Everyone knows being an educator isn’t the most lucrative calling. But the drive to teach continues to lead some of our neighbors from established business careers to education.
When the Region 10 Teacher Preparation and Certification (TPC) program started with the 1992-93 school year, 53 interns were certified through the program. Since that time, about 2,000 more teachers have been certified.
Reasons for the switch to teaching vary, from being unchallenged by an old job to simply wanting something new. But what these new educators share is the desire to make a difference.
Neighborhood resident Debbie Overby is beginning her third year of teaching. Overby was manager of applications for information technology services at Hunt Oil when she decided to become a teacher after 18 years with that company.
With both of her parents retired career educators, she says, “education has always been close to my heart.”
“With my age and the turn of the millennium, I wanted to make a difference with my life.”
While working at Hunt Oil, Overby says she toyed with the idea of teaching, even taking a few education classes. She also started what has become the Partners in Education program at Hunt Oil, and she often volunteered to read to kids at Daniel “Chappie” James Learning Center during her lunch hours.
“I’d heard about the teacher shortage, especially of math teachers, and wondered why people weren’t becoming teachers, and decided that maybe I should,” Overby says.
Overby looked into Region 10 Teacher Certification Program and took the organizers’ suggestion to sign up for a stint as a substitute teacher before making the big leap into full-time teaching.
However, shortly after school started in August 2000, a math teacher at Westwood Junior High in North Dallas resigned, and Overby was called in to interview for the job.
So she met with her husband, Steve, for lunch, and together they made a quick decision: Overby began teaching ninth-grade Algebra I and Algebra IA, and eighth-grade Pre-AP Algebra I.
Overby says coworkers at Hunt Oil were supportive and gave her a going-away lunch and a gift basket full of school supplies.
“They were behind me 100 percent, and that meant so much to me,” she says.
She also credits other friends and family with helping her through the switch.
“My husband has been very supportive. We were at a place financially where it was an option,” Overby says. She says her parents had initial mixed feelings because they knew how difficult it was going to be, but they have since seen that she enjoys her new job.
The Region 10 program also matches new teachers up with mentor teachers. Overby says Steve Morris, her mentor and fellow math teacher, was “just invaluable. That first year you really need someone to guide you and show you the ropes and support and encourage you when you just seem overwhelmed, and he was willing to share his classroom, his materials, his advice. That was just an invaluable part of the experience.”
Despite the fun parts of teaching, Overby says the job is the most difficult and challenging thing she has ever done.
“Anyone who criticizes a teacher should have to teach for a week. Then I think teachers would get better paid,” she says.
Overby, who earned almost three times more money at Hunt Oil than she makes now, says she and her husband have had to budget their money more since she became a teacher.
She also had to drop singing in the Lake Highlands United Methodist Church choir because she simply did not have the time for it with all the demands of her new job, but says she is trying to work it back in to her schedule.
Overby admits there are some days when she wonders “what have I done?” but overall she’s enjoying herself. She has two children of her own: Peter, who will be in the eighth grade at Lake Highlands Junior High, and Andrew, a sixth-grader at Hamilton Park Pacesetter Magnet.
“You have to love kids to do this. I just love to see when the light comes on,” she says.
And she takes her position as a role model seriously.
“They understand that I’m trying to teach them more than math, but also values and ethics. You have to be a role model from the moment you walk in. Your smile might be the only one they see for the day.
“The longer I do this, the more I admire teachers who have been doing this for a long time. They’re the heroes.”
