Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Amida Ashley, Miss A.
And I believe that anything is possible.
Welcome to Anything is Possible.
I'm Hal Orton Hilton Hill.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of these great stories about great people
whose lives prove that anything is possible.
This is Amanda Ashley.
Thank you for being here today.
Thank you for having me.
Even though you don't understand why you're here today.
No, sir.
I do not.
So let me start by telling you why.
So I had the great honor to be the guest speaker for the Seymour Chamber of Commerce.
And at that event, they were honoring their teacher of the year, Amanda Ashley.
And so she gets up after they give her the award and she speaks to us.
And I was blown away.
They did a bit of your bio, your teaching experience.
And then you got up and you started to talk.
You're such an amazing storyteller, but this is what I thought in that moment.
I would have loved to have been one of your students because being a teacher's kid,
I know what it looks like when a teacher is called.
I know that.
I know what love looks like.
And the way you were talking about teaching, the way you talked about your mother,
the way you talked about your son,
I literally was in tears.
And so I was like, I've got to share this wonderful person and her story with the world.
So that's why you're here because you reminded me, I got a show named Anything is Possible,
but you reminded me that night that anything is possible.
Let's start by talking about your mom, historical figure in Seymour, right?
Yes, she was.
What was her name?
Guadalupe.
Guadalupe Farais.
And she was the first Latina that was in the Seymour area.
And locals called her Lupi.
Everybody knew her.
Oh, man.
I feel like my mom got me my job because when I walked into school for my interview,
everybody was like, well, you know her mom, you know her mom.
And yeah, everybody knew my mother.
What was she like?
Tell me what she poured into you.
So let me say this.
If I touched you from what I said, my mother would hold on to you.
Really?
Yes.
To hear my mother, you would want to hold on to her, not just a touch.
Right.
Because I feel like, and so many people say, I mean, you're like your mother.
You know, I see your mother through you.
That's a great compliment for me because I do hope that everything I do is a reflection,
not only of our father in heaven, but yeah, my mother, she was just this bundle of joy.
Like she was hilarious.
Which she worked.
Well, she worked at Carrier in South Knoxville and then it closed and moved to Texas.
And then my mom worked at Kroger's.
And she loved that.
And you could even at times go into the store and she was loud.
She was a loud person and you could hear her in different aisles.
But people told me that they watched her lean across the conveyor belt to pray for people.
And my mom's line, when I'd go in, her line was always long.
And I knew that people wanted to go through her line just to talk to her or whatever.
And then she retired and she got probably the best job that I feel like she could have,
she should have had all along.
And that was to be a translator for the Department of Human Services in Sevierville.
What was it like growing up in Seymour?
So I'm a little bit different even though I have siblings.
They are 15 and 14 years older than I am.
So I grew up with my nephew Adam.
Adam and I are just five years apart.
And we live on a farm.
And that's also probably another reason why kids just, because I tell farm stories.
Like?
About my dog.
They love to hear my dog stories.
So I had a hunter dog, a big dog.
I could just put my hand down and pet him.
And I began to talk about how he hunted these animals and how he would eat everything.
And if you were to go to Seymour Primary and say, tell me about Miss A's dog and what he doesn't eat.
They're going to tell you two things, the head and the feet.
And I would tell these stories.
And it's amazing because all I am is just telling true life stories.
You know, I told the kids about a snapping turtle who ate one of our ducks.
And they are just memorized.
Kids will say, when are you going to come tell another dog story?
So when did you discover that storytelling was a way to engage children and kind of unlock them?
If that makes sense.
So I guess I never realized that it does it, that it unlocks and gets kids to focus.
I just know I didn't like hearing a whistle blown and be quiet and all this stuff.
I didn't like that.
I didn't like watching, you know, in a big assembly, somebody putting on a show, trying to get them to be quiet.
And then the kids are still talking.
It just wasn't effective.
And one day I just grabbed the microphone in the gym.
And I was like, if you can hear my voice clap two times.
And I began to tell a story about my dog Benjamin.
And it was pin dropping.
Like all the kids stopped, there was no more talking.
And if you did talk, like the older kids would be like, shh, I can't hear the story.
And so I tell the same stories.
Like I try to get one, you know, I tell the same set of stories every year.
And I save the best one for the very end where he got this groundhog in it.
It was close to the beginning of summer and it blows up and they love it.
They love it.
So, but yeah.
Possibility powered by Pilot Flying J, Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
So when we were at the event and you were describing this, I saw this love and passion for kids.
When did you decide that you wanted to be a teacher?
You know, Mr. Hill, teaching is not what I wanted to do.
It wasn't.
I remember teaching preschool for about six months because I worked at Taco Bell.
