

Parents coming from public schools often want to know if their children’s needs will be met in the smaller, private setting. Reese is emphatic with her answer.

“Yes, they are getting what they need (in Christian school), and they’re getting so much more because it’s the whole child. There’s nothing left behind. They’re not going to fall through the cracks.”

The Christian Teacher of the Year honor is part of the Herzog Foundation’s Excellence in Christian Education award series. Each of the 12 winners will attend a special professional development and recognition event in Washington, D.C.