You don’t have to be young to find your calling—you just have to be open. For Heather Barker, the calling to teach waited patiently through detours, doubts, and a few discouraging conversations. But it never left her. And now that she’s here, she’s not going anywhere.

A Galesburg native and Class of 2005 graduate, Heather is raising her own four children in the same community that shaped her. With kids enrolled at Steele, Lombard, and the junior-senior high, she jokes that between school drop-offs and teaching full-time at King Elementary, she’s got every corner of the district covered.

“I’m in four of the five school buildings every day,” she says, laughing. “I’m a mom, a teacher, and a teammate. It’s a full circle life.”

But the path to this moment didn’t unfold in a straight line.

Heather earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2011 and dreamed of becoming a teacher. But when she sought guidance on how to transition into education, the message was disheartening: it would be too expensive, too complicated, too late.

So she shelved the dream and focused on raising her family.

For years, Heather poured herself into being a stay-at-home mom. But when the district’s need for substitute teachers grew, a close friend encouraged her to give it a try. “I thought, maybe this is it,” she recalls. “Maybe this is my shot to see if teaching really is what I hoped it would be.”

She started subbing in classrooms all over the district—sampling grade levels, observing different teaching styles, and quietly rediscovering a piece of herself she thought was gone.

And then came the call: would she consider a long-term sub position? Then another. And before long, she was offered a full-time teaching role at King—the very school she attended as a child, and where Chris Wenstrom, her own fourth-grade teacher, still teaches just down the hall.

Now, Heather is earning her master’s degree in teaching through Western Illinois University—juggling coursework, parenting, and full-time teaching with a sense of grounded joy.

“I found the grade I love—fourth grade,” she says. “They’re still kids, but they’re starting to come into their own. I get to build a classroom community where they feel safe, valued, and celebrated.”

That word—community—comes up a lot when Heather talks.

She sees it in her classroom, where her students “work so hard and make me proud every day.” She sees it in the school, where specialists and teammates collaborate to support every learner. She sees it in the city of Galesburg itself—what she and I agree is “a Goldilocks town—not too big, not too small, just right.”

Heather brings a deeply relational approach to her classroom. She sends positive notes home, makes affirming phone calls, and builds trust with families. “One dad told me I was the first person to ever say something nice about his child,” she says. “That broke my heart. But it also showed me how important this work really is.”

And maybe most moving of all—she brings pieces of her own story into the room.

“I’ve been shaped by my children,” she says. “One of my sons is autistic, and he’s taught me so much about empathy and perspective. That experience helps me show up better for every student.”

Heather Barker isn’t a traditional teacher. She’s a teacher built by life.

And her students are the better for it.