Jean Aviles has worked at Joppa-Maple Grove in seven different roles over twenty years. Library aide. Secretary. Cook. Custodian. Bus monitor. Assistant volleyball coach. A little bit changed each time, she says — which is how she likes it.

But this one is different.

She's been a paraprofessional for about two years now, working one-on-one with an eight-year-old girl diagnosed as nonverbally autistic.

Except nonverbal has been increasingly the wrong word.

"She talks," Jean says. "She says sentences and words. She communicates."

Over the last two years, the girl has opened up — speaking, engaging, interacting with everybody around her. Jean has watched it happen, moment by moment.

"It makes me cry," she says.

She means that in the best possible way. "She's a handful. But it's a good thing."

Jean wasn't planning to come back to the district for this stretch. Someone asked her to fill out an application, and she almost didn't. The district has cycled through different administrations over the years — she's seen most of them. But something about this one changed her mind.

"This administration and these people that are working here are the best ones yet," she says. "They listen. It's not hectic. It's not dreading to go to work. You look forward to going in and saying good morning."

She's gotten to know the girl's parents, too. That relationship has grown alongside everything else. "We try to make them family," she says.

In the pre-K classroom down the hall, Tara Burns is doing something similar — meeting a child's needs in ways most people couldn't.

Tara's road to Joppa is unlike anyone else's in the building. She grew up in Johnson County, joined the National Guard, and found herself the youngest person in her unit when they activated and deployed. Attached to the 82nd Airborne, she served in Saudi Arabia and Iraq during Desert Storm.

"It was a culture shock," she says simply. Things happened there that she would not have expected from a small town in southern Illinois. Hard things. She came home carrying more than she left with — including an understanding of resilience she couldn't have gotten any other way.

Years later, she and her husband adopted a daughter named Rosie, who has significant physical disabilities. Tara had been part of Rosie's life long before the adoption — learning, out of love and necessity, how to navigate a world of needs that rarely announce themselves simply.

"I was with her for years before we adopted her," she says.

Rosie, now a first grader, uses a wheelchair to get around. She was an abuse survivor before she found her family. None of that has slowed her down.

"She doesn't let anything stop her," Tara says. "She brightens our day."

That experience — with Rosie, with the military, with the hard things — made Tara someone who knew how to show up for a child without being told how. She started volunteering at the school just to be close to her daughter. Then she got hired on formally, and now she's an individual aide in pre-K, supporting a young boy whose needs span mobility, communication, and learning.

"All of the above," she says when asked what that support looks like.

She wouldn't change any of the paths that led her here. "I didn't necessarily like my experience over there," she says of her deployment, "but I'm glad I have that experience."

At the other end of the building, Dr. Jeffrey Dufour is thinking further ahead — past early childhood, past grade school, all the way to what comes after graduation.

As a guidance counselor and special education teacher for the junior high and high school, his work is about widening the frame. He inherited a foundation built in large part by Penny Bellamy, who retired in December after years of establishing relationships with seniors and helping them dream about their futures.

"She was integral," he says.

Dr. Dufour is building on that. This year, he helped bring college representatives directly to students — Stacy Simpson and Beth Crow from Vincennes Community College, Justin Hill from Western Kentucky Technical and Community College. They sat with students for hours, walked through scholarships, filled out admissions forms, and explored career interests.

Two students who had only planned to go straight into the workforce walked out with a different picture in their heads — one considering Shawnee Community College, another looking at Western Kentucky Technical.

"I never really thought about it like that," they told him.

That change — visible on their faces in real time — is what Dr. Dufour came to this work for.

"I think their faces showed excitement," he says. "The possibilities of what could be."

The community here is a working one. Students help their families, hold jobs, and carry responsibilities that leave little margin. The breakthrough, he says, was helping them see that none of that has to stop.

"They can do all that and go to school too," he says.

His philosophy fits in a single sentence, and he offers it without hesitation:

"Never underestimate the potential of a student when they are presented with a career path that is of interest to them."

Three people, all of whom served their country through military service. Three very different approaches. Jean with her hands at a child's side, Tara with her arms around a family, Dr. Dufour with a door held open toward something new.

All of it is guidance. All of it is care. And all of it, here, is ordinary.