Stephanie Smith is originally from St. Elmo. She ended up in Vandalia the way a lot of people do.

"Met a guy over here," she said. "Been here for 30 years."

She's taught for twenty-eight of them. She started in a private preschool, then came to Vandalia Elementary — first in pre-K special education, where she spent eight or nine years, then into first grade, where she's been ever since.

She's thought about moving up. She can't do it.

"I've contemplated moving up a few times," she said. "But I just can't give it up. It's kind of like a high."

There are five sections of first grade in the building, and Smith can tell you exactly what happens across the course of the year: kids arrive not reading, not doing much math, and by spring they're readers. She and her colleagues work to make reading feel like a big deal, to build exposure, to create the conditions where a six-year-old falls in love with a book.

"It's amazing," she said. "They come in not reading, and then by the end of the year, I have great readers."

That's the day job. Then there's the night job.

Smith has four kids — 30, 29, 22, and 19. She had them young. So when the nest emptied, she and her childhood best friend Sabrina Porter found themselves staring at the same question: now what?

Sabrina's son had tried his hand at DJing — his cousin had done it, so he figured he could too — but it wasn't his thing. That left a trailer full of DJ equipment sitting in Sabrina's backyard. She called Smith.

"She's like, what do you think if we do this?" Smith said.

They got their families together, came up with a name, and launched.

The name is Mixy Chicks.

"It sticks," Smith said.

That was about a year ago. Since then, DJ Steph and DJ Sabrina have booked weddings, proms, retirement parties, birthday celebrations, school dances, and barn dances across the area — as far as Altamont, though most gigs stay close to home. They were so booked in May they had to turn down a wedding.

"We're a little intimidated," Smith admitted.

The barn dances have become their signature. The first two hours are line dancing, taught through YouTube videos that Smith and Porter facilitate. The second two hours are open DJ. The format fits Fayette County like a glove. They just booked a gig at O.B.’s Place, a former school building in Shobonier that's now a bar — and the venue specifically asked for one of their promo videos because their reputation precedes them.

About those videos. To promote a recent barn dance, Smith and Porter dressed as ostriches and filmed themselves running across a road yelling "Follow the chicks to the barn."

It is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. And it works.

"We have as much fun as the parties we host," Smith said.

Smith calls Sabrina "the brains." When the interviewer offered that Smith must be "the beauty," she laughed: "There we go." Sabrina has the creative mind; Smith has the energy and the audience. Between them, they've built something that fills a gap nobody was formally filling — live entertainment for communities that don't have a lot of it on hand.

The moment where Smith's two worlds actually collided happened at school. Mixy Chicks DJed the first-grade glow dance. Her own students saw their teacher behind the DJ equipment with a microphone. She could barely describe how excited they were.

Her grown kids have come to a few shows. Their official position: "They're a little embarrassed." One lives in Florida and hasn't witnessed it yet. Smith suspects they're all secretly proud.

People who find out for the first time tend to react the same way.

"They're like, what? You are not," she said. "Like — yes, I am."

When new people ask what she does, there's now a two-part answer: first-grade teacher by day. DJ Steph by night. Both feel right.

"It's such a nice outlet," she said.