By Jessica Easthope
Wearing a pink bow in her hair and a colorful sweater, Rachel Runyan looks nothing like a drill sergeant. But step into her classroom and she’ll start to sound like one. Every second counts when you run a tight ship.
“I am very focused on, like, time and order. And I’m very organized, so being in this life for 15 years, it rubs off on you in ways that you can never expect and things like that,” Rachel said.
Rachel has been a military spouse for almost 16 years, her husband Mike is a technical sergeant in the United States Air Force. They’ve lived all over the country.
“Northern California, Maryland, Southern California, and then here,” she said.
These days they live on base at Fort Hamilton and somehow, in the busiest city in the world, this family of four from southern Maryland found a home.
“We enrolled 12 days before school started, and we were just really treated like family, it’s just been a great place for my kids to learn and for me to grow as an educator. I couldn’t be more thankful to be a part of this community,” said Rachel.
“It was a little bit overwhelming. And I think once we found Bay Ridge Catholic everything felt like it kind of fell in line,” Mike said.
Bay Ridge Catholic Principal Paul Morisi says having Rachel and her children at the school has been a positive learning experience for everyone.
“What’s so beautiful about what Rachel has brought here is this experience that she’s had of traveling the country, teaching in different states with different communities so she could reach people in a different way that maybe some of our other teachers, can learn from,” he said.
Within the next year or so Rachel, Mike and their children will be somewhere new, but their time at Bay Ridge Catholic will stay with them.
“So many times this school has been a bright spot. It just feels like. It feels like magic,” said Rachel. “This is the standard that I need to look for wherever I go next.”