Teaching Students to Make the Right Choices, Even When Others Don’t

Celebrating the Art of Teaching, One Educator at a Time

We’ve been publishing educator stories through our guest blogging program, The Art of Teaching, for nearly eight years. Educators from all over the country (even the world) have shared their perspectives on what makes teaching so deeply fulfilling despite the seemingly never-ending challenges.

We want to pause a moment and celebrate them individually. Every one of these teacher bloggers has unique strengths that make teaching a true art form. We’re sitting down with them to find out what brought them to education and how they refine their practice.

Today, we spoke with Stacie White, a Career and Technical Education teacher with experience in remote teaching, special education, and language education.

What path did you take to your current role in education?

I began teaching in 2004 after I graduated from college with a degree in Spanish. I started teaching at the same school I graduated high school from only four years prior. I was teaching Spanish 1 and 2 to my friends’ younger brothers and sisters— the same friends I had sleepovers with as a child and the same friends whose parents were still in my parent’s Sunday School class at church.

I look back on that time, and I cringe. I was an awful teacher, like the worst. However, my connections with the community (even though embarrassing) were ultimately what saved me. As a teacher of a foreign language and not a core subject, I had to hold my classes in other teachers’ rooms while they had their conference periods. The school counselors who also knew my family personally designed my schedule so that I floated into classrooms with veteran teachers who could help me grow. One of them was the most incredible teacher I have ever been blessed to observe. We have been married for eighteen years now, and I am still learning from him. Our journey has taken us from Louisiana to the DFW Metroplex, and now to East Texas to raise our three beautiful children and two bonus children. As my husband has moved into the administrative side of education, we have followed his career path. With a growing family, I began teaching online through Texas Connections Academy. Eventually, as our kids grew to become school-aged, I accepted a Special Education Reading Resource and Inclusion position at our local junior high (seventh and eighth-grade campus) and after a couple of years moved into my favorite spot: a career explorations course called Project Success.

Can you describe a time you felt you made a big impact on a student’s life?

When I went back into a brick-and-mortar school after being online for eight years, I started working specifically with special education students. These students in particular were in the seventh and eighth grades, but for whatever reason, were still on a first and second-grade reading level. The position I was in had been a revolving door. In fact, I was only brought in because my husband found out in a principals’ meeting that the teacher hired for that year quit three days after school started, and there had been a different sub in there every day since. They were a hard group of kids. Many of them had issues that stemmed from prenatal drug and alcohol use, and they knew it. Some of them were transfers from other districts as their migrant parents were always on the move. And, some of them barely knew their own mothers because their moms were working three jobs just to make ends meet.

How was I going to grow this class to even just be working literate? I could manage a class, but I had never taught anyone to read before. Trying to get them to do anything outside of school was pointless. They were trying to feed and bathe siblings in the evenings, not to mention themselves.

My dad always told me that the smartest person in the world doesn’t know everything, they just surround themselves with people who do. So, I made some calls and was able to get a specialized curriculum that would meet each student at their individual level. After some training, late nights, and programmed routines for station changes on my classroom Alexa, our classes ran like a well-oiled machine. But, the best part is that their reading levels were growing! As we worked through reading groups, we shared wins. We high-fived each other and encouraged one another. The kids began to see how the program was working and took ownership of their learning. It was truly amazing. I became so close with that group of kids, I cried on the last day of school, and so did some of my students! I didn’t want it to end. This coming year, those kids will be seniors, and many of them have been moved into an inclusion setting instead of a resource because they are now on-level with their peers.

They are the real heroes of this story. Their hard work and dedication are inspirational, and they opened my eyes to see the bigger picture in education: getting our kids job-ready.

What do you want parents and your community to know about Career and Technical Education (CTE)?

CTE provides so many more opportunities than most people know about! In our career explorations course, we research different occupations, some that need additional collegiate training and some that only require trade school training or none at all.

Gone are the days when CTE was only for non-college-bound students. Even if a student has aspirations of attending a university for a field that requires it, he or she can still learn a trade in high school. Then, instead of getting a job in college that only pays minimum wage, they are working the same amount or less and getting two to three times more each paycheck.

As a teacher, I have two degrees and the student loans that accompany them. Almost all of the careers in our CTE program enable students to graduate high school certified in a field where they START OUT making more than I do as a nearly twenty-year veteran teacher. What’s even better? No student loans!

These careers are never going to go away either. People will always need electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC, police and firefighters, medical assistants, entrepreneurs, chefs, etc… The demand for certified people in CTE career fields is growing daily.

What does the “Art of Teaching” mean to you?

There was a time at the end of my first year of teaching when one of my Spanish 2 students (a senior in high school) was about three points shy of having an A in our class, even though she was a really great student. One day close to graduation she and a couple of her closest buddies begged me for something that she could do to raise her grade three points. I was struggling to balance my age with my classroom “power,” and I turned them down saying that she should have done better on her assignments. She earned what she earned. A few days later at graduation, that same student was crying when she stood up to be saludictorian and not valedictorian. Turns out that Spanish 2 was the only B she’d ever received. While I was reflecting with my then-boyfriend (now husband), he asked me why it was so important that she not be given an opportunity to make up that grade if she was willing to put in the work. I explained that I was teaching her to work harder and not to wait until the last minute. He very plainly told me that I definitely made an impact in her life that she wouldn’t soon forget, but it wasn’t the lesson I was trying to teach. I had the choice to build a lasting relationship by showing compassion, but I chose instead to throw my weight around disguising it as a “lesson.”

My student isn’t the only one who won’t forget what happened that year. I had to reevaluate my priorities. From that point on, I made it my mission to create relationships through curriculum, no matter what curriculum I was teaching. Spanish, though a wonderfully beautiful and useful language, isn’t necessary in the grand scheme of living a happy and healthy life. Math, language arts, and science are all really great and useful subjects! But, is anyone on their deathbed ever going to say, “Man, I wish I knew more math in my lifetime?” No. It’s the relationships that we make with our students that will make the most impact on their lives. To me, that is the essence of the art of teaching. Building lasting relationships that teach our kids how to treat others with respect, how to work as a team, and how to make the right choices even when others don’t.

Stacie White is a wife, mother, and 20-year veteran teacher. She has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from LSU-Shreveport and a master’s degree in Teacher Leadership from Lamar University. You may see her cheering her 5 kids on from the sidelines, the stands, the audience, or grading papers while waiting for them in the car. In her spare time Stacie teaches Project Success and Spanish 1 at Pine Tree Junior High School in Longview, Texas.

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To be reminded why your work is so very important and for more stories and advice, visit our collection of teacher perspectives at The Art of Teaching.

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