In the living room, two-year-old Brittany Kreifels rounds the corner wearing shoes ten times too big.

“Plie!” Kreifel screams. A simple ballet movement.

“Guess it’s time to get some of your own dance shoes,” Jane Ditch, Kreifel’s mom, who is a dance teacher, responds.

Ditch watched her daughter fall in love with her passion, and the tradition of dance was passed down from mother to daughter.

“My mom danced, and I danced, so it’s in the family,” said Ditch. “It was just so fun to watch her in the very beginning stages: putting on her leotard and tights, fixing her hair, and sending her into class. All the things that come along with it were truly special.”

Dancing followed Kreifels from early childhood to college. It was a constant in her life and a reliable friend, allowing her to let all other worries go as she freely engaged in all styles of dance: tap, ballet, jazz and lyrical.

“Everything else could be crazy, hectic and busy, but when I went to dance class, I could just focus in and dance,” Kreifels said. “It made me able to put everything else aside and was a great stress relief.”

Friendships formed in the dance class are valued outside of it. Long hours and days spent with one’s teammates lead to easy connections and bonds; friendships are inevitable.

“We would spend time together during the week and on weekends,” Lindsay Plato, a long-time friend of Kreifles, said. “After dancing, we would have sleepovers, and then we followed each other into college.”

A lasting impression was made on Kreifel: a reliable support system that she carries with her even today.

“The friendships that it gave me really formed who I am,” Kreifels said. “I still talk to quite a few of those people today. When you spend that much time, and you dedicate that much energy to something, it really helps you build really great relationships.”

Years of dancing instill more than just how to plie; advancing within the industry requires the skill of balance, both literally and figuratively.

“Dance gave me a really good work ethic and time management,” said Kreifels. “If you are dancing as much as I danced, you have to learn how to fit everything in quickly. I also think that it taught me a lot about relationships and how to collaborate.”

Challenges are a natural part of any sport, with dance demanding equal parts physical exertion and persistence. Dancers must be able to move on from past criticisms.

“I think it’s hard to understand the rejection,” said Kreifels. “Especially because it’s not always based on skill. It’s sometimes based on a particular hole that the team needs to fill, and just learning how to rebound from that.”

For Kreifels, dance is something that has always been in her life: a steadfast friend who has evolved to fit into her life through every stage of life, her daughters carrying the torch.

“I have three daughters who all dance, and I love watching them,” said Kreifels. “I love witnessing their journey with dance and watching them grow. I also just started coaching this year for the JV team here at North, so I get to share my experiences and learn from the girls as well.”

Many teens are content working a minimum wage job in retail or fast food. Senior Avee Patel decided to take a different path, combining his interest in business and entrepreneurship with his desire for self-employment.

“I came up with business entrepreneurship through the CAPS program,” Patel said. “It all started as a project where we had $10 and our goal was to turn it into $100. We saw that the market for [interior detailing] around here, the St. Charles area was very needed.”

Him and his co-founder, Sukhman Singh, quickly realized that they couldn’t do it on their own. After adding marketing and sales managers from other schools, the group was fully formed. Diamond Shine Detailing provided an opportunity for each of them to gain experience in their desired career path. However, between school, working on his business, his job at Fresh Thyme where he was recently promoted as a manager and his religion, it was difficult for Patel to balance his time.

“It’s quite the challenge, and you definitely have to have a calendar,” Patel said. “Especially if my school falls behind, that’s the thing I want to prioritize most. After school, I am also very involved at my religious Hindu temple, and so that’s second. So I just form all my values, and what I prioritize.”

Having his priorities in line gives Patel time to maintain relationships with friends and family.

“[Avee] detailed my car, and he did it for really cheap because I’m his friend,” senior Landon Stirrett said. “It was really nice of him to do it and he did a good job. He’s a great friend, he makes time to hang out with his friends and family.”

Even though the company is still new, the team is already thinking of future plans including detailing the interior of a police car or reaching out to a local fire station in hopes of gaining new customers.

“At the end of the day, we’re doing this not for the money, but for the experience as it provides great entrepreneurial skills such as communicating, marketing, branding yourself, learning how to promote, learning effective ways to negotiate, learning how to keep clients happy customer service and keep these clients coming back,” Patel said.

I wanted to be able to help students enjoy being in school and learning. And I just love the subject of science, so that’s why I chose to pass along that science knowledge.”

It’s 2006. Starting work as a lunch lady at FHN is now 72-year-old Patricia Ann Meers, or Pat for short. Pat skipped college, growing up a housewife and helping run a family owned grocery store before working for a few years at FHN. She then worked at Ashley Furniture up until 2019, when she started to miss cooking and seeing the kids from her prior work. She began working as a lunch lady at different schools like Independence Elementary and Bryan Middle before eventually coming back to FHN.

“I love the high schoolers here, they’re all nice and polite and really good kids,” Meers said.

Meers’ job consists of baking tater tots, making pizzas, cashiering and taking care of the condiments table every day.

“[Working with Pat] is a ball of joy, in all honesty it really is,” FHN head cook Kari Cruzen said. “If she’s not here, the morale and the mood around the kitchen is kind of sober and very quiet. She’s the life of the party. She would give you the shirt off of her back if you had nothing.”

As a kid, Meers never thought she would work a job like this. She had always dreamed of joining the Navy and going to Africa. Though Meers never got to join the Navy, she did end up going to Botswana Africa in 2022, going on a seventeen day camping trip and jumping from hotel to hotel, seeing all of the wildlife with her family.

“Growing up, my goal in my senior memory book was to join the Navy and go to Africa,” Meers said. “I never joined the Navy, but I went to Africa three years ago and totally enjoyed it.”

