At the start of the 2025-2026 school year two women will be expanding their already extensive connection to the schools in which they’ll now be running their own classrooms.

Jamie Jacobsen, Westside Elementary School’s new fifth grade teacher, graduated from Powell High School, watched most of her kids graduate from the district (there’s one left to walk the stage) and has worked as a substitute teacher and para for the last 11 years. Beth Noble, also a Powell High grad who spent the last four years teaching in North Dakota and Powell Christian School, is now returning to the district where she both had a high school work experience and carried out her practicum. 

Eleven years in the making

Jacobsen’s original plan in college was to go into education. She was a student aide to Tracey Wichman (who retired last year after 34 years of teaching) and, “she’s the one who really gave me that spark and desire to want to work with kids,” Jacobsen said. She also cited Dori Trustem as an influence. Trustem retired in 2023 after four decades of working in education.

But after her first year in college “she felt guided to go in a different direction,” Jacobsen said.

She instead completed a degree in business administration, which worked great when her children were younger. The field she went into was something she could do while working from home or in the evenings, and she could take her children to work with her if needed. But when her youngest entered kindergarten she was drawn back into education as a substitute teacher and a para.

As Jacobsen gears up to enter a classroom as a teacher it’s a privilege she said.

“I feel it a privilege to be able to now be employed in this school district,” Jacobsen said. “All of my siblings and I graduated from here, my parents graduated from here, and I do feel like it’s a privilege, it’s a blessing, because we have an incredible school district that puts kids first.”  

Her transition into teaching has been a long time coming, Jacobsen said, Westside’s former principal Angie Woyak also encouraged her to think about earning a teaching degree.

“At the time, I just loved being a para, which then allowed me to just be mom, because being a mom’s been my first priority,” Jacobsen said, adding, “Just a few years ago when Megan, my third [child] graduated, that’s kind of when I felt like, OK, maybe it’s time.”

Jacobsen worked on earning a “post bacc degree” which means she added credits on top of her existing degree as a way to transition to teaching. She could add credits to her bachelor’s or go for a master’s. She chose the latter, completing her education in 21 months allowing her to apply if a teaching position ever opened up. And while she would be fine with teaching another grade, fifth grade classrooms are where she’s worked for the past nine years.

“I’ve worked in fifth grade for the last nine years. I’ve done several long term sub positions in fifth grade, and I love this age of kids. They’re independent, but they’re still, like young and excited, and it’s just my favorite age,” Jacobsen said, adding, “I would teach any because I love watching kids learn … most importantly, I want them to know they have a cheerleader in their corner, somebody who believes in them, sees all their potential.”

Jacobsen’s classroom theme is “we can climb mountains,” whatever her students want to do they can accomplish it in their own way, she said.

“I want each of the kids to be able to discover their own learning style, but believe in themselves,” Jacobsen added. “I want to be able to help them understand that they can do anything.”

Different but similar

Across town at Southside, Beth Noble is also preparing for a role that’s been a long time coming. The Powell graduate had been wanting to return to the area and while she would be happy in any PCSD1 school she’s thrilled being at Southside where she was a student, carried out a work experience in high school and completed her student teaching in one of Southside’s third grade classrooms.

“That made me know, if I could work here, this would probably be where I would want to work,” Noble said, “Because I know people, I have established relationships with a lot of the teachers and staff that work here already.” 

She added that the staff are friendly and seem to enjoy being together. 

In addition to her previous experience at Southside, Noble’s mom has also been a longtime teacher at the school and a mentor to her daughter.

“She’s the one who’s made me want to teach, just watching her for the past 30 years be a teacher,” Noble said. 

She has four years of experience under her belt; she most recently taught science to a wide range of grades at Powell Christian School but prefers younger grades, she said — she has an endorsement in childhood education and taught first grade while in North Dakota. She had also worked as a Title I aide following her work experience.

“I’ve always thought since then, that would be a job that I would really love to do,” she said. It’s a position she hoped would come around eventually but she did not expect it to happen so quickly, and at Southside.

In the Title I position there’s more opportunity to help readers, and teaching reading is one of Noble’s main passions in education.

Noble’s approach to teaching students reading is finding books that interest them, and teaching them to read those books and learn more about what they love in the world.

“That’s why I liked first grade a lot because that’s really where they’re learning to actually put the words together, like string them together on a page, and that’s kind of like my favorite thing.”