We Can: A New Chapter, 37 Years in the Making

As Missy Weddle steps into a new role leading CA’s lower campus, she’s carrying forward a lesson learned through decades of teaching, mentorship, and faith: we were never meant to do it alone.

When Tom Fogg called Missy Weddle into his office, she wondered what she’d done wrong.

Then he asked her a question she wasn’t expecting…

What did she think about administration?

Missy laughed.

“Really? Are you kidding me?”

She had already spent years doing what she loved: teaching. Administration wasn’t something she’d been pursuing.

But Tom saw something in Missy that she hadn’t yet seen in herself.

Today, as Missy enters her 37th year at Collegedale Academy and steps into an expanded role as principal of CA’s entire lower campus, that moment feels especially fitting.

Because when Missy looks back at the path that brought her here, she sees a pattern.

Again and again, someone was there to remind her:

You can.

A Calling That Started Early

Long before Missy thought about becoming a principal (or even officially decided to become a teacher), working with children seemed to come naturally.

Growing up in Ohio, she remembers being asked to help with younger children during camp meeting. A friend once asked how Missy seemed to know exactly what to do and say.

Missy wasn’t sure.

“I think it’s always been in me,” she remembers.

Her grandmother had been her teacher, and eventually Missy found her way to Southern Adventist University and education.

Student teaching brought her to the same school system where she still serves today.

Then, shortly after graduation and her honeymoon, an opportunity appeared.

CA needed another teacher.

Missy was hired on a Thursday. School started Monday.

On Sunday, fellow teacher Betty Swafford sat down with her for about four hours and helped her get ready.

Missy remembers doing exactly what Betty told her to do.

It was a small act of mentorship that helped launch a career. And Missy stayed.

She would spend 25 years in the classroom, teaching kindergarten, third grade, sixth grade, and in other roles before another unexpected opportunity came along.

Someone Saw a Leader

When Tom Fogg suggested administration, Missy’s first instinct may have been to laugh, but eventually, as she puts it, her “wheels started turning.”

She began serving as vice principal while continuing some teaching responsibilities and discovered something new about herself.

She loved solving problems.

How could something work more efficiently? How could they save time? How could they make things easier and better for the people around them?

Administration, it turned out, fit.

But Missy also remembers what made those early years possible: trust.

Tom gave her opportunities to lead. He handed responsibilities over to her. He reinforced a simple message: You’ve got this.

At the conference office, Kim Thompson became another source of support. Missy remembers knowing there wasn’t a question too silly to ask and that someone would be there to help her find an answer.

Little by little, the teacher who laughed at the idea of becoming an administrator grew into the leader others had already seen in her.

Learning to Trust

That doesn’t mean leadership became easy.

Missy’s first year as a full-time principal was the 2019–20 school year. Right when COVID arrived.

There may not have been a more fitting introduction to the unpredictability of school leadership. But through challenges large and small, Missy says one thing has sustained her: Prayer.

“You could not do this without prayer,” she says.

Every day can bring something different—a small problem or a big one. Missy doesn’t expect herself to immediately have every answer. Instead, she returns to what she knows.

“I know that this is God’s school. I know God put me here.”

When worry creeps in, she remembers the challenges that have already been worked through.

“He’s always worked it out before. I know He will this time as well.”

That confidence doesn’t come from believing she can handle everything alone. Quite the opposite.

Now It’s Her Turn

This year brings another change.

Missy will lead CA’s entire lower campus, bringing early childhood through eighth grade together under one principal. For some, that might feel like an intimidating new challenge. But Missy sees something familiar.

She remembers the years when the school operated as K–8. Rather than focusing on what is changing, she’s excited about what can now come together.

She talks about removing the invisible line that once separated elementary and middle school and seeing the lower campus as one big family. Not elementary and middle.

Us.

Ask Missy what a thriving lower campus looks like, and she doesn’t begin with test scores or perfectly organized hallways. She talks about laughter, movement, activities, happy sounds, and parents happy at drop-off.

In fact, she jokes that she gets a little worried when things look too tidy. A busy school is a school where people are preparing, creating, and doing things together.

And when challenges arise, Missy’s instinct is still to ask how things can work better and how she can make life a little easier for the people around her.

We Can

That brings Missy to her hope for this school year.

CA’s theme is rooted in Philippians 4:13: We can do all things.

And Missy is very intentional about one word.

We.

Not I can.

We can.

“We might need to help each other,” she explains. “You can help me, I’ll help you. But the attitude of ‘we can’ is my goal for this year.”

It’s a simple message. But after 37 years at Collegedale Academy, perhaps few people understand it better than Missy.

A teacher gave up hours on a Sunday to help prepare her for her first classroom.

A principal recognized a leader she hadn’t yet recognized in herself.

Mentors trusted her, answered questions, and gave her opportunities to grow. Her faith taught her that she didn’t need to have every answer because God had been faithful before.

And now Missy gets to be that person for someone else.

These days, one of her favorite parts of being at CA happens when former students return to campus. At Kindergarten Roundup, she sometimes looks at the parents walking through the doors and recognizes the children she once taught. Only they’re not children anymore. They’re bringing their own children to CA.

Thirty-seven years after others invested in a young teacher who was still discovering what she was capable of, Missy is now helping lead the school those former students are entrusting with the next generation.

And as another school year begins, her story offers a fitting reminder for all of us.

There will be new opportunities. New challenges. Moments when students, teachers and families need someone beside them saying, You’ve got this.

That’s what “we can” looks like. One person believing in another. One generation investing in the next. And an entire school community trusting that, with Christ, none of us has to face what’s ahead alone.

In many ways, Missy’s story reflects what it means to be Rooted. Ready. Reaching. Rooted in faith and a community that has shaped her for 37 years. Ready to step into each new opportunity God places before her. And reaching forward as she continues investing in the students, teachers, and families who will carry CA’s mission forward.

Here’s to a new year at CA, and all that we can do together.