Long before Sophie Miller had a classroom, she had stuffed animals.

She would line them up in rows, carry home textbooks, and read to them. Her grandfather, father, and uncles were all educators. School wasn't something that happened to her — it was something she grew up inside.

"I always grew up with teachers in my family," she said. "It was pretty normal to be at school."

Now, just a few years after walking across the graduation stage at Du Quoin in 2022, she's returning as a third-grade teacher and high school volleyball assistant coach — coming home to work in the building where her father, Isaac Miller, still teaches middle school math.

Sophie got to Du Quoin Elementary the long way. Coming out of high school with strong dual credits, she earned a full volleyball scholarship to Wabash Valley College in Mount Carmel. Her credits let her accelerate through, and she transferred to SIU Carbondale after a year to complete her bachelor's degree in education. The whole time she was at SIU, she commuted from home — living with her parents in Du Quoin, staying rooted while working toward the degree.

This past year, she taught third grade at Chester Grade School, a first year in the classroom that confirmed what she already knew.

The volleyball career, meanwhile, had an honest arc. The college experience wasn't what she'd hoped, and she came to feel that her senior season in high school was the real ending — the goodbye she needed. Coaching is where she found the sport again.

"I feel like that is, like, barely below playing for me," she said. "It feels really satisfying to be back into coaching and back in the gym — just in a different role."

As a high school assistant, she'll be coaching athletes who need exactly what she carried through her own playing years.

"The most valuable thing I learned was my mental toughness," she said. "And overcoming adversity. You can rely on your teammates to help you through tough times, and they can rely on you to help them through tough times, too."

Playing during COVID, she said, made those lessons real in ways that no practice drill could.

Then there's the classroom itself.

Third grade, Sophie explains, is a hinge year. Students leave picture books behind and enter the world of chapter books. They move from addition and subtraction into multiplication and division — concepts that are entirely abstract until, suddenly, they aren't.

"Before that, multiplication and division were non-existent," she said. "Until you get to third grade, you might have heard the terms before, but maybe you have no idea."

She knows this grade from the inside. Her own third-grade teacher, Donna Davison, was one of her favorites — and she describes her new position as one filled with a sense of rightness. The specific classroom she's stepping into was held for an entire career by Joyce Beckham, who stayed at Du Quoin through retirement.

"That says a lot," Sophie said. "I feel like there's a lot to say there about how their teachers feel. They feel appreciated and content with their job."

That observation about retention shapes how she sees the district's culture. "When teachers get to Du Quoin School District, they stay," she said. Rarely do you see teachers leaving until they retire. She sees that as a statement about leadership and belonging — one she's now choosing to be part of.

Her younger self, she admitted, carried a heaviness that shaped her. She identified as a perfectionist — straight A's or nothing, no margin for error.

"The best advice I could have given myself is just to be okay with mistakes," she said. "Mistakes just mean you're learning."

And then, without prompting: "I try to preach that to my students this year — that mistakes are okay — because I knew when I was little, I would have liked to hear somebody say that."

It's a quiet, specific kind of grace — taking something you lacked and giving it away.

She's coming home to do that for the next generation. The road bent through junior colleges, a scholarship, a commute, a year in another district. But it always pointed here.

"There's no other option," she said. "I didn't even consider anything else."