After 33 years in early childhood education—27 of them in Vandalia's kindergarten classrooms—Lori Watson moves through her day with the kind of calm joy that can come only from a life spent doing exactly what she was built for. She laughs easily, speaks warmly, and somehow makes even the chaos of a kindergarten room sound poetic. To her, a noisy class isn't a problem; it's "a bunch of marbles on a library table"—fast, energetic, unpredictable, and full of life.

Her path into teaching began long before she ever stepped into a classroom. As a teenager, she babysat for a hardworking farming family: a hog farmer and his wife, who worked at the bank. Their three children became her first students. "That's when I knew," she says. They even let her use their kids as practice subjects during her college classes—early test runs at the craft she would later master.

Lori became the first in her family to go to college, studying at Greenville College before returning for her early childhood degree when state guidelines began requiring it. She started as a KRP aide, then spent six years doing home visits—carrying lesson materials through snowstorms and gravel roads across Fayette County, sometimes arriving at 7 p.m., long after most teachers had settled in at home. She calls it foundational to everything that came next.

That foundation mattered. Understanding child development—not just academically but physically, emotionally, neurologically—shaped her entire career. "You can't force time," she says. Learning unfolds as it unfolds. And if you miss key developmental windows, you can't recapture them later.

When she moved into kindergarten—eventually spending nearly three decades at Vandalia—she found her stride. She loved the imagination, the creativity, and the fearlessness in young learners. "They will try anything," she says. "They don't mind if they don't get it perfect." For Lori, that openness is sacred. It's what adults lose far too soon, and what kindergarteners still do naturally: fail out loud, adjust, and try again.

She nurtures that mindset with experiences her students will never forget. Mud for the letter M. Worm painting for the letter W. Science, writing, social studies—integrated not as subjects, but as adventures. Even after earning a master's degree in instructional strategy, she still learns from her students every year. "You have to meet them where they're at," she says.

She sees teaching as equal parts improv and structure. Lesson plans matter, but so do the tangents—the unexpected questions, the sudden sparks of curiosity. Her classroom is organized, but never rigid. She sets the stage, then lets the kids co-author the story.

The heart of it all, though, is the relationship. "You have to start with love and respect first," she says. Children need to know they are safe, cared for, and seen. Once trust is built, everything else follows. She appreciates the support of colleagues like Joe Vanzo, the elementary assistant principal whose daughter was in her class last year. "He visits my classroom all the time," she says. "He likes to drop in just unannounced. And I love that... the kids get to know him, and they love him."

That sense of connection extends throughout Vandalia, with its all-hands-on-deck community spirit. Lori praises custodians, paras, speech-language staff, social workers, community helpers, firefighters, retired subs—anyone who steps in to support kids. "It takes the whole village," she says, and she means it literally.

She's taught long enough now to see grandchildren of former students walk through her door. She runs into past kindergarteners at Walmart, at Burger King, and even behind the pharmacy counter. Sometimes they show her photos of their own children. Every encounter reminds her that the ripples of early childhood stretch through entire lifetimes.

Lori planned to teach for ten more years, but the post-COVID landscape shifted her timeline. Even so, she still loves it—every bit of it. And though she retires at year's end, she fully intends to return and help however she can. She knows she'll miss the children. The messes. The laughter. The fast pace. The tiny hands tugging at her sleeve. The joy.

Not many people retire with their passion still burning bright. But Lori does. And as she steps away from the classroom she's shaped for decades, one truth rises above all the rest:

She never stopped learning—and she never stopped loving the ones she taught.