‘I am here because it is Catholic’
Ann Stevens, middle school science teacher at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School in Birmingham, started her teaching career working for Birmingham City Schools, but she decided to make a change back in 1987. Knowing she wanted a Catholic school education for her sons, Stevens began considering the convenience of teaching where her children went to school.
Ann Stevens, middle school science teacher at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School in Birmingham, started her teaching career working for Birmingham City Schools, but she decided to make a change back in 1987. Knowing she wanted a Catholic school education for her sons, Stevens began considering the convenience of teaching where her children went to school.
She first applied to Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School in Homewood. Around the same time, though, an acquaintance talked to her about a school “down Highway 119” that had been open for just a few short years. She admits with a chuckle that her first thought was, “That sure is a long way away!” She applied anyway, and interviewed with Jo Cazes, then principal. The palpable excitement surrounding the school, thanks to Cazes, was too much to ignore, and Stevens hasn’t looked back since.
Even to this day, she has a standing offer to return to the public school system, but Stevens, without hesitation, chooses Our Lady of the Valley year after year. She is a fixture and a link to the school’s history. With her longevity comes the occasional, “Why haven’t you retired?” While she acknowledges that she could have done so by now, especially considering she has reached the rare milestone of teaching the children of the students she taught in her early days, she never wavers in her response: “I am here because it is Catholic. I get up every morning, and I am glad to go to work. It’s a happy place, and I love the people there.”
As she marks over three and a half decades at Our Lady of the Valley, Stevens shares that she cherishes when a former student “gets out into the real world” and writes a note of appreciation for the part she played in their education. She also sees a future filled with hope and promise, with a dedicated principal in Andy Rothery and a growing group of young parents full of enthusiasm to give back to the school. Paramount in her mind, though, is the gratitude for the freedom to simply live her faith.
“When I first started at Our Lady of the Valley, Sister Patricia [Seward, S.N.D.] was the superintendent,” Stevens remembers. “She would go around to the new teachers and spend quite a bit of time in their rooms, giving us points of interest to help us as teachers. In fact, on my classroom wall by the crucifix is a prayer she gave me for dismissing class, and I still say that prayer with each class every day: ‘Oh my God, I will continue to prepare all my actions for love of You.’”
