In 2002, I married Dennis Wiegmann who is Principal of Queen of Angels, Fort Wayne. We have two daughters. Ana is a sophomore at Bishop Luers High School and Aubrey is in 8th Grade at Huntington Catholic.  We have not always been in the Catholic School setting.  Prior to 2017, Denny taught 5th Grade in the Huntington County Community School Corporation.  Our daughters attended public school.  I worked for Bowen Center for 10 years in several capacities.  After much prayer and my career path changing, we slowly integrated our Catholic Faith into our work and school.

My journey to teaching had a long and winding road.  I graduated in 2002 from Indiana University - Fort Wayne, B.S. Elementary Education.  At the time of my graduation, teaching positions were hard to come by.  One teaching position that I applied for had 200 applicants! Therefore, I changed career paths to get Denny through his undergrad by working at Waterfield Mortgage as a loan officer and internal title company. Then I was a substitute teacher for several years and taught one year as a special education teacher with a focus in Autism & Sensory Processing Disorder.

After budget cuts at the state level, I worked for a total of 10 years at Bowen Center in Community Mental Health with my primary focus on youth and families. What I learned over this time still rings true today that our mental health affects our overall health.  With my training in Trauma Informed Care, training in child and adolescent behavior disorders, The Wraparound Model through the University of Maryland School of Social Work, I was not only trained to work with children and families who were experiencing difficulties in their lives, but I worked alongside them to help put their lives back together.  It was a difficult job, but I loved it!  Additionally, I was in management at Wabash Bowen Center for three years and was the manager for System of Care & Wraparound Services for five counties; Huntington, Kosciusko, Marshall, Wabash, and Whitley for two years.

In 2017, God called me to another career change that eventually put me on the road back to teaching.  I am the Youth Minister of the Catholic Youth Ministry in Huntington for our youth in grades 5-12.  With COVID, we have been on hold, but I hope to help get this back on track soon with the help of our parishioners.

In 2019, I was hired at St. Rose of Lima Catholic School as the 5th/6th Grade Teacher. Fr. Mike Lobo was assigned to St. Rose at almost the same time I was hired.  Talk about God’s Divine Providence as Fr. Mike was previously the associate pastor at my home parish in Huntington, St. Peter and Paul the previous two year. Then I have been blessed with teaching 1st Grade this year. While this has been a big jump in teaching, it has taught me patience and that they are just learning about the world.

Classroom Links

ClassDojo
Lexile Level Books
MobyMax
Epic! Reading - class code: hxp8202

Over the year We Learn About

Other areas of focus for our class is becoming readers and writers as this age is full of creativity.

Mastering addition and subtraction facts from 1-20 as well as learning how to count up through 1000! We are also learning how to tell time on a traditional clock, understanding place value, 2D and 3D Shapes, and counting money. In Science, we study about all the living things around us, plants and animals. We study weather patterns and seasons, too.  In Social Studies, we learn about our community of Monroeville and how each person has a job to help run our town, even first graders! We have been working on map skills, how to read a simple map, and Cardinal Directions (North, South, East, West). I find throughout the planning process each week that we learn some of the same concepts through multiple subjects.

Faith in the Classroom

As I weave our Catholic faith in our class day, we have learned how to be the face of Christ no matter who we meet. We learn about the major feast days as well as the lives of some saints.

Our Classroom Saint is Mother Teresa of Calcutta! If you are over the age of 30, then there is no doubt that you saw her at work.  My prayer is that by watching news footage, talking about her life, and watching a movie based on her life and vocation that our class will model their lives after her.  We also have time to share our prayer intentions at noon each day.  This has been very fruitful as many prayers have been answered; the sick have been healed, arguments in their lives have been resolved, and having comfort of prayer through sharing life’s difficult times has been wonderful, even for 1st graders. Then we pray the Angelus, which dates back to the 1200’s as a way to pray three Hail Mary’s in a row.  Farmers would stop their work at noon to pray each day. The remarkable thing is that they have almost memorized this prayer and understand the meaning of the prayer.