By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

It took walking away from education for a few years for new Joplin elementary school principals Elaina Edman and Sam Rogers to realize it was where their hearts belonged.

Edman, a 1977 Carthage High School graduate, taught elementary and middle-school art for years at area public and private schools before leaving the professional to care for her two children and help her husband run a family business.

Rogers, a 1990 Carthage High School graduate, taught elementary school and alternative school in Carthage for several years before he took a sales job with Leggett & Platt and spent the next five years living in Detroit, Mich., and Los Angeles, Calif.

But neither teacher could stay away from the classroom.

Edman returned to teaching in 2003 as a Joplin art teacher serving multiple elementary schools.

“Often, I was in six schools every week,” Edman said, laughing she recounted her schedule. She also served as the district’s art specialist.

It wasn’t long after Edman started teaching full-time again that she felt drawn to administration.

“There was this point where I thought, ‘I could do this’,” Edman said. “I wasn’t brave enough to deal with some of the challenges in the past. There were a whole bunch of factors that came together to make me want to do this, but a lot of it I think was just growing up.”

Rogers said several years of selling in major metropolitan areas made him miss the Midwest and his previous profession.

“Education kind of chose me right out of college because of my degree,” Rogers said of his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Missouri-Columbia. “But through this I was allowed to choose education for myself. I realized I belonged in education.”

Rogers returned to teaching with a job in Webb City teaching seventh-grade science for three years.

Edman and Rogers both became assistant principals in Joplin in 2006.

Edman became assistant principal at Cecil Floyd Elementary under principal Doug Adams, and Rogers got the job at Memorial Middle School under Steve Gilbreath.