WASHINGTON – Second Lady Karen Pence is returning to her passion: the classroom.

Pence, who who has illustrated children's books about the vice president and advocated for art therapy programs in her current role, is going back to the elementary school in suburban Virginia where she taught art for 12 years when Vice President Mike Pence served in Congress. She's also taught at public and private schools in Indiana.

“I am excited to be back in the classroom and doing what I love to do," Pence said in a statement. "I have missed teaching art."

Pence will teach art twice a week at Immanuel Christian School until May.

The private Christian school bans LGBT employees, gay students and the children of gay parents.

Under a parent agreement posted on the school's website, Immanuel can refuse admission to students who participate in, support or condone "sexual immorality, homosexual activity or bisexual activity." The school also can refuse admission based on similar "activities of a parent or guardian" or "within a particular home."

Her decision drew attention – if not shock – from advocates in the LBGT community. Rick Sutton, an LGBT advocate who co-founded Freedom Indiana, said the Pence family's stance against LGBT rights is well known, so he's not surprised by her decision to join the school. Mike Pence has long maintained that marriage is between a man and a woman.

After news reports highlighted the school's rules, Pence's spokeswoman Kara Brooks called it "absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school's religious beliefs, are under attack."

Pence got her undergraduate and graduate degrees in elementary education from Butler University in Indianapolis.

Teachers were her childhood heroes, according to Andrea Neal, author of "Pence: The Path to Power." Pence named her younger daughter, Audrey, after a favorite teacher. Older daughter Charlotte describes her mother as "a second-grade teacher at heart."

Charlotte, an author, collaborated with her mother on books for children about "Marlon Bundo," the family's pet rabbit.

Karen Pence does the watercolor illustrations for the books, the first of which described a day in the life of the vice president viewed through the bunny's perspective.

Pence played an instrumental role in the development of the art therapy program at the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis and has continued to promote the profession through her current position.

Pence's predecessor, Jill Biden, taught English full time at Northern Virginia Community College.

In a memoir coming out in May, Biden will talk about how she balanced life as a professor and the wife of a political figure, according to People magazine.

“I went to state receptions with the most powerful men on earth, then to study sessions with single mothers just hoping to get a job," Biden recalled in a speech last year. "There was a little nook on Air Force Two that contained the vice presidential seal, and I would sort of wedge myself in there and grade papers on the floor.”

Pence is a full political partner with her husband and takes her current role as seriously as she does her job of "mom" and "wife," according to Charlotte Pence.

"She is the strongest woman I know in her own right," Pence wrote of her mother in a book published last year, "and yet she is also one half of the strongest union I have ever known."

Contributing: Chris Sikich, USA TODAY Network.

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