My mother always said that I became a teacher because I loved to chat, but more than that I loved to share. As always, my mother was right. She believed in me, as well as numerous Tyler ISD teachers (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 be their best every day! From my earliest memories I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. My bedroom closet served as a one-room school where I taught Raggedy Ann and Andy, a stuffed bear named Brown, and Cleo the Clown their ABCs and how to do addition. In the fall of 1969, my mother enrolled me in kindergarten at Caldwell Playschool. I cried the entire first day after my mother dropped me off in my kindergarten class. Both Mrs. Albritton, my teacher, and my mother assumed it was due to missing my mother, however it was because I attended Caldwell Playschool to be the teacher, not a student. However, it wasn't until I walked into Mrs. Estelle Barber's fourth-grade classroom at Bell Elementary School that I fell in love....