My mother always claimed that I became a teacher because I loved to talk, but more than that, I loved to share. As always, my mother was right. She believed in me, as well as many of the teachers at Tyler ISD (TJ Austin, Bell, Moore, Robert E. Lee) who educated me and for that I will be grateful! I want to believe in my students and encourage them to give the best of themselves every day! From my earliest memories, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. My bedroom closet served as a one-room schoolhouse where I taught Raggedy Ann and Andy, a teddy bear named Brown, and Cleo the Clown their ABCs and how to add them. In the fall of 1969, my mother enrolled me in kindergarten at Caldwell Playschool. I cried the whole first day after my mother walked me to my kindergarten class. Mrs. Albritton, my teacher, and my mother assumed it was because I missed my mother, but it was because I was going to Caldwell Playschool to be the teacher, not a student. Nonetheless, it wasn't until I walked into Ms. Estelle Barber's fourth grade class at Bell Elementary School that I fell in love....