ABOUT SHAWNA S.

Shawna S. is a woman of faith who is totally in Love with Jesus and falls more and more in love with Him daily!

She is an educator, author, and mentor with more than 31 years of experience working across K–12 classrooms. Throughout her career, she has worked with students in diverse learning environments, including classrooms serving students with high behavioral needs, where structure, consistency, and emotional leadership are essential.

Over the years, Shawna developed a classroom approach centered on building strong learning communities where students feel respected, supported, and accountable for their growth. Rather than focusing solely on behavior control, her work emphasizes the importance of classroom culture, clear routines, and systems that encourage responsibility and self-regulation.

This philosophy eventually grew into what she now calls the Encouraging Mondays Emotional Regulation & Classroom Economy Framework™, a structured approach designed to help educators build stable learning environments where both students and teachers can thrive.

In addition to her work in education, Shawna is the founder of Encouraging Mondays, a platform dedicated to sharing encouragement, faith-centered reflections, and practical wisdom for everyday life. Through weekly messages, devotionals, and educational writing, she seeks to support individuals and families who are navigating both personal and professional challenges.

Shawna is also the author of educational and devotional works that reflect her passion for mentorship, character development, and lifelong learning. Her writing combines practical experience with thoughtful reflection, offering guidance to educators, families, and young people seeking direction and encouragement.

Whether through writing, mentoring, or educational leadership, Shawna’s work is grounded in a simple belief: when environments are built with intention, clarity, and care, people grow.

😊🏫 My Educational Testimony

💛 More Than a Career—It Was My Calling

When I first entered education, I never imagined that I would spend 24 years of my

31-year teaching career working with high school students.

In fact, I thought I would be working with younger children.

My teaching certification was in special education, specifically working with students with

multiple disabilities. But when I began my first year of teaching, the school district did not

have an opening that matched my certification.

What they did have was a classroom that nobody seemed to want.

It was an elementary classroom for children with severe behavioral challenges.

The students ranged from approximately five to eight years old—kindergarten

through third grade—all together in one classroom.

The district had difficulty keeping a teacher in that room.

And somehow, as a brand-new first-year teacher, that’s where I was placed.

I remember thinking, How do you take a first-year teacher and put her in a classroom like this?

I was told it would only be temporary. They needed me to stay for a couple of months while

they searched for someone whose credentials were a better fit for the position.

That teacher never came.

And I stayed for the entire school year.

The Children Behind the Behavior

It did not take long for me to understand that I wasn’t simply teaching children who

had been given a behavioral label.

I was teaching children with stories.

Some of those stories were heartbreaking.

I encountered very young children who had already experienced things no child should

have to endure. I saw evidence of serious abuse, including burns and other injuries. Some

of these children were carrying pain into the classroom that they did not yet have the maturity

or language to explain.

Their behavior was communicating something.

That experience began shaping the way I would look at students for the rest of my career.

I learned to look beyond the behavior and see the child.

One little boy came into my classroom at about six years old, strutted across the room,

looked at me, and used the word “strawberry” to describe me in a way that made the

other children react immediately.

I had no idea what he meant.

I remember going to find out later, What in the world does “strawberry” mean? He’s six years old!

But that little boy was more than the language he had picked up somewhere.

Eventually, that same child participated in choir.

That’s what I wanted for those children—to give them opportunities to become more

than the behaviors, circumstances, and labels that had followed them into my classroom.

Some students who had been attending school for only part of the day were able to return

to fuller participation. Relationships developed. Progress happened.

And by the end of that supposedly temporary assignment, something else had happened:

I didn’t want to abandon those children either.

When Temporary Became Personal

The parents wanted me to return the following school year.

Throughout the summer, some of them called me asking whether I had heard

anything about where I would be assigned.

I hadn’t.

And because I hadn’t been told otherwise, I began assuming I was probably going back to the same classroom.

After all, I already knew the children. The parents wanted me there. I was willing to stay. Why move me?

Then, right before the new school year began, I was told I was being assigned to another elementary school.

Okay.

Not what I expected, but another elementary school made sense to me.

Then I got there.

Two teachers had been assigned to the same position.

Now what?

That’s when they decided to send me across town—to a high school.

A high school?!

I had already adjusted to the first classroom nobody could keep staffed. Then I had spent the

summer not knowing where I was going. Then I was sent to another elementary school. Now

there were two teachers assigned to one position, and suddenly they were sending me to a high school.

I remember thinking, essentially:

Y’all are doing too much.

I had pictured myself teaching younger children.

I had grown attached to my first students.

Their parents wanted me back.

And now I was being sent across town to work with teenagers.

I couldn’t see it then.

But God could.

The Assignment I Didn’t Know Was Mine

That unexpected reassignment became the beginning of 24 years of my 31-year

teaching career at the high school level.

The population I had not originally pictured myself teaching became the population

God had prepared my heart to serve.

And I loved those teenagers.

I didn’t look at teaching as simply somewhere I went to collect a paycheck.

I looked at it as my assignment.

That distinction mattered when teaching became difficult.

It mattered when students arrived carrying problems that had nothing to do with

the lesson I had planned for that day.

It mattered when families needed someone they could depend upon.

It mattered when circumstances would have made it much easier to say, I’m not going in today.

I lived approximately 45 minutes from the school. I lived in the suburbs and drove

across town to teach in an inner-city school district.

