Jessica Gross
Tri-County Technical College
"…I knew I needed to take teaching beyond my own family. That’s when I realized I could touch two hearts, or I could touch hundreds."
When I first met Jessica Gross for our Zoom interview, she had just wrapped up another day with her kindergarteners at Blue Ridge Elementary School, followed by a parent conference. In a colorful t-shirt, messy bun, and radiant smile, she gushed with pride, “See my class?!” As she panned the camera around the room, its splashes of color and neat organization – not to mention her exuberant joy – made it clear that any kid would enjoy her class.
Yes – I love it! What makes it feel like home?
I wanted my classroom and my house to be two totally different feelings. My house is very subdued and calming. But here, it’s explosive with color and excitement because that’s what I want my kids to feel when they come to school!
At first, I made it mine because I had been saving materials for years to put in my classroom. And now, my students and I have made it ours because I’ve put up all of their things. Every day these babies are walking into my room, I feel like I’m getting to be a difference maker in their lives!
And this is the fulfillment of how many years of hard work?
Eight! I got married and had children at a young age, and they both had serious medical conditions that needed my attention, so I wasn’t able to attend college full-time. For six years, I kept taking classes – sometimes four a semester, sometimes one. It just depended on what my family needed at the time.
I often wondered, Am I ever gonna finish?! But I was blessed to have instructors who didn’t give up on me. They would call and say, “I haven’t seen you this semester. Are you coming back?” And I’d say, “Yes – I’ve got a lot going on right now. But I’m coming back, I promise!”
That’s the way it was for a lot of the women in my cohort. We were married with kids and jobs and lives of our own, but we just kept trucking and coming back. We were determined to walk across that stage for graduation.
After graduating from Tri-County Technical College, you wanted to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education, so you spent a year at Clemson before learning about an online program through North Greenville University that better accommodated your needs.
Yes. Meredith Dickens, my former instructor and advisor at Tri-County, called me and said, “You really need to take a look at this program. It’s a brand-new articulation agreement between Tri-County and North Greenville University (NGU) with some flexible learning opportunities.” Attending Clemson in-person, full-time, with my family commitments had been exhausting. So the very next day after receiving Meredith’s call, I visited NGU. I laid everything out on the table – my GPA, the credits I’d earned – and said, “Please take me!”
And they did. At first there was a learning curve with the online classes. I’m a big advocate of not putting people on tech all the time, so that was hard to get used to. But I also found so much freedom in online learning. It opened up my world to have more time with my family. My kids could be working on homework, and I could be beside them doing my homework too.
So, yeah… it took me six years to get my 2-year degree at Tri-County, one year at Clemson, and one year at NGU. And I finally graduated in May of 2024.
Wait… what about student teaching? How did that work in an online learning environment?
That was another unique part of NGU’s program. I didn’t do student teaching as part of my undergraduate degree. Instead, after graduation, I was hired as an intern at Blue Ridge Elementary – a process that was very similar to student teaching. I was observed numerous times. I went through the ADEPT 4.0 process. I completed all of the state paperwork and other requirements to get a teaching certificate. The difference was that I did it after graduation.
So I interned for the fall semester, and earned my teaching license in December. And then I just continued as a paid school district employee. I was also able to start my 401K and retirement, so those were huge benefits of doing the internship over student teaching.
Kudos to Tri-County and North Greenville for finding a unique solution to meet future teachers where they are while also supplying a competent education workforce!
But we also know that this effort isn’t just about filling jobs. It’s also about supporting people who feel called to teach. Was there a specific moment when you felt that calling?
It sparked when I had my children. I wanted to homeschool them, and I knew that, to be the best mother that I could be, I also needed to be the best teacher that I could be. I wanted them to be educated, but I also wanted to be educated. And I wanted to do it right.
To go through that process, I conducted classroom observations. Every time, I found myself in awe of those teachers and the love they had for their kids. That’s when I knew I needed to take teaching beyond my own family. That’s when I realized I could touch two hearts, or I could touch hundreds.
Good teachers also often had good teachers of their own growing up. Tell us about yours.
There are two from high school. One was my strings teacher, and the other was the colonel from my JROTC. Both of them showed up for the right reasons every single day. Having them in my life has always been an important little piece of my heart.
Then at Tri-County, Meredith Dickens always rooted for me – always – even when I thought she was being hard on me. She didn’t make any exceptions for me, but she always encouraged me to keep going. In hindsight, encouragement was what I needed more than an exception.
And then there was Jackye Murphy. She was a very influential teacher in the Education Department at Tri-County. Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, she kept teaching! She passed away in 2018, and I placed a handprint on a tree mural in her former classroom as a way to remember her and honor her contributions to the college and to her students. I hope that I am an ounce of what that woman was – to be so strong, and to show up, and to exhibit such selfless love for other people because I am so passionate about what I do.
So yeah… her. Definitely, definitely her.