Missouri Baptist University has long held a reputation for producing high-quality teachers that local schools are eager to hire. While the university’s rigorous School of Education is known by teachers and non-teachers alike, few outside of the program know about Kendra Ray, who works tirelessly to maintain its success.
Ray currently holds a host of responsibilities within the School of Education. She is the assistant to MBU’s dean of education, Dr. Tammy Cox, she pairs every education major with a local school for field experience observations, coordinates all School of Education admission and student teaching interviews, serves on one of the faculty interview teams, schedules all main campus and online education courses, is a member of the Education Lead Team, which works to prepare the next accreditation visit, and, if that weren’t enough, she also teaches four classes and supervises a few students in the Field Experience I and II programs, all while working on earning her doctorate in education.
According to Dr. Alicia Noddings, associate dean of education and assistant professor of education, the School of Education would not look the way it does today without Ray’s guidance.
“She’s completely overhauled the Folio process in incredible ways,” said Noddings. “That’s not just on main campus, that involves responsibilities for Folio teachers on other campuses, which is a big commitment.”
Noddings is referring to Ray’s redesign of the Folio I and II classes that she teaches, in which students write and refine the foundational documents they will need to present to the principals of schools where they hope to be employed.
The Folio process originally required students to submit rough drafts of their foundational documents to Ray and her student fellows, who would return the documents with lists of required edits that needed to be made before the document could be submitted for a final grade.
Recognizing that this approach focused on making surface-level fixes rather than teaching students to become better writers as a whole, Ray has given the Folio classes a makeover, incorporating writing workshops and requiring students with weaker papers to work with her student fellows in mandatory tutoring sessions. She has also created her own Canvas shell to help students manage these courses more effectively.
Noddings, who has worked with Ray for three years, can attest to the wide variety of skills she has brought to the School of Education.
“Initially, she exemplified a commitment to excellence in her work. She was managing a lot of behind-the-scenes pieces relating to field placement, technology and that liberal arts education,” said Noddings. “But as she’s gotten to be more and more of a teacher as well as a member of the staff, I think her commitment to excellent teaching and high expectations for students, but also supporting students at different stages of their journey, has made itself more and more clear.”
One of Ray’s skills that Noddings is most grateful for is “her sense of humor. She can always take a challenging moment and make it something that we can laugh at, which is a really valuable skill.”
Ray isn’t just beloved by her colleagues, her students also appreciate the guidance and support that she offers on their journeys to teaching. She always tells them that teaching is a calling, and she is fully prepared to help them answer that calling.
“Mrs. Ray helped me during a very difficult period of my academic life. In the short time that I’ve known her, she has become someone who I know I can rely on,” Jaz Gibson, a junior English and middle childhood education major and one of Ray’s student fellows, said in an email.
As a mentor to future educators, Ray always does her best to emulate the qualities that her students should display in their own classrooms.
“She does not shy away from difficult situations, and whenever I’ve needed additional support in building vital skills, she has graciously offered her guidance,” said Gibson. “Mrs. Ray has been there for me in ways that I have never experienced with an instructor before. She has been an amazing role model and has shown me just what kind of power an educator can have in the lives of their students.”
Ray’s ability to guide the next generation of educators stems from over a decade of experience as a middle school English language arts teacher, although education was not the original career path she chose.
“I graduated from Southwest Baptist University with a degree in youth ministry,” Ray said in an email. “Shortly after graduating, I lived in Mozambique, Africa, for a short time, working as a teacher. I fell in love with teaching as a result. When I returned to the states, I pursued my certification at Missouri State University. Before I was done with that program, I was hired to teach middle school ELA. Whether it was students in Africa seeking to learn a new language or middle school students seeking to figure out who they are and what they want from life, it was one of my greatest joys to be a part of their journeys.”
Ray eventually found her way to MBU in 2019 when her life took another turn.
“I had been teaching middle school ELA for a little over a decade and absolutely loved it. It was a career that I thought I would stay in for a long time,” said Ray. “However, God led my husband and I on an adoption journey. I knew that parenting a child who had endured significant trauma would require all of my time, my energy and my heart. Teaching was also requiring a lot of my time, energy and heart – and I was teaching a lot of students who had difficult home lives.”
She continued: “I knew I couldn’t do both of those things well. So I decided to walk away from teaching middle school to fully embrace what God had in store for us in adoption. My work here at MBU began as just an office job, which allowed me to focus on what was needed at home. Our first year having our then-8-year-old daughter home was incredibly difficult. This job, and the people here, offered me the encouragement and rest that I needed to help bring our daughter through a really challenging time of healing.”
Although Ray gave up her career teaching in middle school to invest more time into raising her daughter, she is more than ready to pour into current students at MBU, demonstrating her belief that relationships are the most important part of teaching.
“I love reading and writing and I took great pride in fostering a love of reading and writing in my middle school students. But more than that, investing in them as young people and helping them navigate the really difficult season of life that middle school sometimes is was even more enjoyable,” said Ray. “There were days that it felt teaching content was the least of my responsibilities. But being a listening ear, providing guidance and wisdom through choices, and encouraging students to pursue their dreams was my greatest joy. Here at MBU, it’s not much different. The students are older and definitely out of the awkward middle school phase, but I still have the opportunity to build relationships and help students pursue their dreams of being a teacher.”
Through her work with Ray, Gibson gets to witness firsthand the effects of the professor’s relationship-oriented work ethic and teaching style.
“One great benefit of working with Mrs. Ray is that I get to see how she operates outside of the classroom,” Gibson said. “I have been given the unique opportunity to work closely beside her, learning from her years of experience and acquired wisdom. I appreciate that. Although she is my superior, Mrs. Ray is always one to consider others’ input and perspectives when making decisions. Working with her is collaborative in nature, and I know that. Just as she kindly respects suggestions made to her, she also extends her own advice to me and others who need it.”
In fact, Ray has said that building relationships with her students and peers is her favorite part of her job.
“Our team of faculty and staff is amazing and being here at work is a lot of fun,” said Ray. “I love how we work together to do what is best for our students and preparing them for the field. And I love watching students graduate, become teachers, and live out the dreams they talked about while in my class.”
Gibson believes that Ray is one of the reasons education students are able to make those dreams come true.
“She is a pillar of strength in the School of Education, always holding us up to high standards, not because she has any desire to make things harder for us, but because she knows what we are capable of and wants to see us reach our greatest potential as future educators,” Gibson said.
Ray is always careful to remind her students that the responsibilities of a teacher go beyond the content being taught. Gibson’s impressions of her suggest that she is definitely succeeding in modeling this behavior.
“Kendra Ray is more than just a teacher,” the student fellow said. “She is a mentor and a motivator. She advocates for her students and is invested in their growth. She is generous with both her time and knowledge. She is not the sort of person who would tear you down, nor is she one to do you the disservice of coddling you in ways that prevent you from improving independently. Rather, Mrs. Ray is the kind of person who comes alongside you to build you up so that you can stand on your own two feet. Her expectations are high, but she supplies ample support in surpassing them and is willing to walk beside you every step of the way.”
