STEPHENVILLE — Tamara Taylor loved high school.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say, she LOVES high school.
That’s where the Tarleton State University alumna will celebrate World Teachers’ Day today, Oct. 5, in front of her family and consumer sciences students at Boswell High School in the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District.
She wouldn’t spend the day anywhere else.
“I find myself being a high school kid every day,” she said. “I love it, and I love the up-and-down drama of watching my students grow socially.”
World Teachers’ Day is celebrated annually Oct. 5. The 2023 theme is “The teachers we need for the education we want: The global imperative to reverse the teacher shortage.”
Tamara graduated from Tarleton State in 1994 with a home economics degree. She turned her diploma into a career in education, one that has seen her earn recognition for her dedication to students. The Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers Association of Texas recently named her Teacher of the Year.
“I have daily opportunities to exemplify the skills to be a positive, productive, responsible, reliable and self-sufficient individual in society,” she said. “I want my students to not only understand the content I happen to be teaching that day or year, but learn how to set goals, formulate plans to achieve those goals, problem solve and manage their resources to become leaders in their homes, careers and community.”
Tamara’s journey to a career in education was not the route she planned. She initially headed to college in Idaho to rodeo and study accounting. Then she realized she didn’t like accounting.
“This was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
In a career explorations class she discovered she was a natural as a teacher. Maybe she was a natural for Tarleton, too, so she transfered. She had grown up in nearby Rio Vista and attended cheerleader camps in Stephenville.
She admired the campus, just as she would come to admire Dr. Mary Ann Block, a future major force in her life.
“They should make a statue of her and put it on campus,” Tamara said. “She was phenomenal. She not only taught us how to teach, she showed us how to teach. She made us see beyond the textbook.”
Tamara is passionate about the courses she teaches and how they impact the lives of her students.
“As a family and consumer science teacher, you teach life lessons,” she said. “We cover child development through geriatrics. We discuss budgeting, money management, time management, goal setting, decision-making, the importance of values and morals. We cover interior design, making a home a pleasant place, relationships, how to love yourself first.
“We teach the basics to just be a good person and how to apply what you’ve learned.”
She’s grateful for the opportunity to share her lessons with her children. Her son, Blake, is a certified diesel technician, and her daughter Tara Jo graduates from Tarleton in December with a degree in history and a plan to follow in her mother’s footsteps as an educator.
“I may take a moment and talk about my path and how excited I am,” Tamara said of her World Teachers’ Day plans. “My students make my world better. Working with them is the best.”
I know many great families that excel at home schooling, but read the story of this outstanding teacher, and see if home schooling could ever approach what she has done and is doing to instill excitement in kids lives.