Fixing a kid's shoe, mending a pair of glasses, and troubleshooting somebody's laptop in the same class period without missing a beat is normal for Sarah McKinney. "I just fix everything," she said with a laugh, describing the reputation that's followed her for years. Her students call her a jack of all trades, and after six weeks teaching eighth grade science at Benton Grade School, that reputation is already taking root in a brand-new town.

McKinney isn't new to teaching. This is her eighth year in the classroom, all of it spent working with middle schoolers. What's new is Benton itself. She spent her first seven years at Richland County Middle School in Olney, teaching a year of sixth-grade math followed by six years of STEM before her family's move brought her south. Her husband, Trevor McKinney, took over running the Benton park district, and the family relocated this summer. Before that, Trevor spent years fishing professional bass tournaments, including the Bassmaster Opens and the Bassmaster Classic, before stepping back from the bigger events to be home more with their daughter.

"The community's been very welcoming," McKinney said. "I can walk through Walmart and see students and parents and just other community members that we've met and have conversations with them." She and her family attend Whittington Church, another place she's found familiar faces waiting.

McKinney grew up in Olney and met her husband while playing Division II softball at McKendree University, where dual credit from high school let her enter as a sophomore and finish her degree in three years. She started teaching just two weeks after turning twenty one. "I was a baby," she said. As a true softball supporter, she's attended most of the softball team's home games and hopes to coach hitting down the road. Still, her heart belongs squarely in the middle school classroom. "I love seeing the kids grow," she said. "By the time they graduate as eighth graders, they're just like many adults, and I enjoy watching that progression."

She credits her own sixth-grade science teacher in Olney, Jamie Tyler, with showing her what a great science teacher does, and she's spent her career trying to pass that excitement along. Her classroom runs on what she calls adventures rather than lessons. Students have measured bubble diameters while testing different dish soaps, and tasted household liquids to identify acids and bases by whether they were sour or slippery. Soon, she hopes to have the students make pancakes while learning about homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures. This fall she's planning a pumpkin chunking unit built around Newton's laws, complete with catapults and a giant trebuchet on loan from her sister. Later, students will decorate sugar cookies to model the stages of mitosis and meiosis. "I want them to not even realize that they're learning," she said. "I want them to think that we're having a conversation."

Moving to a new district has meant learning new systems, from school computer programs to new curriculum groupings, but McKinney says the families have been patient while she finds her footing. She was accustomed to using examples drawn from Olney's farming community, while she's learning more about the mining backgrounds of families in Benton.

McKinney's path to the classroom wound through plenty of other interests along the way. She spent two weeks in an orphanage in India on a college mission trip, did competitive gymnastics for twelve years, and once changed a football player's flat tire during her first week on campus. Her father kept bees growing up, and she can knit, crochet, and make T-shirts in her spare time. Her family also owns a soda shop back in Olney called Ginger Ales, a play on words honoring a family full of redheads, where her sister crafts every syrup from scratch. Don't expect a Benton location anytime soon. "My parents don't like to step on other small businesses' toes," she said, pointing to local shops like Ranger Nutrition and Mr. D's. "We really like to try to shop locally if we can."

For now, McKinney is settling into her new classroom and her new town one adventure at a time. Someday she'd like to travel to all fifty states with Eloise, including trips back to the Finger Lakes region and the St. Lawrence River, a favorite fishing stop from her husband's tournament days. Until then, there are pumpkins to launch, cookies to decorate, and a whole new community's worth of students to introduce to the adventure of science.