For Ashley Willman, returning to Teutopolis meant more than a career move—it meant raising the next generation inside the same values that shaped her. She always figured she’d come back. She just didn’t know when the cards would let her.

Ashley is Teutopolis through and through—Niebrugge on one side, McMahon on the other, both families born and raised in the community. She graduated from Teutopolis High School in 2005, studied education at Illinois State University, and taught kindergarten in Bloomington for three years.

Before returning to Teutopolis, she taught in a small, rural school where colleagues supported one another and worked as a true team, even when grade‑level partners were spread across different buildings. That experience shaped her as an educator and gave her a deep appreciation for collaboration. Now, being back in her home district, she’s discovered a new kind of connection, one where her fellow first‑grade teachers are right down the hall, sharing ideas, energy, and daily moments of growth. The immediacy of that collaboration, paired with the strong instructional culture at Teutopolis, has made her return feel both meaningful and uniquely rewarding.

All that time, coming home sat in the back of her mind—less a plan than a hope. She and Ross were happy in Greenville, close to his family. “If it happens, great,” she told herself. “If it doesn’t, we’re very content here as well.”

Then Ross took a job in Effingham. At first he traveled constantly. But a promotion put him in the office full-time—and he started eating lunch at Ashley’s mom’s house.

“I’m like, okay, if that’s the case,” Ashley says, laughing.

Right around that time, a first-grade teacher was retiring at Teutopolis. Her mom, who runs a daycare and watches the grandkids, could help raise the children. Several nieces and nephews already lived nearby. The cousins Ashley grew up with—her best friends to this day—were still there.

“The cards all played out,” she says.

She took the position in 2021. They found a house with acreage—“four minutes from town,” she clarifies, because the lifelong townie girl can’t quite believe she lives in the country. She and Ross now have three children: Kellen, seven, in second grade; Eden, five, heading to kindergarten next fall; and Emmett, three, starting preschool.

“They are wild,” Ashley says. “They’re crazy. They’re fun. They’re worth it.”

What she found when she came back was something she could see clearly only because she’d been away long enough to know what other places looked like.

In her earlier teaching role, she worked in a warm, community‑centered school where families were deeply committed to their children’s success and partnered closely with teachers. Now in Teutopolis, she’s experiencing a different kind of support, one where families not only stay engaged but also have additional resources to reinforce learning at home. Both environments have strengthened her belief in the power of strong school‑family relationships and the many forms they can take.

“The school is the core,” Ashley says. “The school is what this town is based off of.”

That investment extends to the relationship between parents and teachers—a mutual trust that, in much of the country, has eroded. In many districts, a phone call home about a discipline issue is met with suspicion. Here, parents understand the call is coming for a reason. “They know that I have done XYZ to handle the situation before I needed to call them,” Ashley says. “And they have my full support.” That trust changes everything—from student behavior to teacher morale to the willingness of good educators to stay.

Staying matters. Across the country, the teacher shortage is real. Districts everywhere struggle to recruit and retain qualified educators. Teutopolis has managed to build and hold a strong staff, and Ashley understands why. The parental support helps. So does the culture of accountability. But what surprised her most was the power of the teacher cohort itself.

“My teaching has just grown so much,” she says. “Being able to feed off of the other co-workers and share ideas and thoughts and venting and all the things.”

That kind of professional community doesn’t just make teachers better. It makes them want to stay. When burnout is driving talented educators out of the profession entirely, having colleagues who share the load—who understand a hard Tuesday because they’re living one too—is as powerful a retention tool as any salary schedule. Teutopolis has built what many districts talk about but few achieve: an environment where teachers are supported by families, resourced by the community, and sustained by one another.

She sees the pressures, too. Enrollment has pushed first grade to five sections. Space is tight. “We are jam-packed right now,” she says. But she frames it the way Teutopolis people tend to: “That is definitely a good problem to have.”

Ashley knows she’s different for having left. If she’d started here, she says, she would have been naïve. The years away sharpened her. “I don’t think I could teach anything else,” she says of first grade—a year where children arrive unable to read and leave devouring chapter books within months.

And she gets to do it in the place that made her. Among the names she grew up with, the faith that formed her, the family that waited for her, and a classroom full of six-year-olds who are just beginning to discover what she already knows: that Teutopolis is a place worth coming home to.