Holly Riggins didn’t always know she would become a teacher. But in hindsight, the signs were everywhere—in the stories passed down about her great-grandmother teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in McDonough County, in the way her own childhood felt stitched into the rhythms of western Illinois classrooms, and in the classroom where she now teaches fourth grade at Edison Elementary in Macomb.

“I started out as an accounting major,” she says, with a laugh. “I liked math. But I realized I didn’t want to sit at a desk doing numbers all day.”

That realization came with a personal pivot—from Illinois State to Iowa State, from a path of calculation to one of connection. She’s been with Macomb Schools ever since, serving 13 years as a reading specialist before moving into the classroom eight years ago.

“I wanted to see students grow over time,” she says. “As a specialist, I’d work with kids in small blocks, help them make progress, and then pass them along. It was rewarding—but I missed the long view.”

In her current role as a fourth-grade teacher, Holly gets the best of both worlds. She helps students move from learning to read to reading to learn—while also shaping their independence, their confidence, and their ability to manage the small but growing responsibilities that come with this pivotal year.

“This is the age where we start handing things over to them,” she explains. “They come in and make their lunch choice, get their supplies, read the list on the board. We’re building initiative.”

Fourth grade is also a threshold moment academically. “I tell parents: if you can master fourth grade math—adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, basic fractions—you can function in life,” she says. “But it’s also when students begin really using text to gather information. It’s not just reading words anymore. It’s figuring out what matters.”

Her own teaching philosophy was shaped by years of reading instruction and a refusal to give up on reluctant learners. One story stays with her—a student who wanted to be a mechanic and didn’t see the point of reading fiction.

“So I went home and got a Chilton manual,” she recalls. “Brought it in and said, ‘If you’re going to be a mechanic, this is what you’ll have to understand.’ That changed everything.”

What’s remarkable about Holly’s journey isn’t just her teaching skill—it’s the legacy it continues. Her daughter teaches agriculture at the middle school. Her husband’s grandmother was her own fourth-grade teacher. Her great-grandmother’s chalk and slate have given way to iPads and Google Docs, but the through line remains: education is a family calling.

Macomb, too, is part of that legacy. “This place is family,” she says. “It’s home. A lot of us said we’d leave and never come back—but here we are.”

It’s not nostalgia that drives Holly. It’s something deeper: gratitude for what was, and investment in what is. That’s why she still loves coming to work, even on the hard days. “There’s a lot of noise in education right now,” she says. “But if you can tune that out—you remember why you’re here. You remember the faces of the kids.”

You remember that a fourth-grade classroom isn’t just about teaching content. It’s about catching students at a critical moment and walking alongside them as they step more fully into who they’re becoming.

Somewhere, her great-grandmother would be proud. And Holly, without fanfare, carries that story forward—one Chilton manual, one social studies lesson, one morning routine at a time.