And as our new store was getting built, I worked at, I taught preschool for about six months.
And man, did I fall in love with those kids.
Just knowing that you're helping a person, a little person, get things that they need for life.
You know, like you're helping that child grow.
And I shifted my focus in college then.
That's when I switched it to education and I just, I couldn't think about anything else.
I really couldn't like, I know that the good Lord put me in this path because that's not the path I would have chosen for myself.
And now I feel like this is, this is my element.
I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
The kids run to you, don't they?
They do. They do.
Why do you think that is?
I don't really know why, but I hope it's because they feel my love that I have for them.
I could be the only hug that child receives that day.
I could be the only smile that they see that day.
I could truly be the only part of Jesus that they see that day.
And I want to, when they come in, that's why I like to greet the children.
I'm right there.
I heard you, you didn't want to leave the classroom because you were jamming in your classrooms.
Your kids love you and they asked you to take on a new and different role.
What did they ask you to do?
So, yes, I'm with these children probably more that day than their parents will be that evening.
And I did not want to do that.
I felt like certain kids needed me.
And that was hard for me to leave the classroom because that's how I feel like every class that I get,
they're putting my room for a reason, not just on a roster.
They needed Miss A that year.
And so I didn't want to leave that.
And I had prayed that year that if, Lord, you open up a door, I'll walk through it.
And so when my principal came to me and said, do you, would you like to, you know, be a math interventionist?
And I was like, oh, well, I'm supposed to have this certain student, you know, and she was like, well, you just pray about it.
And the minute she said that, I said, nope, I've already prayed for it.
I told the good Lord that I would walk through the door. If you open it, I'll take it.
And Mr. Hill, it has been the absolute joy truly of my teaching career as, as much as I love my students and made connections with those 20 or 40 kids that I had.
I'm making connections with 160 third graders.
I know them all by their name because those third grade teachers that seem more primary asked me, said Miss A, let's rotate centers.
And so each teacher gets me, you know, a day each week and we sit and we're able to just enhance their learning. And I love that.
So you have dedicated your life. That's the thing that struck me was like, this is your calling.
Like you're, you're, you're walking in the purpose for which you were designed.
But then as you were talking and you were accepting this award, you stopped in the middle of accepting the award and you looked at your son and you started pouring into him.
And that's what got me, right? Because your son has been through a lot.
Yes, sir.
Let's talk about it.
So please excuse me if I tear up a little bit.
My son, Ryan, does not fit the typical teacher kid mold.
When he was five years old, my mother passed away and him and his mom, I were very close.
He walked to her house. We live on a farm and he walked to her house at a year and a half years old and they would stay outside all day and just, it was great to watch them have that bond.
And when she passed, he became angry and disrespectful.
And I remember when he threw something in the house, I talked to him and I said, he thought you, you, you can, you can be angry and you can be upset, but you cannot throw things.
And I saw it counseling for him.
And he was in kindergarten.
And as he's in kindergarten and in first grade, I'm going through depression.
And man, I'm telling you, until you walk through that valley, you have no idea what that is.
No idea. He's shaken up by the loss of your mother.
Yes.
But so are you.
Yes, sir. My mother was my best friend, best friend.
And I cannot be there for my son as much as I want to.
Depression has me held down and I cannot.
And second grade, he makes it through kindergarten and first grade, I'm going to say on his own because I was absent.
In fact, through counseling, he felt like I died.
My mother passes away, I die. And when I'm able to come out of the depression in April of 2017, I lose my father-in-law in June of that same year.
And that pushed Ryan over the edge because my mom was healthy and she passed suddenly.
I was now absent from his life.
And my father-in-law, same thing, healthy. And we take him to the hospital for what we thought was a pulled muscle.
And he was a Marine in Vietnam and he's eaten up with cancer from head to toe.
And he passed away. We found that out.
I came out of depression in April.
We found out May 29th that he has cancer and he passes away June 20th and that pushed Ryan over the edge.
Why are all these healthy people dying?
So now he's afraid at any moment that everything that he knows and loves is going to be taken away from him.
Yes, sir. Exactly.
And second grade was probably a very rough, probably Ryan's hardest year.
He would need to come see me and see me in the next couple of years.
And I think he's really afraid of me.
He's afraid of me.
I'm afraid of me.
I'm afraid of him.
I'm afraid of me.
I'm afraid of him.
He would need to come see me in class just to make sure I was still alive.
He worried so much.
He would be sick, physically sick.
And I had gone on a field trip.
My class had won this field trip.
And the nurse at the time told me, you can fake a fever.
You can fake vomiting.
You can do this and that.
But your body can't fake this.
And Ryan's body is like this.
And I need to tell you that so maybe you will get him some help.
