Every new school year is a beginning. That’s true for some more so than for others.

Take Lacey Phelps. The new fifth-sixth English language arts teacher at Boothbay Region Elementary School has just started her first year as a Maine classroom teacher, her first year living in Bath and her first year shepherding her sons, 9-year-old Casey and 7-year-old Myer, through their new school as well. Casey is a third-grader at the elementary, while Myer is in first grade.

Phelps’ husband, Jeremy, is an English teacher at Lisbon High School. It’s a first year there for him, too.

At the end of Phelps’ second week on the job, she was ready to register a verdict: “I love it.”

Phelps replaced the retired Cathlene Parkhurst. “Once I got to know my kids, it became comfortable. Seeing them understand and engage makes it all worth it.

“The kids make it easy. They’re so inquisitive. They opened right up.”

She said her approach in the classroom is discussion-based — to draw the students out socially and to stimulate critical-thinking skills. “Some of it is informal — ‘let’s talk, let’s chat,’” said Phelps, who grew up in Brownville. “I like discussion, because it leads to answers: ‘Why did we choose this?’ ‘What were we thinking about here?’”

She also wants to leverage technology with her students, turning them on to podcasts and audiobooks. That’s inspired, in part, by her daily trips to Boothbay Harbor and back to Bath with Casey and Myer. “We listen to a lot of audiobooks,” she said.

Phelps and her family came to the area from Washington County.

“We wanted to look for an area that would give us small-town exposure but also access to things that would be new to us,” she said.

The family seems to have hit the jackpot in that regard. Myer excitedly told a classroom visitor about the best part of the new house in Bath: “It has an upstairs!”

Phelps grinned. “We had a ranch-style house before.”

Phelps graduated with her bachelor of arts degree in liberal studies from University of Maine-Augusta this year. She previously worked in the Title I program at Calais Elementary. Now, as she continues her transition into leading a classroom, she said the difficult part is fixating on a lesson plan.

“That’s the hard part of ELA (English language arts),” she said. “There are so many options. But it’s a good problem to have.”