Erin Floyd
I think the thing that really sets us apart is just how supportive we are as a community.
I’m from Ohio originally. I came to Goshen College in 2006. I grew up in kind of a Mennonite community and heard about Goshen, heard that it was a pretty liberal school as far as small private schools go. I came to visit and just fell in love with the school, first of all. I did all four years at GC and met my husband during college. He’s from Goshen.
I’m kind of a Jack of a few different trades at this time. I work at Maple City Market, which is a place that I just really love. I’ve been there kind of on and off for a couple years, between teaching. It’s just a place that I always come back to because of the awesome people who work there and the awesome people who come in. I just value that space that honors people and good food and the environment.
I’ve taught in the Goshen school system for five years – three years at Goshen Middle School, and two years as a Title 1 instructor at Chandler Elementary School. Loved that, but just never felt like classroom teaching was quite the right fit for me.
Within the past couple of months, I started a private tutoring business. Tulip Tree Tutoring is the name of it. It’s just super cool, because I’m free to do what I think is appropriate and teach in a way that I think I should be teaching. I’m really loving it.
I’m on the Goshen Tree Board. That’s been really cool to do that. We get together and talk about ideas, mostly how to grow our canopy here in Goshen. We have the 45 by 45 goal – we would like to reach 45 percent canopy coverage in Goshen by the year 2045. It’s a pretty ambitious goal; We’re at, like, 20-something percent right now.
I’m part of the Bridge: Anti-Discrimination Network. We’re a network of resources in our community. We had the vigil. We’re planning a virtual anti-discrimination allyship workshop. We’re getting our feet under us right now. Mostly we just want to be a force for progress and also ensuring that people have access to all the resources already in our community that can help them.
I know when I’m wanting to start something new, or when I see someone else wanting to start something kind of new or adventurous, it’s going to be supported. I think it’s so cool how we have a real sense of shared values here in Goshen. I think that’s shown by how we interact as citizens. I’m also really proud of how our city government recently has been displaying, I think, the shared values we have as a community. Like with the formation of the Department of Environmental Resilience and the Mayor’s Arts Council. These values I think a lot of us share are supported by the businesses, by the citizens, by the government.
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