The old adage says you can’t go home again, but it doesn’t mention anything about returning to school. In Beth Todd’s experience, going back to the school she attended as a kid to become a teacher has been a positive experience.
Todd was a student at St. Thomas More in Decatur from 1987 until 1996. In those days, the Catholic school, founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1950, still counted several religious among the faculty (the last sister retired in 2000). Todd attended during the years when the facilities expanded to include a gym, faculty rooms, a cafeteria and kindergarten classrooms.
This year marks the school’s 70th anniversary, and it finds Todd in her old fifth-grade classroom teaching third graders, a job she’s held for almost four years.
“I thought it would be too weird to be back as a teacher,” she said. “It is really surreal. But while Atlanta has so many people who come and go, many of my classmates have found their way here to bring their own kids. There’s a sense of consistency that’s comforting, something that’s different and special.”
The difference, said Principal Shaun Bland, is the community the school has built over seven decades.
“We describe ourselves as a family, and we watch out for each other,” she said. “There is a lot of history with families, from grandmothers who have gone here to new people each year.”
The community of 473 students in kindergarten through eighth grade draws from the metro area’s 17 Catholic parishes as well as Decatur.
“We have a diverse population that includes about 20% who don’t identify as Catholic," said Bland. "Some come from different denominations; some from none at all. But they value the richness of the traditions and the faith we have.”
Having that faith element was a strong motivation for Todd to leave Inman Middle, where she’d taught sixth grade for 10 years.
“It was such a loss to be in a place where we couldn’t incorporate the faith aspect,” she said. “Here, we have our mission to reach out to the world in the name of Christ. We always come back to that.”
The school’s strong outreach component recently included a food drive for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and making hundreds of lunches for the homeless served by Crossroads Christian Ministry. That mission hasn’t slowed, despite the pandemic, which has kept about 25% of the student body at home with remote-learning devices the school provided.
“It’s been very stressful on all parties, but we’ve come together to make it work,” said Todd. “Our parents' and teachers' responses speak to how our community works together and to why we’ve been here for 70 years.”
Todd noted three other factors that make her job at STM special: Her two daughters are enrolled there, and her mother, Mary Nicolatos, is also on the faculty, a post she’s held since 1987 when Todd entered kindergarten.
“Here, I can see my mom and daughters every day,” Todd said. “That’s a very cool thing to be a part of.”
Information about St. Thomas More is online at stmga.org.
SEND US YOUR STORIES. Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
About the Author
