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Longtime North Escambia Educator Pens Spiritual Poetry Collection Book
March 9, 2008
Longtime North Escambia teacher Mary Alice Thomas has published a personal spiritual poetry collection called “Battle of the Soul”, a title that has connections with her early days as a Teens for Christ sponsor while teaching in North Escambia.
Thomas used her Christian educational background to author and publish to the collection. Thomas said that she is “writing from the heart and not from the head”, and she adds that she took the seeds that were planted in her life at Southern Normal and transplanted them when she ended up at Stillman College, where she earned her undergraduate degree.
In her Bible classes at Stillman, these seeds grew into small plants. This basis has allowed her to draw deeply into her inner being and urged her to find her calling in the teaching profession.
Florida’s Escambia County School District opened the doors for her to become an educator, creating an opportunity for Thomas to combine her spiritual training with her love for writing.
“All my life I had wanted to minister to the needs of people, students and peers,” Thomas says. And Escambia County offered this to her until she retired 35 years later after teaching both English and social studies.
Thomas began teaching at Ernest Ward Middle School then transferred to Carver/Century K-8 School, where she remained for 22 years.
“Century, Florida, is as much as home to me as Brewton, Alabama,” she says. “I hold both of these towns close to my heart.” Thomas retired from Northview High School in 2004 and followed that year with a year on the West coast where her daughter and grandchildren resided at that time.
After a year out of the classroom, Thomas found herself restless and missing the faces of young people, so in 2005 she returned to the same district. She is presently employed at Carver/Century.
When asked why she wanted to come out of retirement, Thomas replied, “My love for teaching, trying to change lives, trying to encourage the broken-hearted, trying to get students ready for learning and trying to massage the brain, to change the mind and heart and the directions of the innocent.”
Thomas said that her superior fulfillment comes when she learns of the success of one of her former students. “I invested my life in every student who sat in a classroom under my teaching.” She adds that her favorite success was the day that she started working with a group of young people who would sacrifice their early morning peer social time for Bible study and pray before school.
She ended up sponsoring the Teens for Christ group for 24 years. She said that her commitment to that group and those students stemmed from the fact that “the battle of the soul is in a changing society”.
From this comment comes the title of her book, “Battle of the Soul”. Thomas believes that teaching is a ministry that one must be called into. It should never be a choice one makes just to have a job.
“I write to honor the Creator of all life,” Thomas adds, and her collection of over 35 spiritual poems is a testament to her endeavors. She currently has a religious-based drama and other various poetry collections that are awaiting publication.
To order a copy of her religious poems, write to Mary Alice Thomas, P.O. Box 163, Brewton, AL 36427. All books are $10 each.
Submitted story and photos by Vicki Baggett. Click photo to enlarge.
Comments
One Response to “Longtime North Escambia Educator Pens Spiritual Poetry Collection Book”
Truly she is a jewel.. She was the only person I felt loved me, believed in me! If God had not loved me enough to put such a angel in my life I would not have bn where I am today! I thank God for her, n I thank her for being there for me over n over in high school. She was the only person who could do anything with me lol. I truly love her, she sown the seed in me about how God made me wonderful and because of that seed, I live today, I’m not afraid of rejection in life, nor do I feel unloved, I know God accepts me and loves me and that makes my life worth living! Thank you Jesus for sending me one of your angels!