Beyond the Classroom: Sublimity’s Jennifer Lawson is a Champion for Students
“Every kid deserves to have somebody rooting for them.”
For nearly two decades, Jennifer Lawson has been molding young minds at Sublimity Elementary School, going above and beyond to be a champion in her students’ lives.
Jennifer, born and raised in Laurel County, is married to Bart Lawson. The couple has three children, Luke, Cam and Skye.
At an early age, Jennifer was one of those students asking for extra worksheets so she could play school at home. Jennifer admitted teaching wasn’t her first choice when choosing a major in college, although after one semester of nursing school, she realized her true passion.
Jennifer took her first teaching job in 2006 as an art teacher who went back and forth between Sublimity and Johnson elementary schools.
“That was the only thing open, so I took it,” she said. “I was just eager to be somewhere, anywhere.”
By her second year of teaching, Jennifer was offered a first-grade job at Sublimity just a few weeks after the start of the school year. Since then, Jennifer has found herself teaching second grade and fourth and fifth grades, all at Sublimity. Jennifer is now entering her 19th year as an educator where she teaches reading to fourth and fifth grade students.
Last school year, Sublimity Elementary School was named the number one elementary school in the state of Kentucky based on results from the 2023 Kentucky Summative Assessment, a statewide assessment that measures a student’s learning in different subjects.
“When we told the kids that news last year, to see how proud they were of themselves—it was one of the best days in my whole teaching career, just to see those kids be so proud of themselves and to accomplish something nobody has ever done here before,” Jennifer said.
Jennifer said it takes everyone in the building, from teachers to administrators to custodians to teacher’s aides, to make something like that happen. And that is why, Jennifer said, there is just something special about being a Sublimity Eagle.
“Every teacher thinks their school is the best and I’m no different, to me our school sticks out as a special place for a lot of different reasons,” Jennifer said. “Here, our motto has always been ‘every student, every day.’ Don’t do what’s easy because 99 percent of the time, what you’re supposed to do is the hardest thing of all to do. Here at Sublimity, students have always been the number one focus.
“Sublimity is a small school, which is one of the things I love about it—a small community, a close-knit community. So, when you have a group of educators in the building who all have that same common goal, I hate to be cliché and say magic happens but truly when you can all work together, all be on the same page, something special happens.
We push kids really hard here at Sublimity, in every grade level. We are the number one school in the state for a reason, because we aren’t easy. If we didn’t give our kids challenges, they wouldn’t grow.”
To keep her students interested and excited about learning, Jennifer finds ways to make her classroom more inviting, she integrates little games into her lessons and encourages her students to engage in group discussions. The school also hosts things like a masquerade ball for the students, pep rallies, team days and other activities.
“We do little things like that all throughout the year, just little extras to give them something to look forward to,” Jennifer said. “All of us work together to do these things. We come to our job, and we get paid—well this is the students’ ‘job,’ so they should get rewarded or get ‘paid.’”
Jennifer’s former principal, Kristina Thomas, who was named the Director of Accountability and Elementary Education for the district last year, is always encouraging teachers to be champions for their students. Kristina really challenged Jennifer to find new and exciting ways to keep students engaged, which has become an integral part of Jennifer’s day-to-day teaching.
“She has been such a great mentor to me,” Jennifer said of Kristina. “She has always said ‘you can say the perfect things, you can have the perfect curriculum but if your kids aren’t engaged, then they are learning zero percent.’ Engagement is something I’ve always considered a strength but moving to intermediate grades, I found that to be a bigger challenge. She challenged me to not only find new ways to engage students but to also analyze that data that goes hand in hand with that. Analyzing that data to see how each student is progressing is a crucial aspect.”
Jennifer has seen a lot of changes to the education system in the time she has been teaching, including advancements in technology and new teaching curriculums. But perhaps the biggest change of all has been teaching during the COVID shutdown, as classes were all moved online and teachers were still expected to find a way to reach their students through a screen.
“It was such a time of uncertainty and not knowing ‘is this the new norm forever?’,” she said. “Those COVID kids, I think they will have a deeper appreciation for learning that no other kids will, those that remember being home and remember not being able to leave their house.
“Teachers who have been here before, after and during COVID, we just get it. We see things and understand things no one else will. It gives us teachers who have been through it a deeper appreciation.”
Perhaps one of the hardest parts of being an educator is wishing they could do more for their students beyond just teaching them in the classroom.“I get paid to come in and teach standards, that’s what I get paid to do but that’s only about 50 percent of what I do,” Jennifer said. “To be able to come in and love them and be that person that so many of them don’t have and be able to help them in so many ways, outside of reading is so special. To be the person they talk about their problems to, that’s one thing in fourth and fifth grade that I was not prepared for—they deal with so much that when I was a kid was nonexistent. And that’s one of the hardest parts of this job. I always knew that kids had bad home lives, that’s always been there but just seeing the pressures they deal with daily, it’s just so much.”
Because of that, Jennifer said that teachers often find themselves up late at night worrying about the student who seemed extra quiet in class that day or picking up a pair of shoes for the student whose shoes are worn out.
Jennifer’s daughter, Skye, was one of those students who Jennifer was constantly worrying about.
Skye had been in the foster care system since she was just two years old and was a student of Jennifer’s when Skye was in second grade, a student who Jennifer saw so much potential in despite her struggles in her home life that in turn caused behavioral issues at school.
“I would go home to my husband talking about her and I’d be like ‘there’s this little girl and if she just had anybody to help her—’ she was so smart, so pretty but she was a terror, she was not a good kid at school, but I knew she had so much potential.”
In third grade, Skye’s foster mom passed away and Jennifer offered to help her foster dad out if he needed it. Less than two weeks later, Jennifer was asked if she would like to take Skye in and she immediately said “yes.”
“I went home and I said ‘Bart, remember that girl, Skye? Well, she’s going to come home with us tomorrow.’ And he just said ‘OK’ because he just knew,” she said. “When I say that was a God thing, truly. It just all happened really fast. It was just a whirlwind.”
Three years later, in February of 2020, Skye was officially adopted into the Lawson family.
“The day we told her she was going to be living with us, she was a different child,” Jennifer said. “Her walls finally came down; she was able to just be Skye. She just completed our family.
“There are more teachers than I think people realize that would like to take students home with them and some who have, and I know a few who have tried and it just didn’t work out. Educators see those students who just need somebody and it’s something that I know we all think about a lot.”This year, Jennifer has a rare opportunity to teach her former students again, as she teaches reading to both fourth and fifth grade students, something that has her really excited for the school year.
“Being able to get to know students on a deeper level in the second year of teaching them and being able to make such stronger relationships and seeing them be leaders for fourth graders who may be struggling, that is something that I didn’t know was going to happen but now I’m really looking forward to it.”
More than anything, Jennifer hopes that students who go through her classroom leave with the knowledge that just because something seems difficult, doesn’t mean it is impossible, and that showing a little kindness goes a long way.
“All our teachers in this building, we teach kindness with such a priority because we know this world is not kind,” she said. “But I hope that they remember that kindness can take you a lot farther than anything else. It’s a really hard thing to teach because a lot of kids don’t see kindness at home and when they don’t see kindness at home, it’s a chain reaction, they don’t show kindness to others. And I hope they know how much I love them and how much all their teachers love them.”
Jennifer said she and her coworkers are all thankful for the support from the rest of the school staff, the school administration and the support of the parents and community.
“All teachers, we love what we do, and we could not do this job without the support of our community—it makes a huge difference,” she said. “It really takes everyone in the building to make this such a special place.”
