Allegheny Township woman is teacher, mom, blogger -- and soon, book author

Editor’s note: This is part of an occasional series that features Alle-Kiski Valley residents and the notable things that they do.

Stephanie Jankowski is a mother of three and teacher of many.

She taught English at Valley Junior/Senior High School in the New Kensington-Arnold School District for five years and then at Riverview High School in Oakmont for a year.

She’s spent the last decade educating about 130 rural Louisiana youths online — all from her Allegheny Township home.

Jankowski, a 1999 Kiski Area High School graduate, serves as a hybrid between a guidance counselor and academic advisor for K12 Inc., a Virginia-based company that sells online schooling and curricula.

Her efforts help children in the Sugar State who would otherwise have to travel great distances to be educated.

“It’s amazing what technology can do and how it connects us,” she said. “I have a nice opportunity to make some nice lasting connections with these kids.”

Jankowski thought about moving to the Southern states, but fate and family kept her in her hometown.

She married Zach Jankowski, an Advanced Placement statistics teacher at Valley High, and they have been together for 15 years.

“I think it’s hard to come by a teaching job in Pennsylvania, where as when you go down South they’re a dime a dozen,” Jankowski said. “I like the little-town vibe. I like hardworking, honest people. Now that we have kids and have roots here, it makes sense to stay.”

Their children are Brady, 10, Ella, 8, and Lyla, 5.

“They’re really sweet kids,” Jankowski said. “I always wanted a bigger family. I do feel like that they’re each other’s best friends and built-in buddies. All that stuff you see in yourself comes back at you tenfold out of your kids. It’s a total trip. My greatest accomplishment is those kids.”

They are the reason she joined the online education field. She decided to leave brick-and-mortar schools while having her first child.

“I didn’t want to leave him, but I also didn’t want to leave teaching,” she said. So I just forged my own path and started in the cyber schooling world.”

When she is not parenting or teaching, Jankowski draws on those experiences for other writings, including a blog at whencrazymeetsexhaustion.com.

There she posts musings on being a woman, mother and educator.

It started in 2011 as a way to express herself, and her work gained national attention.

Jankowski and other mothers/educators were invited to the White House by then-first lady Michelle Obama.

“She recognizes that power of the female community and the teaching community,” Jankowski said of the experience. “It’s such that we have power and we are valuable. It was a pivotal moment for me as a mom and an educator to know I can make a difference.”

Jankowski is nearly ready to launch her first book, “Schooled: A Love Letter to the Exhausting, Infuriating, Occasionally Excruciating Yet Somehow Completely Wonderful Profession of Teaching.”

It’s available though Page Street Publishing and will be released in mid-December.

The work is a collection of frank and relatable essays such as “The Month of May Can Go Straight to Hell,” “When You’re a 22-year-old Teacher and Your Students are 18,” and “Why Do I Kind of Hate This Job?”

Jankowski’s love of putting pen to paper began in childhood. A few entries into a diary turned into an explosion of words throughout her room.

“I had a closet at home at my parents’ house, and as early as I could start writing I would write little poems, letters, anything I thought was funny,” she said. “I would cut things out of magazines — phrases, words, inspirational quotes — and would just plaster them all over the walls of my closet. It started creeping out into my bedroom and my doors.

“And I eventually wallpapered my room in words.”

Jankowski earned a bachelor’s in English education from Clairon University, and a master’s in 21st Century teaching and learning from Wilkes University.

She and her husband went to the same high school and Clairon, but did not meet until he coached her brother’s, Michael Barone, baseball game at Kiski Area High School.

More information about the writer can be found at stephaniejankowski.com.