“I graduated college in ‘97 from University of Minnesota Southwest State,” explained Schneider. “I had a business degree and wanted my loans paid off.”

So, she joined the army.

“The military wasn’t even on my scope until probably my junior year,” said Schneider. It helped pay for college but there was another reason: “I had talked to a recruiter. I played softball with them in the summer and he kind of talked me into it. I was all about adventure.”

Before she left for basic training there were a few things she needed to do. One of them was to graduate; the other to get married.

“I got married my junior year, right before my Senior year, because I knew that being married would be able to get my husband out with me to wherever I was stationed,” said Schneider.

After she graduated, with her business degree in hand, she was sent off to basic training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

“I loved all the stuff we did,” said Schneider. “I was very active; I was in sports all my life and I grew up target shooting with my family.”

However, there were drawbacks.

“I was also a lot older than people,” Schneider said. “I graduated from college and most everyone I was with was right out of high school. There’s a lot of maturity differences when you’re a 22-year-old versus an 18-year-old.”

There was another step for Schneider after basic training; “I went down to Fort Gordon, Georgia, and did my computer training.”

She became a computer specialist, or a 74 Bravo, in communications. She ended up stationed at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“I worked in the computer room and so I did a number of different jobs,” said Schneider. “We did a lot of report running. Eventually, I moved into where I did all the approvals for any of the technology built or bought on base.”

There were some entertaining parts of the job.

“We got to monitor […] where anybody on base, including doctors, anybody, if they were on inappropriate sites. It would flag them, and we could shut them down,” Schneider said. “So that was kind of the fun part. I mean, people being on stuff they should not be is not fun. But I mean catching them [is].”

She left the army after two years for family reasons.

“I ended up getting pregnant, and our next stop on our rotation was to Korea,” said Schneider. “I could either go there, with a newborn son staying behind with my husband for a year, or I could take my family over there for two years. I didn’t really want to do either option and so I chose to get out.”

Her family decided to go back home and also where her parents lived—Albert Lea, Minnesota. Coming back here was never their plan, but DC was not a place they could raise their children. “Where my husband taught, it cost more for those kids to go to kindergarten than I paid for a year of college,” Schneider explained.

After they moved back Schneider decided to use her business degree.

“I started working for Americana National Bank,” Schneider said. “I was there for five years. I started off as a teller, and then I moved to lending.”

After those five years she spent another five at ABG Alliance Benefit Group.

“I was an account manager,” said Schneider. “I dealt with 401k plans for companies.”

After that she worked for AmeriNat for another five years. She started there she started off in Investor Accounting and Reporting and then moved to an Accounting Clerk position.

“By the time I left, there were 10+ bank accounts I was reconciling,” said Schneider.

After being in the business world for 18 years, she decided that there needed to be a change in her life and looked to teaching because of her family background.

“My mom was an options teacher at Southwest. My husband is an elementary teacher. My brother is a math teacher out in Colorado. So, it was just one of those things that I just felt might be my calling,” she said.

With all her education in business, you might be asking yourself why she chose not to teach Economics or math. For that Schneider has two reasons; “My brother is a math teacher […] and I listened to everything he went through,” she explained. “He had to pass a lot of stuff and that was a little more math than I wanted.”

The other reason was her mother, Linda Applegate, who worked in special education for 18 years.

“It was just that satisfaction that she had that [she] did something,” said Schneider. “It may not be for every student, but there were some that were impacted.”

Stephanie Schneider’s journey from the military to special education teacher is one for the books. She is a role model to her students and the people around her, and though her life may not have gone as her younger self planned, she shows us every day that you will end up where you’re needed most.