LOUISVILLE, Ky - “Come with fire and passion everyday.” 

That's the theme of Superintendent Dr. Martin “Marty” Pollio’s speech that kicked off Jefferson County Public Schools’ (JCPS) New Teacher Orientation on Thursday.

The two-day event provides brand new teachers and those new to the JCPS district with training and networking opportunities.

Nearly 300 new teachers registered at the orientation. Among them, was Autumn Turpin. She will start teaching at Price Elementary School on the first day of school, August 14. She hopes to provide her kindergarten students with the patience that she wanted.

“So later in life, I realized how important elementary education is,” Turpin told Spectrum News 1, “I wanted to make kids not feel the way I felt."

Chris Stein is leaving the information technology industry to teach second grade. Stein doesn’t take his new career path lightly.

“We are working with blank canvases, and we shape how these little people become big people, especially in lower socioeconomic areas,” he said.

“When people say kids have changed, I disagree,” Dr. Pollio said during his speech. “Our kids are bringing us many more challenges.”

Pollio cited homelessness, housing insecurity, trauma, abuse, and learning English as a second language as their challenges.

He added, “I only say that to you because you can be the one who makes a difference.”

JCPS will also face its own challenges during the upcoming school year, including another district audit in 2020 by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE). The audit is part of a settlement agreement with KDE that prevented a state takeover of the district due to low-performing schools.

Kentucky’s 2019 Elementary Teacher of the Year, NyRee Clayton-Taylor, also spoke to the new teachers and offered them some advice.

“I would tell new teachers to just breathe and do three things. Those three things are work on relationships. That’s number one. Number two: work on relationships. And number three, work on relationships,” Clayton-Taylor advised. “When I think of my students my first year, God bless their hearts because I didn’t know a thing.”

Clayton-Taylor said relationships are key to developing students and helping with behavior management in the classroom.

After a training session, a few new teachers agreed that it was a previous educator that inspired them to choose this profession.

Jessica Mains said she had the best teacher in second grade: “She had long hair and a motorcycle,” Mains described. “I’m going to be a teacher just like you, minus the motorcycle,” Mains reminisced.

Mains will soon be on the other side of that teacher-student relationship in a few weeks when she’ll teach first grade at Byck Elementary.