Elementary school teacher Sabrina Webb was born and raised in Chicago, where she attended the Chicago SDA Jr. Academy starting in Kindergarten. In 2013, upon graduating from Oakwood University with her teaching degree, God led her back to that school — not as a student, but as a teacher. During her last semester of college, however, Sabrina was unsure whether God wanted her to be a teacher after all.
“Teachers have to take plenty of tests to be able to be certified and graduate and do an internship,” Sabrina explained. In her Junior year, she had passed all those tests and received her certification. Everything was on track until the following year, when a new test was added to those requirements. “My teacher told us we were all going to have to take that test in order to graduate, to do internship, and for certification,” Sabrina recalled — and she only had a week or two to study for it. Sabrina took the test and missed passing it by a mere two or three points. It was a devastating blow. Not passing meant that Sabrina was not certified to do her internship, the final thing she had to finish for her degree.
Feeling defeated, Sabrina moved out of her apartment and returned home, not planning to return the following semester as she could no longer do an internship. “Is this really what you want me to do, God? Am I supposed to be a teacher?” she wondered. Her answer came a few days before the new semester began when her department’s dean informed her that she was eligible for her internship after all and could re-take the test. Sabrina returned to school, completed her internship, and took her test again, this time receiving one of the highest scores out of all who took it.
“God is amazing,” she marveled. “That, right there, just let me know that whatever He has planned for me . . ., He has a plan, and I’m just going to follow whatever, wherever He leads me to and whatever He wants me to do.”
And God did lead. Sabrina had planned to work in the public school system and assist part-time at Chicago SDA Jr. Academy, but a phone call from her former Kindergarten teacher, alerting her of a job opening, changed her course.
Sabrina currently teaches first through third grade, as well as teaching fourth-graders in four subjects and the entire student body in choir. “I feel like this is the school that made me who I am,” Sabrina said. “They definitely set the foundation, and I want other kids to be able to have that same foundation.”
