EH Teacher of the Year Crilley embraces unique challenges
Teaching her kindergarten students to read and write their own books has been one of the most satisfying parts of Chestnut Ridge teacher Lindsey Crilley's job.
When 2024 East Holmes Schools Teacher of the Year Lindsey Crilley began her teaching career, she eventually worked toward her degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
That move proved to be beneficial when the Strasburg High and Malone University graduate found herself teaching among the first-grade Amish students at Charm Elementary for five years before settling in at Chestnut Ridge School the past eight years.
The kindergarten teacher quickly became enchanted with working with her young students, who are all Amish.
“I love the fact that I’m able to have an impact and develop a love and appreciation for school and learning in these young children,” Crilley said. “I’ve had this lifelong joy of learning and want to instill that in my students. So many kids don’t think learning and school can be fun. I want them to realize that isn’t the case.”
That passion for teaching children developed in Crilley from a young age. She had a sister three years younger, and she said she was always playing school as the teacher for her sibling.
She said she explored other options, but teaching never left her heart.
“I feel it is a calling,” Crilley said. “I had high school teachers discourage me in high school because there were no teaching jobs available at that time. Nobody was retiring around the financial crash in 2008,” Crilley said.
She applied all over the area at around 25 area school districts.
Oddly enough, East Holmes wasn’t one of those 25.
“I knew nothing about the district,” she said of East Holmes.
She said she was working at a church camp when Malone University contacted her and said East Holmes was looking for recommendations for a position.
She quickly became more familiar with the district, sent in her resume and soon she was part of the EH Schools system.
“I really feel like it was God working things out,” Crilley said. “I also had a grant that I needed to teach in a high-needs field for four years, and Charm qualified and fulfilled that, which was $8,000 in loans I didn’t have to pay back.”
Crilley said kindergarten suits her to a tee because these are children coming into school with a clean slate. She said there is a weighty responsibility to it, knowing these kids take every single thing to heart.
She said she has always incorporated play with learning, with an emphasis on building language and social skills.
Her work in TESOL has come in quite handy, and while many of her young students speak both Pennsylvania Dutch and English, there are challenges.
However, she has embraced that challenge, just as she has taking students who are lucky to know the alphabet and teaching them to read and write by year’s end.
“Those challenges are why I went back and got my TESOL endorsement,” Crilley said. “It’s a unique challenge, but I’ve come to enjoy it.”
She said teaching reading and writing basics to students is her favorite part of teaching, and watching them develop skills that allow them to write their own stories is fulfilling.
“You see so much growth at this age,” Crilley said. “I think getting them writing and getting their own ideas in writing is intensive and intentional.”
In promoting reading and writing to her students, Crilley said she has brought in second-grade and third-grade students and had her kids read their own written stories or other books to them.
“There’s never a dull moment,” Crilley said.
Crilley joked about leaving a path of destruction in her wake as far as schools go.
She attended elementary school at Beach City Elementary in the Fairless School District, where the school was eventually razed. She attended middle and high school in the Strasburg School District, where both of those buildings were torn down to make room for a new school. She taught at Charm Elementary, which was torn down several years ago.
“You can see where this is going,” she said. “I told my co-workers when I moved to Chestnut Ridge that maybe they don’t want me here. But then again, if they want a new school building, maybe they do, because I’m leaving this path of destruction.”
School buildings aside, the district has thought enough about the work Crilley is doing that they bestowed this honor upon her.
Crilley is currently enrolled in online classes at Mt. Union University, where she is working toward her master’s degree in education.