Kaye Historillo

Kaye Historillo

After working in the Surrey public school system, Kaye Historillo says working in a Catholic school feels like coming home.

Historillo initially took a public school job after graduating from teaching school during the COVID pandemic. She had felt some anxiety about getting a job and accepted the first offer that came along.

While she doesn’t think the three years she spent in public education were wasted, she felt something was missing.

“I felt comfortable where I was; I had been happy to go with the flow,” she said. But something changed when she was able to spend a professional development day at St. Jude Elementary in Vancouver, where she had worked as an educational assistant before getting her teaching certification.

“As soon as I walked in the doors it felt like coming home,” she said. “It was an instantaneous, ‘why did I leave?’ feeling.”

Because it was the first Friday of the month, there was adoration in the chapel.

“Everyone was asking me, “Why are you not back (at the school) yet? And they told me I needed to go to adoration and pray about it.”

In prayer she heard “a lot of voices and noise,” she said. “But the answer from Jesus was clear, that it was time to come home.”

“The Holy Spirit gut-punched me in the best way possible,” Historillo said.

Historillo is teaching science and religion at Archbishop Carney Regional Secondary.