If there is such a thing as a Martinsville through-line—a thread that runs from one generation to the next—Lora Parcel might be one of its clearest examples. She grew up here. Her husband grew up here. Her parents once walked the halls of Martinsville schools, cheering for the same mascot and guided by the same neighborly compass that still defines the town today. Her four children have followed that tradition, and she herself has come full circle—now teaching in the same community that raised her, even as the buildings and classrooms have changed with time.

“Yeah,” she laughs, “we go back deep.”

Lora graduated from Martinsville High School in 1997. Her husband graduated here. Her sister, nine years ahead of her, remembers the mascot spelled as two words—“Blue Streaks”—but Lora prefers the single-word version she grew up with. It’s fitting: she’s a one-word kind of presence, steady and whole, rooted and forward-looking all at once.

Her path into education wasn’t linear. Her dad farmed; her husband farms. Her mom taught elementary school here until Lora’s first-grade year before leaving education for insurance. But her influence lingered. So did the influence of two Martinsville teachers who shaped Lora at exactly the right time: English teacher Ms. Toner, and Family & Consumer Sciences teacher Mrs. Lolita Neidigh.

“She was fantastic,” Lora says. “I learned things in her class that were useful in daily life. She commanded respect, but she was always there for you. I’d be channeling my inner Mrs. Neidigh sometimes, because she had a strictness and order I still admire.”

She first set out to become an English teacher, but the classics—Dante’s Inferno, Wuthering Heights—left her cold. “I’m a pragmatist,” she says. “I need to know why I’m learning something and how it matters.” So she shifted into Family Services at Eastern Illinois University, a major steeped in usefulness, and after her first child was born, she went on to earn her teaching certificate through Indiana State.

That chapter was not for the faint of heart. “I had a baby and a baby on the way,” she says. “It was the real deal.” But she wanted it, and she earned it.

She stayed home with her kids for nine years. Then the moment came: Mrs. Neidigh retired. The space her mentor had anchored for decades suddenly stood open. Lora stepped directly into it.

Today, she teaches a wide array of Family & Consumer Sciences classes—courses that touch real life in real time. And the kids know it. “They choose my classes,” she says. “It makes me feel good that they want to take my classes.”

That interest has only deepened as Martinsville has expanded its Career & Technical Education offerings. Two standout additions—Child Development and Foundations of Teaching—have become essential in the district’s deliberate effort to “grow our own teachers.”

That effort is already working. Last year, Martinsville tried something new: school-to-work students were placed at the elementary school—unpaid, purely for experience. Three students participated. Two are now in college studying education.

“We want more of that,” Lora says. “A lot more.”

To make that possible, she’s been working on her master’s degree in Early Childhood Education through National University, a fast-paced online program that will allow her to teach those two classes as dual credit. She’ll finish in January.

Her whole approach is a blend of practicality and heart. She wants students to know why they’re learning something, but she also wants them to feel connected to it. And nowhere is that clearer than in the community service work built into nearly all her classes.

When Martinsville’s resource resale shop, Changing Hands, needed help relocating toys and Christmas items for a community sale, one call went out—and Lora’s students answered. “We made nine truckloads,” she says. “The kids loved doing it.” The experience taught them something simple and profound: learning is bigger than a classroom, and giving back is part of belonging.

Her catering class extends that lesson even further. These students don’t just learn recipes—they cater real events. When a fellow teacher’s son got married, Lora’s class created shimmering white wedding cupcakes and brownies for the rehearsal dinner. At Christmas, they baked sheet cakes for the Martinsville Chamber of Commerce party. Every year, they produce the entire meal for the town’s beloved eighth-grade etiquette dinner, a tradition supported by Martinsville on the Move’s education committee in partnership with the University of Illinois Extension.

“They serve a full meal, practice etiquette, and learn conversation skills,” Lora says. “We make everything—from the multiple courses to the dessert.” It’s a soft skill set with lifelong value.

They also bake roughly 250 cookies for the entire elementary school whenever asked, run a pork-themed breakfast for the whole district, funded in part by the Illinois Pork Producers, and collaborate with other CTE teachers for Martinsville’s 1st annual Autumn Market, where pumpkin bread and cinnamon rolls fly off the tables as fast as they can be made.

But perhaps nothing captures Lora’s spirit better than the annual Lincoln School one-room schoolhouse simulation. Partnering with the Clark County Historical Society, Lora and her Foundations of Teaching and Child Development students take first graders (and sixth graders and even students from neighboring communities) back in time. The kids dress the part, milk a pretend cow, make hanky dolls, churn butter, use a two-man saw, play pioneer games, and sit at original desks inside a restored 1950s one-room school.

“It’s like a regional celebration,” Lora says. “Everyone looks forward to it. It’s so much fun.”

When she talks about Martinsville, her tone shifts—softens, warms, deepens. “This community is amazing,” she says. “The way they support our students, our athletics, our school—I wouldn’t want to raise my kids anywhere else.”

You hear that sentence and realize she isn’t describing a district. She’s describing a home.

Her mentor once made this place feel meaningful. Now, Lora does the same—through classes that matter, service that connects, and a commitment that stretches from her childhood to her children’s futures, all inside the same walls.

She didn’t just step into the shoes of someone she admired. She stepped into a legacy.

And she’s carrying it forward, beautifully.