Nursing is often thought of as medical emergencies in hospitals and overnight shifts. But for Amy Kelly, her passion has landed her a meaningful position at FHN as a school nurse. Kelly has been working at FHN since May 2021. She went to Purdue University and earned her degree in management and leadership, then went on to get her first job in banking after graduating.

“My work-life balance has always been a goal,” Kelly said. “I loved my job in banking–it was interesting, it was challenging, people looked up to me and respected my opinions, and I enjoyed what I did. But, it was requiring so much more work than life… I just saw that I had this opportunity to enter nursing and be able to continue that better work-life balance.”

Kelly’s older sister, Michelle Claravall, described her sister as being very calm and collected even in intense situations, which she believed made her a good fit for a nursing role. She went back to school as an adult and graduated in 2016. She has worked as a nurse at multiple schools since then.

“She did an amazing job in her role in banking, and I think what she was missing was just the human interaction aspect that I know she gets from her nursing role,” Claravall said. “And I also think my nephew’s health played into it. I mentioned that she’s nine years younger, and although we had kids around the same time, her kids struggled with asthma and certain illnesses, and at their young ages, a lot of toddlers do. So, I think she always wanted to learn more about the sciences, and I really think maybe that’s what drove her to want to pursue nursing as a second career.”

Kelly’s work-life balance did have a large part in her ultimate decision to study nursing, but her genuine desire to care for others was also very important to her. During her time as a school nurse, she has worked to achieve her goal of helping others and she hopes she has made a lasting impact on many students.

“I hope people see just the happiness and joy that they added to my life and that I added to their life and pick out moments where we were laughing and happy together,” Kelly said.

Many people consider their college years to be the “best years of their lives.” What a lot of people don’t recognize is the weight of the decisions they make during those years. For FHN counselor Ann Herman, a key decision she made during her sophomore year of college changed the trajectory of her entire life.

“I started out as a biology major in college, I thought I wanted to go into the medical field,” Herman said. “I took a psychology class and fell in love with it. Immediately, at that point, I changed my major from biology to psychology. I think that’s really just where my passion was.”

Herman has always been a “caretaker.” The oldest of two, she found herself taking on a nurturing role in her younger sister’s life. Today, she still finds herself helping everyone around her.

“She has a natural ability to just be very calming and welcoming,” FHN counselor Stephanie Johnson said. “Students just feel very comfortable with her. I feel comfortable with her myself.”

Although Herman knew switching majors would mean taking extra classes, it ultimately made her college experience much more enjoyable.

“The biology courses felt a little bit more like a grind,” Herman said. “My psychology classes were much more satisfying…When you realize that you are making a difference where you are positively affecting somebody or helping them in some way, I think that’s probably just the most satisfying thing.”

Switching her major ended up being one of the most positive decisions Herman has made.

“[Psychology] has been an honor— it’s a privilege to work with so many people and hopefully bring some positivity to their life,” Herman said.

It was Sunday, May 18, 2025. Harvester Christian Church was having one of its last high school nights (HSN). The stage hosts run on stage.

“What’s up High School Night?” the stage host Jordan Schott asks. “I’m Jordan, and this is my co-host…”

Then, they start picking people to play a game. The game was chaotic but fun. The students were ready to engage and learn about the teaching that was to come. After the message was over, Schott came back on stage.

“I’m going to get real with you guys here for just a second. I recently lost my job, and I had been at this job for a little bit, and it was really helping me and my family. If you guys could just send prayers for me and my family, that would be amazing.” Schott said.

After he is done speaking, he goes right into announcements and dismisses the students.

Jordan graduated from Lindenwood University in May 2013 with a degree in elementary education. A few years later, Schott started working at a Christian school– Veritas Christian Academy– in 2016, where he taught 4th and 10th grade World History, and middle school PE and health. Schott worked there for six years, but he felt like it wasn’t where he needed to be in his life.

“The private school really wasn’t helping meet my family financially, so I prayed about that and just said, ‘Hey, I’ll try something different,’” Schott said. “God provided. And it helped in the season of life that we were in.”

In July 2022, Schott started a corporate job, working to help train adults how to use software and how to use their products. But after working there for three years, Jordan was unexpectedly let go.

“[It was] kind of a blessing in disguise, because it had been very strenuous and stressful and just not what I wanted to do at the time,” Schott said. “It was helping pay the bills and provide for my family. But it honestly was a relief when I did lose my job, because it allowed me to look for something I really cared about or was passionate about, and that was teaching and coaching.”

And now, back on that Sunday night, Jordan is back on stage. He is trying to figure out what his next move is.

A few months later, Jordan is at Harvester Christian church for a Sunday service. Still worried about his financial situation. Little did he know that Assistant Principal Shelly Parks was right around the corner.

“On the same day that I prayed about that, it was, about an hour later, I talked to someone at church, and they connected me with Mrs. Parks,” Jordan said. “I desired to be a teacher again, and I wanted to be a coach again. God knows the desires of our hearts, and I expressed that with him over and over and over, it was just kind of crazy. It all happened on the same day.”

During September, Schott got a job at FHN as a paraprofessional, helping students in the SPED department. Schott wished people at FHN would see him in a new way. He wants people to see that he likes to be silly, but also that he can be serious. That he loves to talk to people and know their story.

“I would like them to know that I do love God and I love his people,” Schott said. “I like to connect with people. I like to talk about their lives. I like to have fun.”

Jordan’s coworkers think he’s perfect for the job.

“His temperament is just really calm,” paraprofessional Sierra Porrit said. “He doesn’t get upset or worked up about anything, which is really important in a role like this.”