On January 29th our beloved Stephanie Peyatt (known around East as Mrs. P) returned from maternity leave. She is the mother of three children: Landon (8), Jessilynn (7), and Baby Lane (4 months). She welcomed Baby Lane on last September 9, 2023.

When I interviewed Mrs. P, I asked how she was welcomed back to school. “By a mouse running around my classroom!” she said. “It is now living in my air conditioning!”

Her first day back was exhausting because she had to juggle teaching and motherhood. Mrs. P describes herself as “a control freak,” so she struggled during her time away with leaving all control to her substitute Mr. Smead. She went on to explain that one challenge of returning to work was that she felt like her students missed Mr. Smead and didn’t like her since she hadn’t formed the connections with them she normally would have at this point in the school year. They are now warming up to Mrs. P even though she has had to enforce some new rules about organization and cleanliness–when she returned she found multiple moldy cereal cartons under and around her bookshelves!

After school on her first day back, Mrs. P had to go to basketball practice, pick Baby Lane up, and then do all the normal mom things. I asked her whether she felt it was harder on the mother or the father to return to work after parental leave. She said that in her case it was harder for her since she she had been forming a connection with Lane, never leaving him, whereas her husband had taken only a week off and was used to being apart from him. 

Mrs. P’s older children love the new baby, although Jessilynn struggled to accept not having all the attention she was used to. As for how they reacted to Mrs. P’s return to work, she said, “They hate it because they have to ride the bus and don’t get all my attention because now I have school work.”