Josie Manternach had a plan.
She knew it from high school, solidified it at Iowa State, and never once wavered: she was going to be an agriculture teacher. She was going to go back to Cascade. She was going to teach in the ag room where she had once begged to spend her study halls, and she was going to do it for the rest of her career.
By the time she was 24, she was doing exactly that.
And then, within the same month, her dream job opened and her husband got accepted into the Navy JAG program. Both of them. At the same time. Two Cinderella stories, as she put it, that couldn’t coexist.
What followed was five years of moves, career restarts, a pandemic, a newborn, a master’s thesis, and eventually a path back home that looked completely different from anything she had mapped out. And every single piece of it, she’ll tell you, made her exactly who she needed to be.
The Ag Room and the Teacher Who Changed Everything
Before we get to the military and the moves and the nonprofit world, we have to go back to the ag room at Cascade High School. Because that’s where this story really starts.
Josie describes her high school ag class and FFA experience as the place where she felt she truly belonged. Not in a passive way. In the way where you’re begging your teacher to let you spend your free periods there. In the way where you can picture, at 17, exactly the job you want to have for the next 40 years.
Her ag teacher, Milt Lockstead, was the person who made that happen. She cites him as the first in a line of mentors who shaped her sense of what education could be, alongside her advisors at Iowa State who pushed her toward research and a broader understanding of the field.
She never changed her major. Never second-guessed the path. Graduated, got her first teaching job at Aplington-Parkersburg, loved it, and then two years in, Milt announced his retirement. The position she had always imagined holding was suddenly open.
She applied. She got it. She was 24 years old and thought she was done deciding.
Two Cinderella Stories, One Very Big Decision
About a month after Josie accepted the position in Cascade, her husband Jared found out he’d been accepted into the Navy JAG program. Extremely competitive. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
And she had just accepted the position she had spent her whole career working toward.
They were both 24. They both said yes. And then they figured it out as they went.
The first year Jared did his training, Josie taught in Cascade. They lived separately and navigated it. And then, in year two, COVID ended the school year early, and Josie moved to Washington, DC, without a plan, without a job, without her people, and into a tiny apartment right off Capitol Hill, across from Nationals Park.
“The world was so big,” she told me. “You’re in Cascade and you know everybody. And then suddenly you’re in DC and you know no one.”
Starting Over. And Over. And Over.
What I find so remarkable about Josie’s story is not that she had to start over. It’s how many times she had to do it, and what she found each time she did.
In DC, she subbed, networked over virtual coffee (because COVID), and eventually landed a middle school science teaching position at a large, highly diverse school in Maryland. She had never seen herself in that role. She loved it. She learned things she couldn’t have learned anywhere else.
Then came Florida. A new duty station, a new city, a new job search, a new community to build from scratch. And five weeks into Dolan’s life, she flew with a newborn to Florida alone while Jared drove the car behind a moving truck.
“You just find your favorite restaurants, your people, your workout place, your job,” she said. “And then you’re asked to uproot and do it all over again.”
What she learned from military life about community is one of the most transferable things in this whole conversation. Because when everyone around you is in the same position, when everyone is new and doesn’t know anyone, the walls come down fast. You go to birthday parties for kids you just met because there’s no family nearby to invite. You join a workout class because it’s the fastest way to find people who might become your people.
She brought that lesson back to Cascade with her, and I think it’s one that rural communities could apply more broadly: belonging doesn’t just happen. Sometimes you have to build it actively, even in the place you grew up.
The Thesis, the Toddler, and the Nights at the Computer
During their time in Florida, Josie started working at the University of North Florida, finally getting her feet into the higher education world she’d been curious about since her research work at Iowa State. And she decided to pursue her master’s degree through Ohio State remotely, in ag education with a communication and leadership focus.
And she chose to write a thesis. Not a creative component. A full research thesis.
This is not a small thing. A thesis means a year-long research project, a lengthy paper, and a defense. And she was doing it while working full time, raising a toddler, and living in a city where she and Jared had no family nearby to lean on.
Her days looked like this: work, come home, do the walk with Dolan, make dinner, put Dolan to bed, go back to the computer and work until late. Saturdays fully dedicated to research. Sunday mornings protected. Sunday afternoons, back to the computer.
Her thesis examined whether teachers’ confidence was built through using social media for professional development, with a focus on agriculture educators who are often isolated as the only ag teacher in their district. (The findings: no direct correlation, but younger and female teachers use social media for professional development significantly more than their older and male counterparts. Fascinating, and not entirely surprising from where I sit.)
The day she defended it, she said, was one of the proudest moments of her life.
Coming Home, and Finding the Work She Was Made For
After five years of military life, Josie and Jared came back to Cascade. And she’ll tell you that transition home was its own adjustment, one she hadn’t fully anticipated. When you’ve been away for five years, building yourself in new places, coming back to a place that stayed the same while you changed is its own kind of recalibration.
She landed at the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, serving a seven-county region across Northeast Iowa. And the work she does there is the clearest example I’ve seen in a long time of a person’s whole life story converging into a single role.
Her education portfolio includes the Every Child Reads campaign focused on third grade literacy, a dyslexia tutoring initiative, rural teacher retention work, childcare initiatives, and the grad partnership program focused on belonging and agency among students and staff.
The dyslexia piece is the one I keep coming back to. In 2024, a donor came to the Foundation because his granddaughter was dyslexic and there were no local tutoring services in Dubuque. The closest option was a 90-minute drive to Cedar Rapids. So the Foundation convened a community conversation to assess the need. The response was overwhelming. People showed up to say: this gap cost me. This gap cost my child. We need this here.
The Foundation partnered with Aspire Academy to bring services to Dubuque. They cover the cost of tutor training and certification, and they offer scholarships so cost isn’t a barrier for families.
Two years ago, there were zero dyslexia tutors in the Dubuque area. Today there are 24, serving 47 students weekly, with a wait list.
That’s what it looks like to identify a gap, convene the right people, and move.
Flexibility Over Perfection
When I asked Josie what she’s found about herself through all of this, she didn’t hesitate.
Flexibility over perfection.
She had a picture-perfect plan at 22. And life handed her something better: range. Perspective. The ability to walk into a room anywhere and find the people, build the community, do the work. The knowledge that diversity of experience makes you smarter and more useful and more empathetic to the people you’re trying to serve.
Every step she took that felt like a detour turned out to be part of the same road.
Find Josie and the Community Foundation
You can learn more about the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque and connect with Josie at dbqfoundation.org. If you’re an educator in the seven-county region and want to be part of the Rural Teacher Summit this summer at Camp Little Cloud in Epworth, keep an eye on their site for details.
And if this episode resonated with you, send it to someone who is right in the middle of a plan falling apart. It might be exactly what they need to hear today.
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