Community, connections drive educators to return to Oglethorpe County
There was a knock at the door of longtime educator Brian Lance’s office at Oglethorpe County High School.
Jennifer Yauck, another teacher, poked her head in and smiled.
“Here’s another one,” Lance said. He had been listing coworkers at OCHS that grew up in the school system and came back. “She graduated from here, and she's also a teacher here — and she's also my sister.”
In Oglethorpe County, the lines between work, family and friendship often blur. Many educators choose to come back to the county that raised them, and it isn’t just about convenience.
It’s about connection.
Brian Lance and Jennifer Yauck
The siblings said they’re always surprised when students don’t recognize their resemblance.
“It’s funny how many students will be here for three or four years, and had both of us, and never realized that we were brother and sister,” Yauck said.
Their mother was a teacher at the elementary school for a long time, and Lance said students often don’t make that connection, either.
“Just amazing how many did not realize that,” said Lance, 53. “Then after they learn that, they say, ‘That makes sense!’”
Lance, a Spanish teacher, has worked at OCHS for the duration of his career. His sister had a more meandering path back to her alma mater.
Yauck, 46, worked in Wilkes County for nine years and Oconee County for six before starting her current position.
“When I first started teaching, my uncle was in my department,” Yauck said. “When I went to Oconee, my husband was in the same department that I was. When I came here, it’s my brother. So to me, working with family members is normal.”
Yauck and Lance come from a long line of teachers. Their mother taught at the elementary school, and their father, Guy Lance, coached and taught at the high school.
A generation before, their grandmother was a one-room schoolhouse teacher in Wilkes County.
Despite this legacy, Lance described himself as an “accidental teacher.”
He went to UGA and earned a degree in romance languages with hopes of becoming an interpreter. But when the principal of OCHS called him and asked him to fill a teaching position, he took the opportunity and has since embraced it.
Yauck said “open-mindedness” is important when working in a familiar district, and it’s important not to pigeon-hole students based on their family members.
Lance agreed, but said the “positives outweigh the negatives.”
“When you get someone that’s coming to the school that they graduated from, the intangible there is so much more beneficial than you’re going to get elsewhere,” Lance said. “I think you’re more vested when you come back to what’s home.”
Vicky Matthews and Kelli Kitchen
Lance and Yauck aren’t the only family members working in the district together.
Vicky Matthews, 60, and her daughter Kelli Kitchen, 34, have both dedicated their lives to Oglethorpe County schools.
Matthews’ 43-year career started before she even graduated high school. She was a student bookkeeper and eventually worked her way into accounts payable at the board office. Now, she’s the finance director.
Kitchen said her mother’s job was ever-present in her childhood.
“All I knew growing up was, get out of school and walk down to the board office,” Kitchen said.
Matthews said both of her daughters showed an early interest in education.
“My grandmother lived across the road from us and she would watch both of them, and I just remember her telling me they always played school with her,” Matthews said. “I remember her making the comment, ‘I should be the smartest person around for all the schoolwork I’ve had to do.’”
Now, both Kitchen and her sister have teaching degrees. Kitchen has worked in the Oglethorpe County school system since 2016. She started out in kindergarten and now teaches pre-K.
Matthews said after working in the district for so long, her coworkers are like family.
“You don’t just have a work relationship,” Matthews said. “They’re there for you. You depend on one another.”
Two years ago, Kitchen and her son were in a car accident outside the board office. Matthews wasn’t working that day, but her colleagues immediately stepped in to help.
“Everyone in the board office were up there on the side of the road making sure we were OK,” Kitchen said. “It’s not just the ladies that I work with here; I also have that support system from the board office from (Mom) being there so long.”
Kitchen said her 15-year-old daughter, Allison, also “has her mind set on going into education.”
“She’s in the early childhood education class at the high school, so she’s pretty excited about that,” Kitchen said.
Lynn Webb
The connections in the school system don’t end there.
“I actually taught Kelli and her daughter,” said Lynn Webb, an eighth-grade English teacher at Oglethorpe County Middle School. Webb and Lance, the OCHS teacher, graduated together in 1989.
With 31 years of service in the school system, she’s taught her fair share of the county’s “babies.”
Webb, 54, said she’s wanted to be a teacher since she was 4 years old.
“My kindergarten teacher let me read to our kindergarten class one time when she got called to the office,” Webb said. “That was like, I know this is it. This is power, sitting in that rocking chair.”
She earned three degrees from the University of Georgia — a bachelor’s, a master’s and an education specialist degree — before returning to teach at her alma mater.
“Teaching with the teachers that taught me, to become their peer and to see a whole different side of them, that’s pretty phenomenal,” Webb said. “It means a lot because they gave so much of themselves to me, and I feel like, them being such great mentors, it’s so easy for me to give to my babies, too.”
Monique Shelnutt
Webb said she’s been inspired by teaching alongside her former mentors. Third-grade teacher Monique Shelnutt, 25, said that aspect of the job can be difficult to wrap her head around.
“Some of my teachers that taught me are still here,” Shelnutt said. “Now, being back to teach with them, it's kind of hard. To me, they're still my kindergarten teacher, so I have a different respect for them.”
Shelnutt graduated from UGA in 2022, but started a long-term substitute teaching position at Oglethorpe County Elementary School before her semester ended. That led to her current position.
She said she loves third grade because it’s the year most students “start to develop their personalities.” Outside the classroom, Shelnutt builds bonds with older students as a softball coach for the middle school and the recreation department.
“I know that some of these families, I know them outside of school,” Shelnutt said. “I’ve always loved the small-town community.”