And mind you, when he threw that thing and he was angry, I got him help.
But he seemed to get better.
And so we stopped that therapy.
And second grade was his hardest year.
And then we get to third grade.
And that, if you don't mind, is just a wonderful story.
Because I had a certain teacher in mind for him.
And third grade that year had just now moved into our building.
Seymour at the time was only Kay, kindergarten, first and second grade.
And that year that Ryan was going into third grade, third grade moves into our building.
And I'm talking to one of the teachers and I do not know these teachers personally.
They work in a different building.
And she says something about mental health, about her own mental health.
And it was like the good Lord pushes me and like, that's her.
She'll get it.
And I remember going to talk to my assistant principal.
And I told her that story and she was like, well, her room is already full.
She said, if I put him in there, I'll have to take somebody out.
And I said, I don't want that.
If you already have the class, let it, you know, but the Lord made a way because the Lord knew we needed Regina Cox.
And I talked to Mr. Gina and she told me about a counselor that her family used, Courtney Brandon, with Knoxville Counseling Services.
And I called Ms. Courtney up and Courtney begins to tell me that she would like to test Ryan for PTSD.
And I giggled.
And she said, why did you giggle?
And I said, because my son's never been to war, he's never seen anything that's traumatic because I'm thinking of other things.
And she said, well, this is what she said, a profound moment for me.
She said, but I don't want you to laugh or giggle because although she said, would you laugh at a veteran?
And I said, absolutely not.
No, I would not.
And she said, then don't laugh at your son because the war in his mind is very real.
And that started our journey.
And Mr. I'm going to be honest, even though that right there, that moment.
And being blessed with Ms. Courtney and Mr. Gina, there were, it wasn't over.
Like, I felt like we had just started the climb because it got hard, real hard.
We could not go anywhere.
You know, we had a, like a circumference of 12 miles, six miles this way and six miles this way.
And then my son would absolutely have panic attacks because he thought we were going to be in a wreck.
But through Ms. Courtney, you know, we've learned to deal with it.
It's still hard for him at school.
And the biggest challenge for me, I guess, was how other people have a different trauma response.
Right.
And the most trauma responses that I've seen is where kids kind of shut down or they're quiet.
Sometimes they'll cry.
My son's trauma response is to puff up and protect himself.
He's going to be disrespectful. He's going to be loud.
And that, Mr. Hill, was hard for me.
That was probably the hardest pill to swallow.
Doctors and counselors and all these people told me that he doesn't understand.
And I honestly was tired of hearing that until one doctor, I looked at him and I said,
you mean to tell me that my son, who I raised, doesn't know when he's disrespectful, when I've taught him respect.
And he took my hand and he said, mama, he really doesn't.
And then my focus shifted.
Right.
Instead of trying to, I'm sorry, instead of trying to get my son out of this, now I'm fighting with him.
I need to be his advocate.
His ally.
Yes.
Right.
Instead of trying to fix him and say, no, this is not, and I just, it's a thankful moment for me because I did not know.
But it's, see, this is the contrast that really moved me about your story even as it continues.
It's this.
People that watch this show, this show is about possibility.
So think about these possibilities.
One, that you could show up at work every day wanting to give a smile, a hug, and a high five.
As you are needing a smile, a hug, and a high five.
That you would have a deeper empathy for students and their challenges because your own child is facing those challenges.
And for you to do both simultaneously, say to your students, I'm going to give you the best of who and what I have, but also to your son.
I'm going to give you the best of who and what I have.
And if I need to pivot and change and learn and grow by the grace of God.
Absolutely.
Anything's possible.
Absolutely.
And I bless you for that.
Well, thank you.
Because I appreciate that you say that anything is possible because I truly want and desire and believe that through Ryan's story, that hopefully education can change a little bit and focus more on our students with mental health.
And to know that my big three, you know, my big strong kid who is no longer as strong physically and mentally is helping so many other people.
I had a student who did not, his home life was a little hard for him.
And every day he'd ask, how am I getting home?
How am I getting home?
And I saw myself losing my patience.
I wanted to say it's the same way I told you, you know, the other five times, but I did not say that.
And I thought about Ryan, maybe that child is just looking for safety.
And so what I did is I got a little post it every day I'd put a post it on his desk.
They said, today you're going home with mom or today you're going home with dad.
Today you're going to be a bus rider.
And I did that every day for the remainder of the school year just so he would feel safe.
And half the times the kids coming in, that's what they want.
They want that safety.
They want to feel safe.
They want to feel loved.
Yes.
And the beautiful thing is that is a possibility because people like you, Mrs. A, are a teacher in our community and for that we bless you.
And thank you for being a person of possibility.
Well thank you for having me.
I do appreciate it.