When Crystin Farris introduces herself to her middle school English students at Meridian, they have no idea the journey their teacher took to reach their classroom.

"My background is a lot of fun," Farris says with a smile that hints at the adventures behind her.

Growing up in Chicago, Farris moved to Southern Illinois at 18 to attend SIU, pursuing English education and photography. But her college career hit a roadblock when she dropped out with a 1.9 GPA in her junior year.

"I just didn't like doing schoolwork," she admits candidly. "It was not my priority. I had classes at 8am—I didn't think attendance was super important."

With education no longer an option, Farris pivoted to cosmetology school, earning an associate's degree and beginning a decade-long career as a hairdresser. Life took another turn when her husband was stationed in South Korea, where they lived for three years.

While abroad, Farris worked under another army wife to continue her hairdressing career and helped establish a thrift store on the military base for new families and soldiers. It was also in South Korea that she gave birth to her son, now 14.

Upon returning to the United States, the family settled in Marion, her husband's hometown. Always restless and curious, Farris returned to SIU—this time earning a degree in fashion design and merchandising. After graduation, she worked for her former professor, digitizing patterns and preparing them for production.

"People would send us patterns, and I would digitize them, get them into the computer, make sure that they all fit together, perfected them, and then set them for whatever size range they needed," she explains.

The unexpected call that changed her trajectory came from SIU, asking if she would substitute teach in the fashion design department when a professor returned from summer break seven months pregnant. Those two months in the classroom rekindled something in Farris.

"That's when I was like, I really like teaching," she recalls.

Though university-level positions required more advanced degrees, Farris began substituting at her son's school, Marion Junior High. The experience "reignited the whole thing even more," pushing her to pursue her master's degree in English education—which, ironically, required no additional English courses thanks to her earlier college work.

After completing her master's in 2022, Farris applied for teaching positions and landed at Meridian as a middle school English language arts reading teacher. Now in her first year, she juggles teaching with additional certification courses—and somehow still finds time for roller derby practice, where she's known as "Brik-olage" or simply "Brick."

"I've been playing roller derby for nine years," she says. "I'm a pretty solid person and I'm like a wall on the track."

In her classroom, Farris creates an atmosphere that reflects her personality—not authoritarian, but built on mutual respect. "The biggest rule in my classroom is just that we respect each other. We respect our education, we respect the classroom, we respect the school," she explains.

This approach stems partly from her own educational journey and the teachers who inspired her. "I really just want to be the type of teacher that I had in school," she says. "They taught me how much words have meaning and how to use that to understand the world around you."

For students with limited travel opportunities, Farris sees literature as a window to wider experiences. "I want to be able to help my students experience everything about the world, even if it's just through books," she says. "Books are a really good way to meet people that you'll never meet in real life and learn about stuff and people's experiences."

At Meridian, Farris has found a school that "cares a lot about their students, cares a lot about student success," and focuses on understanding each student's individual needs—values that align perfectly with her own teaching philosophy after her long and winding journey to the classroom.