Biography

I graduated from Port Neches Groves High School in 1998. I took one year off of school, before going to East Texas Baptist University to start my undergraduate degree. I transferred to Blinn Jr. College in Bryan, Tx, and then to Lamar University. I have also attended Lamar Port Arthur and Lamar Orange. Even though I took a year off of college I was still able to graduate within 4 years and finished my teaching certificate one semester after that. I took 12 to 15 hours of college in the summer and sometimes up to 21hrs of college in the Fall or Spring. Lamar Beaumont wouldn’t let me sign up for 21hrs, so I took 18hrs from Lamar Beaumont, and another 3 hrs from Lamar Orange. I took these large amount of hours while working a job that I was on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There were times that I would get called out to work on my way home from school. I would do my homework after a job and usually get called out again at night. It was normal for me to go one to three days at a time without getting any sleep. I did this because I was motivated to finish my degree and begin my life as an educator. I graduated from Lamar University in December of 2002. I substituted for Port Arthur School District that Spring. I felt like if I could handle being a sub for Port Arthur, I could handle being a teacher anywhere. I was requested by many teachers to sub, and filled in for teachers for weeks at a time. This experience made me confident I could handle anything in the education field. I landed my first teaching job with Jasper Jr. High teaching 7th and 8th grade history and coaching football, baseball, basketball and track. Jasper’s TAKS scores raised over 10% the years I taught there. There score dropped 7% the year I left. I enjoyed coaching at Jasper, and we were very successful. In the two years I coached football there, the team made it to the State Semi-Finals and to the State Championship game. It was a great learning experience for me. I started teaching and coaching at Bridge City my third year. I have taught 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th grade History. I have not had one student fail the TAKS test since I have been at Bridge City. 100% of my students passed the TAKS test with an average of 50% to 60% getting commend performance every year. I coached Varsity Football, Track and am the Head Boys and Girls Powerlifting coach. I was in charge of all off-season and summer workouts and conditioning for the football team. I also organized a lift-a-thon and Strong Man contest against a local school that raised $8,000’s to buy new weight equipment that we severely needed. I had a hard time giving up teaching and coaching to become the Assistant Principal at the Middle School in 2008. It has been a fun experience so far. I feel as though we have done a good job instilling discipline at the Middle School. I am happy I made the move, because I feel like this is what I was meant to do. Even though we have had to overcome our obsticles, including a new Principal, Assistant Principal, 2 secretaries a new counselor and being flooded by Ike, it has been a relatively smooth year.