Jessica Hoskinson (’05)

A day in the classroom of Jessica Hoskinson (’05) is unlike that in most other high schools. There is no chemistry, no algebra, no foreign language or essay writing. Instead, the curriculum centers around more fundamental skills, such as hand-washing, teeth-brushing, communication, and basic academics.

Miss Hoskinson teaches children and young adults with severe mental and physical disabilities at a public school in Anaheim, Calif. Her students range cognitively from the level of six months to three years old. Most are non-verbal, and all require assistance with even the most basic tasks, from eating to using the restroom.

This is not the job Miss Hoskinson had in mind when, at age 18, she envisioned a life of action and adventure on the high seas. It is better. “I would say that joy is the underlying feeling that I have when I work here,” she says — a deep, gratifying, profound sense of joy that she has rediscovered after many years of searching.

The College Try
Growing up the second of three in a Catholic family in Anaheim, Miss Hoskinson remembers a carefree childhood and happy home life characterized by a love of books and nature. She attended public schools all the way through high school, where she was active in various extracurricular activities as well as in her parish’s youth group.

Yet when it came time to graduate in 1995, like many young people today, she would make a series of decisions that she would later come to regret.

During her senior year, Jessica’s father, an avid reader with a keen interest in the great books, suggested Thomas Aquinas College. So did her parish’s youth minister, who talked up the College’s classical curriculum and its strong Catholic culture. “But I already had this other dream,” she explains. “I was going to go into the Coast Guard.” Young, idealistic, and imbued with a strong sense of civic duty, “I wanted to do something kind of adventurous,” she says. “And I wanted to save people.”

That dream, however, was briefly deferred. Uneasy about making the four-year commitment that the Coast Guard required, Jessica opted for what she thought would be the safe route. She enrolled in a public university in Northern California that she chose, she admits, primarily for “some superficial reasons” — namely, the weather and the scenery. The environment did not disappoint; the academics were another story.

In her second semester, Miss Hoskinson enrolled in a “World Religions” course in which the professor, using sophistical arguments and misappropriated verses of Scripture, purported to “disprove” the Holy Trinity. “That brought my whole world down,” she recalls. In short order, she lost her faith as well as her joy — although at the time she saw no connection between the two. “I just got depressed,” she says. Neither edified nor enlightened by her classes, she dropped out at the end of the year, “never wanting to read another book again.”

Rough Waters
After a year of disappointment in college, the thought of committing to four years in the Coast Guard no longer seemed so daunting. So in 1997 Miss Hoskinson enlisted, hoping that a life of fast boats and heroic rescues would relieve her sorrows. It did not.

The military culture was hard, aggressive, and not, she found, a good fit for her reserved, compassionate temperament. After boot camp, she was stationed at U.S. Coast Guard Station Grays Harbor in Westport, Wash., where, amid the Pacific Northwest’s many storms and rough waters, she discovered an unwelcome proclivity to seasickness.

Off-duty, the circumstances were little better. The culture of the base, for the most part, was bawdy and raucous. “Having lost your faith before you go into the military isn’t really the best way to start into this really amoral atmosphere,” she says ruefully.

Still, the greatest hardship of that time was not professional but personal. The day Miss Hoskinson set out for boot camp, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer; she passed away some 18 months later. Grieving, away from her faith and her family, Miss Hoskinson was sadder than ever.

New Directions
The silver lining to this otherwise dark time is that while at Grays Harbor, Miss Hoskinson’s thoughts turned once again to the Triune God her professor had claimed to debunk just a few years earlier. Suffering can have that effect, as did her occasional brush with mortality on dangerous search-and-rescue missions. This spiritual reconversion was by no means instantaneous. “I didn’t reform my life right away,” she observes, “but I started to think maybe I should go to confession, maybe I should try going to church again.”

There was also another upside: “One great thing about being completely miserable and stuck in it is that you have great clarity,” Miss Hoskinson laughs. “You know exactly where you would rather be and what you would rather be doing!” The sense of intellectual emptiness she felt since her year in college, combined with the unhealthy moral life on the base, left her with a craving to seek truth, preferably in a more wholesome environment. “I knew by this point in my life what I wanted in a college,” she says.

She began to daydream of studying philosophy and theology, and found herself drawn to that small, Catholic, great books school her father and youth minister had recommended back when she was still in high school. She would wistfully look up the Thomas Aquinas College website on the Internet and count the days until her discharge from the Coast Guard.

Shortly after her mother’s death, Miss Hoskinson was transferred to U.S. Coast Guard Station Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, Calif. Little did she know, she was only 25 miles away from campus.

One evening at the station, during one of her periodic visits to thomasaquinas.edu, something on the computer screen stood out — the mountains in the background of the campus photos. “I thought, ‘I’ve seen those mountains before. Where have I seen those mountains?’ Then I looked out the window, and I could see the mountains! And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m here, I’m already here! The College is right there, calling me!’”

Soon after, she came to campus for a three-day visit. “I knew quickly that this is where I belonged,” she remembers. “I realized that this school and its confident search for truth was what I was really seeking.” In the fall of 2001, at the age of 23 — just three days after her Coast Guard commitment expired — Miss Hoskinson matriculated as a freshman.

The transition from military to student life was challenging, she admits, but also graced. “I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be,” she recalls. “I was surrounded by good people, and I was studying good things.” With the help of one of the College’s chaplains, she was also able to begin to overcome the loss of her mother. “He was really helpful to me in starting to grieve in a healthy, faithful way.”

In studying theology Miss Hoskinson came to fall more thoroughly in love with God, thus engendering what she describes as “a deep desire to serve.” At the same time, through studying the human soul and human nature, she developed a greater regard for the dignity of all persons that now informs her work as a special-needs teacher.

“To work in special education, you almost have to be a Christian,” she says. “To be able to see a beautiful soul where maybe a beautiful mind and body are lacking, and to not just pity them for what they lack or when they are suffering..… When I see these kids with minds that aren’t fully developed and bodies that have all kinds of problems, I can still see a wholly human soul and a beautiful child of God before me.”

Finding Hope and Joy
Upon graduating from the College in 2005, Miss Hoskinson returned to her family home in Anaheim. Unsure of what to do next, but with a newfound interest in education, she began substitute teaching at local high schools. Then, one day in February 2006, she got a special-education assignment that would prove providential.

“I fell absolutely in love with the kids, and with the staff, and with the whole environment,” she says. Two weeks later, she took a job as an instructional assistant. She has since earned a teaching credential and a master’s degree, and is now a fully credentialed special-education teacher, managing a classroom with three full-time aides. To hear her tell it, she has never been more joyful: “What I really love about my work is the one-on-one interaction I get to have with the students. I get to make this real connection with these people who need that kind of connection because they can’t really go out and make it for themselves.”

Which is not to say her job is easy. Her patience is often tested. Sometimes classroom situations can be alarming, such as when a student has a seizure. Moreover, there have been a few episodes of student violence. “Yet even on my hardest, worst, most miserable day at work — and there are some really hard days — I’ve never questioned whether it’s the right place for me,” she says. That confidence comes, she finds, from the words of Christ Himself: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40).

“My students are ‘least’ in so many ways — in intellect, in physical ability, in emotional ability, in communicative ability,” she says. “And yet, they’re incredible in so many ways. I see the face of Christ so clearly in them.”