Kloey Harsy still remembers exactly what she said when the phone rang.

It was Du Quoin Elementary School Principal Amanda Milam calling. Kloey had been trying to keep her hopes measured, telling herself not to get too far ahead of things. Then she picked up.

"I answered the phone, and I said, 'Oh, I feel like I'm going to throw up.'"

The call confirmed what she'd been quietly hoping for: she had been hired as Du Quoin's new fourth-grade teacher. The moment landed like something she'd been moving toward her whole life.

"I've always wanted to be at Du Quoin," she said. "I planned on being there one day, and I just felt like it was the moment that I'd been waiting for."

Kloey graduated from Du Quoin High School in 2020, where she was a member of the Indian dance team and a student who already knew she wanted to teach. She'd played school with her sister growing up — she was always the teacher — and the conviction deepened when she enrolled in Teresa Stacey's education class in high school and got to work in real classrooms. Time spent in Mandie Davis's fourth-grade room made the grade level feel like home.

"After being in there, I was like, this is definitely something that I could see myself doing. Something that I think I would be really good at."

After high school, she worked for three years at Buttons and Bows daycare in Du Quoin before attending John A. Logan College and then Southern Illinois University. Then something coincidental emerged when she accepted the new position: many of the children she helped care for at Buttons and Bows — who were two years old when she started there — are now preparing to enter fourth grade. She may end up teaching some of them a second time.

She did her student teaching at Pinckneyville District 50, placed in a fifth-grade classroom. Her initial reaction was not what she expected.

"I was like, oh, like, I don't like kids that are this old."

That lasted about a week. The influence she found herself having on upper elementary students — the way they're genuinely growing and changing — converted her. Fifth grade became a comfortable home.

Fourth grade, she decided, would be better.

"I feel like my fifth grade, by the end of the year, they start to get a little bit rotten," she said. "I feel like fourth grade will be even more beneficial."

She has spent this past year teaching fifth grade at Eldorado, where she confirmed what she'd suspected all along: the job isn't only about academics. "I try to teach them how to be good people and to be kind to others," she said. "If they get anything out of my classroom, I want it to be the fact that they know how to treat others."

Coming to Du Quoin means coming into a building full of family.

Her uncle had 10 children, and four of his five daughters work in the Du Quoin schools. Jacqueline Harsy, the social worker at the elementary school, will be right there. Other Harsys populate the high school. In total, Kloey has 31 first cousins. The idea of showing up somewhere she already knows half the faculty isn't something most new teachers get to experience.

The incoming fourth-grade team reached out to her before she even started. The previous teacher in her classroom, Heather Booksaver, met with her personally — gave her supplies, walked her through what she'd be leaving behind, and what she'd be taking. The welcome felt like something Kloey had been describing her hometown with for years.

"You have the Southern Illinois sunsets," she said, "and it just feels so peaceful to be back where you know everyone and you can depend on everyone. It's just a happy little community that's always supporting each other."

When she posted the news that she'd gotten the job, the community response was immediate and overwhelming.

"I knew I had so many people behind me," she said. "But just to see it — it was such a great feeling."

The little girl who played school with her sister is going home. And this fall, a classroom full of fourth graders — some of whom she already helped raise — will find out what that's worth.