TEACHER'S CORNER: TEACHER GIVES LESSONS IN PRACTICAL LIFE SKILLS

As a Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) teacher, Heather Love believes she is giving her Cape Girardeau Central Junior High students much more than just the facts. She said she loves what she is teaching because she is giving her students practical skills they will use everyday.

"Everything I teach is a life skill," said Love, who is in her first year of teaching in Cape Girardeau. "The most gratifying part of my job is that I feel I am lucky enough to be teaching a subject area that is directly related to preparing my students for family, school and work."

Love started preparing for a career in education at an early age. She said she participated in her high school's cadet teaching program and worked for the Kirkwood YMCA for seven years. When she first started college, she said she was an elementary education major, but after the first year, decided she was better suited for secondary education. Family and Consumer Sciences was a great major because of the diversity of the subject matter, she said.

Currently, Love is teaching ninth-graders about consumer education by working on a "Wake Up to Missouri" project. The materials they are using were provided by the Missouri Department of Tourism.

"This project encompasses the time management, budgeting and resource management skills they have learned in the consumer education unit," she said. "They are learning about Missouri, but also applying the skills they have learned in class to a real-life scenario."

Love is currently working on her masters degree in Family and Consumer Sciences Education at Southeast Missouri State University. She and her husband Daren moved to Cape Girardeau in June 1996 from Jefferson City, where she had taught for three years.