People sometimes wondered why I would make that drive every day, passing

other schools along the way.

But I knew where I was supposed to be.

So I worshiped on the drive there.

And I worshiped on the drive home.

Those 45 minutes became part of my time with God.

Then there were the winters.

I lived in the snow belt, and some mornings that 45-minute commute could turn

into an hour and a half.

My solution wasn’t to continually arrive late.

I left earlier.

There were mornings when the roads had barely been plowed. There were teachers who

lived only minutes away from the school who sometimes couldn’t make it in.

But I did everything I could to get there.

It wasn’t because I believed substitute teachers weren’t valuable. I have known wonderful

substitute teachers, including experienced and retired educators.

It was because my students were expecting me.

Their parents were expecting me.

If someone was depending upon me, I wanted to show up.

There were years when I didn’t miss a single day.

Not because I was trying to win an attendance award.

I wanted my kids to know their teacher would be there.

Sometimes They Came Back

Years after that first elementary classroom, something remarkable happened.

Some of those little children eventually showed up again—this time at the high school.

And something I observed mattered tremendously to me:

They were not necessarily still in behavioral classrooms.

That reinforced something I had come to believe strongly as an educator:

A child’s current placement should not automatically become that child’s permanent destination.

A five-year-old experiencing serious behavioral challenges does not have to become a

teenager permanently defined by those same challenges.

With appropriate intervention, instruction, structure, support, expectations, relationships,

and opportunities to grow, children can make progress.

I watched some of it happen.

That’s one reason I became so passionate about refusing to reduce young people to labels.

I knew some of their stories.

I had seen where some of them started.

And then I had the privilege of seeing where some of them went.

Another Classroom, Another Opportunity

My educational journey even took me into a college classroom for one summer.

It was the only time I taught at the college level.

I taught algebra to incoming students who would be the first generation in their families to attend college.

They weren’t my special education students. They came from different high schools and different backgrounds.

But before some of those math lessons began, we talked.

We talked about life.

We talked about where they were going.

We talked about what was ahead of them.

I don’t know where all of those young people are today.

But I know that summer was not wasted.

God gave me another classroom and another group of young people to pour into for a season.

And I did.

The Classroom Ended. The Calling Didn’t.

Eventually, after 31 years, I retired from teaching.

But I did not retire from caring about children, teenagers, families, education,

encouragement, or helping people grow.

The career ended. The calling didn’t.

Today, that same heart shows up throughout Encouraging Mondays.

It’s there when I tell adults:

Listen to our teenagers.

Learn from them.

Cherish them.

Pray for them and pray with them.

It’s there in Teen Fridays, where teenagers receive messages created

specifically with them in mind.

It’s there in the Children’s Corner, where younger children are reminded that

they are loved, valued, seen, and important to God.

It’s there when I insist that children need environments where they can feel safe

enough to communicate, learn, make mistakes, grow, and be heard.

It’s there in my educational resources and in the work that continues beyond the walls of a classroom.

And it’s there whenever I remind someone that adults don’t only have something to teach young people.

We can learn from them too.

I learned from teenagers throughout those 24 years.

I still learn from young people today.

More Than a Career

When I look back now, I can see a thread that I couldn’t see while I was standing at the beginning of it.

I thought I was going to teach one population.

God sent me somewhere else.

I thought my first assignment was temporary.

God used it to begin shaping how I would see children for the rest of my career.

I thought I was headed to another elementary classroom.

An unexpected administrative mix-up sent me across town to a high school.

And that high school became home for 24 years.

What looked like reassignment was actually direction.

What looked like inconvenience became preparation.

What looked like a career became an assignment.

And what began inside classrooms continues today in a different form.

So when someone sees Teen Fridays and wonders why teenagers matter so much to me,

the answer did not begin with Encouraging Mondays.

When someone hears me say that children need to be seen, heard, valued, understood,

taught, encouraged, and loved, those convictions weren’t created for a website.

And when I say that I believe God can use our experiences long after a particular season

has ended, I know because I am living it.

The classroom may have been where the assignment began.

Encouraging Mondays is one of the places where that assignment continues.

Education was more than my career.

It was—and remains—a part of my calling.

✨Our Faith Focus

This platform is grounded in Isaiah 26:3:

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.”

We believe that true growth—spiritual, personal, and academic—flows from a steadfast heart anchored in God’s Word. Every reflection, video, and resource you’ll find here points back to Him.

🌿STAY CONNECTED WITH ENCOURAGING MONDAYS

Encouraging Mondays is more than a website — it’s a growing community of faith, reflection, and peaceful transformation. If God has been speaking to your heart through these messages, I’d love for you to stay connected throughout the week. Each platform gives you a unique way to receive encouragement, grow spiritually, and walk in God’s perfect peace.

LinkedIn — Weekly Encouragement & Reflections

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawna-stately-853771390

YouTube — Encouraging Mondays Video Messages

http://www.youtube.com/@EncouragingMondays

Podcast Devotionals With Shawna S. — Listen on the Go

https://open.spotify.com/show/3pT2RcBNOKpa8A2vuYIJ4W

Encouraging Mondays Store — Faith-Based, Educational, and Personal Growth Resources

https://www.encouragingmondays.com/store

Wherever you choose to connect, may these messages speak life to your spirit and peace to your heart.

I’m praying for you always — and I’m grateful you’re here!