NEWS A Texas Team Ag Ed Publication
May 2019
#TammyTalks
Tammy Christian, Penelope
I hope you all have had a few days to rest, relax and spend time with your families. I hope you had a chance to read Barney’s legislative update email a few days ago. The days are ticking off for this legislative session. While the House school finance bill passed, the Senate has not passed anything on it yet. It will be interesting to see what happens, and we will keep our fingers crossed. Continuing my journey.... things started falling into place. I was able to pass the ExCet and get certified in Life/Earth Science. I continued to teach 7th and 8th grade science along with Ag. After several years of being back at Penelope, the Superintendent I had started teaching under left, and things started changing a bit when the new Superintendent arrived. He took an interest in the program and in me. He bumped me up from an 11-month contract to a 12. I got a phone in the Ag building as well as a computer. I felt like I had won the lottery! The program was starting to
come together and have some of the success I had wanted for my home town school. We started a booster club and had a group of hard-working parents. We had quite a few students involved in showing cattle as well as other things. In 1999-2000 Penelope FFA had our first state officer. It was an exciting time to say the least. Teaching in my hometown had been a great experience, but a part of me felt like I needed to challenge myself a bit. I did not want to become so comfortable that I quit challenging myself and doing a good job. I interviewed at a neighboring school for a Jr. High Science position. I can remember returning home and discussing the interview with my husband. His words “you are not ready to not be an Ag Teacher” and he was right, I was not! To be continued…. I simply cannot get over how fast this spring is moving! We are just over a month away from completing this school year and I feel like I still have a lot left! I am in the middle
of preparing for Area Degree Check and Convention and planning our banquet. This is always a stressful time as we work to have our students prepared for awards and scholarships to recognize and reward all their work. While Penelope is a very rural area, I have fewer students who can do traditional animal SAE’s, so I must do a better job of being more creative with SAE’s. SAE’s are very important and probably the part of the threering model that most of us struggle with. We owe it to our Continue on page 2