As a student at Trinity Lutheran High School, Sarah Akey never pictured herself returning there someday and being in front of a classroom.
At Hillsdale College in Michigan, she double-majored in math and political science with the intention to work for a congressman, senator or think tank in Washington, D.C.
During an internship in the nation’s capital, though, she said she realized she didn’t want to follow that career path.
“Through talking with my professors, they said, ‘You really could teach at the collegiate level,’” Akey said. “I had kind of sort of thought about that, but it was through their encouragement and looking at it more that I thought, ‘OK, let’s try that.’”
She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2016 and began working on a master’s degree in political theory when teaching became her career focus.
Once she met her husband and they later had a child, Akey knew she would be following her husband for his work as a Lutheran pastor.
His work happened to take him to Seymour. Colleges in the area weren’t offering any positions Akey could fill, so she looked at the high school level and wound up with an opportunity to teach at her alma mater.
Teaching chemistry and integrated chemistry and physics, Akey is Trinity’s first alumnus to return there to teach.
“This ministry had such an impact on my life in forming me spiritually, morally, intellectually, and so it’s an immense opportunity to be able to partake in that now and see how God might use me for these students,” she said.
Akey has one more chapter of her dissertation to finish and then she will have her Ph.D. She hopes she’s not the last TLHS alumnus to return.
“I would love to have more,” she said. “I loved my classmates, and I know that some of them are aiming to become teachers, and it would be great if they came, too.”
Other new staff members at Trinity this school year are Jaime Brown, biology; Faith Wilder-Newland, English; Danielle Storm, weights and conditioning; Brittany Darlage, health science; Brad Dickey, athletic director, boys basketball head coach and student media; Erin Brooks, admissions; and Patrick Downey, school counselor and test coordinator.
Jaime Brown
After graduating from Manchester College in 2001, Brown spent 19 years teaching biology at Seymour High School.
Over the summer, she obtained her insurance license and wanted to help more with her family’s insurance business in Brownstown.
When Trinity Principal Clayton Darlage approached her about a part-time teaching position, Brown accepted the offer.
“I wanted to be able to help with (the family business) more, and we have three kids that are busy,” she said of her and her husband, Todd. “I got my insurance license this summer so that I could help him, and (Trinity) was nice enough to fill my need that I had.”
While it has been a big transition going from teaching full time to part time, Brown said it has been a great transition.
She’s teaching biology and Advanced Placement biology, the latter being a dual-credit class.
“Everything has been great,” she said. “The kids being able to be themselves just to explore their religious side, getting to know the kids more one-on-one because class sizes are smaller here, that has been really nice, and the faculty and staff have been so helpful. It has been really good. It’s exactly what I needed.”
Faith Wilder-Newland
Wilder-Newland is in her 37th year in education.
She graduated from Jennings County High School and then Franklin College, where she earned an education degree and played volleyball.
“I knew when I went there that I wanted to be a teacher because my mom was a teacher’s aide and she worked with kids who had learning disabilities or just needed extra tutoring and stuff like that,” she said.
Her sports experience resulted in her wanting to become a coach, too. After graduating from college in 1986, Wilder-Newland became an English teacher at Columbus East High School and also coached volleyball.
She remained there until retiring at the end of the 2020-21 school year, but then Darlage called her about an open teaching position at Trinity. She had coached volleyball there for the past two years.
She said she prayed for God to give her some direction and decided to accept the offer.
“Just being in the building and the inspiration of having pastor and devotion and chapel on Wednesday, that has really just been a blessing,” Wilder-Newland said. “I came here approaching it from the teaching aspect, but there’s just so much more to it.”
She also has gotten to know her volleyball players more through having them in class. She’s teaching American literature and AP literature and composition and also is the school’s career exploration coordinator.
“To really see that whole picture, you really need to be in the building, so it’s just a wonderful place,” Wilder-Newland said. “My kids are kind, polite, hardworking. I really, really have just loved every minute of it so far.”
Brittany Darlage
Since Trinity added a health science graduation pathway, Brittany Darlage is teaching a medical terminology class to get them on track toward a career in that field.
“I generally have students who enjoy what they are learning about, so someone would voluntarily sign up for my class,” she said. “The most exciting thing is when people are excited about what I get excited about.”
Darlage spent four years working in nursing before she and Clayton started a family. She later made the transition to teaching with C4 Columbus Area Career Connection.
“Luckily, I was able to team teach with a couple of great teachers, got to learn a lot and get my feet wet,” she said.
She was with C4 for two years before accepting a part-time job teaching medical terminology at Seymour High School. Then when Trinity added the health science pathway, she taught the dual-credit course.
“I have students in there who get those aha moments,” she said. “That’s the most exciting, and they can apply what they learn to life because they are not going to not use med terms in life at some point, whether it be a doctor’s visit or a job down the road.”
Brad Dickey
Throughout his 16 years of varsity coaching, Dickey gained experience in seven sports at three different high schools — Edgewood, Tipton and Franklin Community.
Since starting at Trinity, he said he has been “remarkably busy” keeping everything moving.
“It has been a lot of fun and a challenge,” he said. “Hopefully, we can keep helping athletes and helping coaches enjoy their experience.”
Dickey also is the student media teacher. His four students are learning how to conduct interviews and write stories so they can publish content on the school’s website, and they later will develop a school newspaper.
“It’s something I’ve done in the past, and it gives me a chance to get in the classroom and hopefully serve the school and improve our communications,” he said. “We’re hoping to have a better online presence and digital relationship.”
Dickey hopes to draw more interest in the class.
“We’re already posting online today as a part of our current website, and we’re trying to help the school improve their website services,” he said. “We’re still trying to learn our way around our own website. We have aspirations to get better and be more newsworthy.”
Erin Brooks
Brooks spent seven years teaching at Seymour Middle School and the Seymour Middle School Sixth Grade Center.
Then when her son started kindergarten at St. John’s Lutheran School Sauers, she taught math and science there.
At the beginning of 2021, she moved to Trinity and worked in admissions. She was supposed to take Student Ambassadors to local Lutheran schools to share information about Trinity, but due to the pandemic, the students came to Trinity.
In early October, she hopes the program can return to its normal format.
“My goal is to just try to help them understand how different this environment is and what your options are here and the things that separate it from middle school and make it look enticing,” Brooks said. “It’s exciting and it’s a new thing that they get to embrace.”
Her job also includes organizing open houses and enrolling new students.
“We have 51 new students this year, which is really exciting. I want to one up myself hopefully,” she said, smiling, about her goal moving forward.
This school year, she also is serving as development assistant and is in charge of the school’s auction fundraiser.
Patrick Downey
Downey is in his 18th year in education.
The San Jose, California, native first taught fifth grade at a Lutheran school in Washington, D.C., and then went to Wisconsin to teach at a high school.
The principal encouraged him to get his counseling degree, so he earned that from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
For the past 10 years, he spent time at three different schools as a counselor, most recently at Jefferson County Traditional Middle School in Louisville, Kentucky.
Once he found out about Trinity six years ago, he and his family moved to Seymour. The eldest of his five children is in sixth grade at Immanuel Lutheran School, and the intention is for the kids to go to Trinity.
“We wanted to move and just settle so that we could stay in one place and raise our family,” Downey said. “We were coming up here for Camp Lakeview, and that’s actually how we first found out about Seymour.”
Through his service on Immanuel’s school board, Downey learned Trinity was in need of a school counselor, so he applied and was offered the job.
He handles all of the scheduling and ensures students are on track with their credits and standardized testing to graduate. Plus, he helps students apply for scholarships and guides them toward jobs and colleges.
“I’m really excited to be in the role,” Downey said.