Walk into Mrs. Lauren Brown’s first-grade classroom and you’ll hear laughter before you notice anything else. The room feels less like a traditional class and more like a small, energetic family, a space where students feel safe to try, fail, and grow. For Brown, now in her fourteenth year of teaching at Magnolia Elementary, that sense of belonging is intentional. “Relationships are the foundation of everything,” she says. 

Lauren wears many hats outside the classroom: college instructor, business owner, real estate agent, and creator of teacher-focused social media content, but teaching remains at the center of her life. “It’s a lifestyle,” she explains. “I wake up in the middle of the night, worried about kids. My husband knows all my students’ names.”

Ask her what people misunderstand most about teaching today, and her answer comes quickly. “Teachers really love these kids. We don’t make all the rules, and we’re asked to do so much.” She describes balancing students who read just three words per minute alongside those who read more than a hundred, while teaching every subject, managing behavior, communicating with families, and meeting state expectations. “People think teachers just teach, and it’s very black and white,” she adds. “Most teachers put a lot more heart into it than people realize.”

That heart is evident in the way Lauren talks about her students. She hopes years from now, they remember how they felt in her classroom more than anything else. “I want them to feel safe taking risks and making mistakes,” she says. “I don’t want perfection, I want them to try.” Her classroom includes a simple emotional check-in system where students rate how they’re feeling each day. If a child marks a low number, Lauren knows to quietly check in.

Moments of empathy shape the culture she builds. Last year, when a student lost his mother, the entire class rallied around him. “He would come and snuggle on my lap while I kept teaching,” she recalls. “The other kids didn’t get jealous. They understood he needed that love. Watching first graders demonstrate that kind of empathy was incredible.”

Students would likely describe her classroom as “crazy,” “family,” and “exciting,” she says with a smile. But behind the energy is a deep belief that children need consistency and reassurance. “Kids today have so much comparison from social media. They need someone in their corner telling them, ‘You’re okay.’”

Lauren’s journey to teaching began long before she entered the classroom. Growing up in Oakdale schools, she says she always knew she would be a teacher...even pretending to teach her younger sisters as a child. Today, teaching in the same district feels like coming home. “Teaching is one of the gifts God has given me,” she says. “He puts the kids who are supposed to be in my classroom with me.”

Her first year at age 22 confirmed she had found her calling. She still keeps a letter from a former student who once crossed out the word “mom” before writing her name. The letter says, in part, “I’ll never forget to believe in myself, because you believed in me.”

For Lauren, that moment captures what teaching is truly about, not just academics, but shaping lives through care, connection, and unwavering belief in every child who walks through her door.