Joanne Williams
Editor
(Courtesy photo- Teacher of the Week honors went to Olivet College graduate and stellar softball player Jessica Davenport Creager (right), shown here with her mother, Ponja Dye.)
“By their fruit you shall know them.”
Life seldom provides a straight path to adulthood. It is often the people along the way that make the journey worthwhile – a teacher, a parent, a coach.
For Jessica Davenport Creager, it was all three.
The path in life brought her to Olivet College in the late 1990s. Mother, Ponja, began work at the College (now The University of Olivet), and Jessica dove in to all things college, rather, she pitched in.
A stellar softball player, she won admiration in Michigan and at tournaments and play across the land. A member of the Olivet Athletic Hall of Fame, she was “the first woman in school history to earn Most Valuable Player honors from the MIAA (Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association). You earned first team All-MIAA honors in 1999 and 2000 and first-team All-Region honors in 2000.”
It was not all sports for Jessica, who was also a solid student, member of the prestigious insurance chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, a member of the Sigma Beta Sorority, and, of course, 1999 Homecoming Princess.
Her accolades continue, “After graduating from Olivet in 2000, you taught in the Lansing School District for five years and were the varsity softball coach at Everett High School.”
A life move spirited her to Savannah, Georgia, where she has spent more than 20 years of teaching while raising her two sons.
Recently, she was recognized as teacher of the week by the local media.You can be sure her first-grade students at Spencer Elementary in the Savannah/Chatham County School District, cheered her on.
In an interview, Jessica quoted storied Olivet wrestling coach and mentor Jare Klein, who often told his students about teaching others, “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
