AUBURN — Soon, students and their families will settle into a new routine, and teachers in the Twin Cities have been working hard behind the scenes to make that possible.

Mariah Mitchell-Labrie will start her first year of teaching Wednesday at Sherwood Heights Elementary School in Auburn. “Before I was even officially signed on, our principal let me come into the classroom and start painting. It was a lot of figuring out what colors I wanted,” she said. “I wanted it to be bright and exciting and fun.”

“I was always the neighborhood babysitter,” Mitchell-Labrie said. She will teach second grade at Sherwood Heights. “I’ve always loved working with the little ones. I think they have this innocence about them. They love school; they love learning,” she added.

Mitchell-Labrie said she is looking forward to bringing representation to her classroom. “During my student teaching year, I designed and created a Black History Month event for the entire school,” she said. “It had different stations that allowed students from all the different grade levels to come and spend an hour learning about the history of different influential African Americans.”

“That was something special to me because growing up, a lot of the time, I didn’t really see myself represented in the classroom,” Mitchell-Labrie said. “It is so great now with all the different literacy and books that are being rolled out, seeing that representation, such diverse students being represented in the book.”

“Being able to create that for my own students and some of those minority populations, allowing them to see themselves in the classroom, is really important,” Mitchell-Labrie added.

For Leah Enos, teaching is an ever-evolving process. On Wednesday, she will begin her seventh year at Farwell Elementary School in Lewiston.

“The first couple years of teaching you’re still trying to figure out the curriculum and what works best for you as a teacher, what doesn’t,” Enos said. “The past couple of years I’ve really started to find my groove and what works for me and my students.”

“But of course, each year, things might work well for one class and not well for another class,” Enos said. “I’m excited to figure out the learning styles of my students, how they learn best, different projects that they might enjoy, and use that to really tailor what our year ahead will look like.”

Benjamin Allen, a teacher at Robert V. Connors Elementary School in Lewiston, feels similar to Enos. He, too, will begin his seventh year of teaching Wednesday.

“The thing I’ve taken home the most is that you never really stop learning,” he said. “There are always new situations coming up and adaptability is really, really the name of the game in so many different cases. I think over those seven years, I’ve become a different person than I was then. Kids really helped me become that person, as well as many colleagues.”

“I think the biggest takeaway for me is you never really stop learning, you never really stop reflecting, and things keep changing. You just have to adapt,” Allen said.

He said he is glad to have followed in his mother’s steps.

“I’m a teacher because of my mom,” he said. “I grew up listening to all of her stories and it’s really funny because I told her for years, ‘I would never become a teacher’ because I grew up hearing about all the challenges she faced.”

Life had different plans for Allen.

“When I was in college, I had a chance to earn some extra money working at her school,” Allen said. “That’s what changed me. I met a group of kids and I realized that was the direction I had to go.”

“If I had to thank one person, it’s my mom without a doubt,” he said.

For many teachers like Allen, family ties have been a fateful influence.

Nesrene Griffin did not think about teaching as a career before she fell in love and decided to settle down in Maine.

“Teaching is my second career,” she said. “I worked with a multinational oil company in Asia for eight years before we migrated to the United States. I knew this was where I wanted to be and have gone through the extended teacher program at USM to get certified.”

Griffin met her husband, a Maine native, while in college. “My husband is a Mainer. We met in Boston at Northeastern (University.) We decided to come back to Maine,” she said.

Griffin will start her 15th year of teaching at the Connors Elementary School in Auburn.

After 23 years of teaching, Nicole Job is excited about her first year in a special education classroom at Farwell Elementary School. She said she is embracing the significant change.

“It’s a different atmosphere,” she said. “It’s like a brand new day again. I’m very nervous but hopefully, things will go well. I’m excited to help kids face their challenges and figure out their own ways to become more independent.”

“(Lewiston) school district is amazing. Their training for teachers, their resources, opportunities, and just the friendly camaraderie of everybody who’s been here for a while. . . It’s just been amazing,” Job said.

At Sherwood Heights Elementary School, Kristen Archer is undergoing a transition similar to Job’s. Archer will begin her 13th year of teaching Wednesday, going from a special education classroom in Regional School Unit 4 in Wales to a regular one in Auburn.

“I am excited just to be able to have a whole group, a whole lesson to the whole class and be able to provide interventions in the classroom setting,” Archer said. “Everyone is really positive, friendly and welcoming in Auburn.”

Lewiston native Sadie Rouillard will begin her eighth year of teaching at Farwell Elementary School on Wednesday. She said she is most excited to see her students experience the joy of learning.

“I know June comes around and we’re always ready to go home and enjoy our summers, but there’s this really special excitement about opening the school again and the kids coming in,” Rouillard said. “Classroom is where teachers live for the next nine months. We get to see these kids every day, every morning, and send them home every night.”

“Just teaching and watching kids really absorb all of that learning. There’s nothing that feels better when you are teaching something and a child is able to connect with that, and experiences the excitement of understanding,” Rouillard said.