Top Teachers 2021

While our top teachers come from different backgrounds and experiences, they all share an immense passion for what they do. As the magazine has done in years past, we’re honoring 10 teachers across Greater Tarrant County.

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While our top teachers come from different schools — public and private — different areas of town — urban districts and rural areas — and different backgrounds and experiences, they all share an immense passion for what they do.

As the magazine has done in years past, we’re honoring 10 teachers across Greater Tarrant County. We began this process by asking our readers to submit votes through our website, fwtx.com, where students, parents, fellow teachers, and staff members can explain why their nominee is deserving. After collecting the nominations, we vet the final list through the teachers’ headmasters and principals.

Courtney McCartney has played an integral role in the growth of the Great Hearts charter school network. She started teaching second grade and later third grade for Great Hearts’ school in San Antonio. When the group looked to open in Fort Worth, McCartney became the third-grade team lead, moving to Cowtown to help launch the school last year in the middle of the pandemic.

“It was a wonderful year, even during COVID,” she says. “It was challenging, but the community we have is very positive.”

The fall semester began completely online. “That was a challenge in itself because I’m very big on relationships with my students,” McCartney says. “That initial meeting, when you get to see them and know them, that was hard on Zoom.”

But they made it through, and this coming school year, students will return for fully on-campus learning.

“One of my biggest strengths is my classroom management,” McCartney says. “Some students have gotten to know that I’m ‘stern but loving’ — that’s what one of them actually said. It was really sweet; she was saying, ‘You love us so much, and we know that, but you have expectations.’ Through all those expectations with a strong classroom management, that’s how my class succeeded.” 

McCartney won’t be returning to the classroom this year though — that’s because she got promoted, now working in administration as dean of students.

“At first, it’s hard to not think about that connection with all the kids in your classroom,” she says, “but I’m going to have that with the whole school now.”

Lindy Davis is not just a high school theater teacher but also chair of the theater department at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts. That means she’s overseeing operations, helping choose the theater season, and, of course, teaching during the day and heading to rehearsals in the afternoon or evening. 

Before joining FWAFA, Davis was an actress, singer, and director. She got a theater degree from TCU and stayed in Fort Worth since, working for various venues including Casa Mañana, where she participated in productions for 16 years, while also teaching there.

“As I was working, teaching was always an element to my career,” she says. “I just loved sharing the passion for my career.”

Seven years ago, she decided to pursue teaching at a greater capacity, specifically seeking out a fine arts school to work for. She landed at FWAFA, where now one daughter is an alumna and the other is a senior. 

“Helping a young life walk through these four years of high school and try to figure out what comes after — it’s such an important part of the discovery of your lifetime,” she says. 

For Davis, teaching is more than just imparting skills — or even becoming a better performer.

“I am a theater teacher, but I see it as my job just as much to [teach students to] be good human beings — not just good artists,” she says. “I take that very seriously in all the things that we do. My approach to teaching is to not walk in the room like I’m the smartest person there, but that we’re all on a journey together.”

With a degree and experience in math and computer science, Kymberly Ayodeji has spent a chunk of her professional career in front of a screen, analyzing data and sifting through numbers and spreadsheets.

But after a while, Ayodeji craved human interaction — something a little different that would give her more sense of purpose. 

“I’m just in front of a computer all day,” she says. “I was like, let me just give teaching a try.” 

She’d get a master’s degree in computational and applied mathematics from Rice University, where she also worked in the retention program for minority students in math, science, and engineering — along with teaching college algebra as an adjunct faculty member on the side. She “really liked the teaching part,” she says, and later landed in inner-city Houston to teach high school for the next 10 years. 

After a stint teaching overseas in Korea (yes, Korea), she was back in Texas, and The Oakridge School in Arlington was hiring. She’d spend three years there, teaching high school math and computer science.

But, true to her nature, Ayodeji can’t keep still for long. She’s taking a break from teaching this year to work as an analyst for a technology company. Still, she speaks fondly about her teaching experiences, hoping she left a mark on her students beyond just mere knowledge in science and mathematics. 

“I know that I’m teaching a course that not everyone wants to take or is excited about taking, [but] I want students to be able to leave that school year with problem-solving skills,” she says. “Yes, they will learn how to graph trigonometric functions by hand, and they’ll be able to understand the reflective property of conic sections, but at the end of the day, when they’re approached with a problem that may be challenging, trying to depend on the resources that they have … that’s my overall theme. You have to be problem solvers.”

When Karen González was little, she would spend her allowance at the teacher supply store, buying grade books, workbooks, and planners, and hosting a school in her garage with other kids in the neighborhood. 

“I’ve had it in my brain ever since I was a little kid that I was going to be a teacher,” she says.

Describing herself as a “Mississippi girl gone international,” González was born in the U.S. but moved overseas when her father’s job as a geologist for Exxon moved the family to Singapore. There, she became immersed in a multitude of cultures: “Different religions, culinary experiences … The people across the street from us were Swedish. The people next door were from Mumbai. The people on the other side were native Singaporians.”

She’d make her way back to the U.S. for college, though she didn’t pursue teaching just yet. When she found herself working for a day care, she realized how much she loved being with children, and her path toward a career in education began.

González now teaches at McLean Sixth Grade Center, a school focused on the pivotal grade between elementary school and junior high.

“They’re betwixt and between. Some of them are sitting on the living room floor at home still playing with Barbies and G.I. Joes and that sort of thing. Others are playing with them but hiding in their closets doing it. And others are wanting to date. There’s a huge difference in the maturity levels and the hormones and that kind of thing. It’s a bridge year. It’s fascinating to watch that,” González says. “Watching them grow emotionally, it’s a fascinating process. They change so much in sixth grade.”

Eva McCarty speaks both English and Spanish. But as a child growing up in Springtown, Texas, there were no Spanish nor English Second Language classes, nor did she have many friends at school she could converse in Spanish with. The only way McCarty could maintain her Spanish was through speaking it at home with her parents, immigrants from Mexico.

“At that time, they called it the ‘sink or swim,’” McCarty says. “I spoke English at school, but I spoke Spanish at home.”

For many immigrant children, it’s not uncommon to lose touch with one’s native language as they become immersed among English speakers, but McCarty credits her mother for keeping their culture alive at home, teaching her not just how to speak but also read in Spanish. It was her mother’s influence that eventually grew into a passion for bilingualism, prompting McCarty to earn a Spanish degree from the University of Texas at Arlington and pursue a career in education. 

Years later, McCarty would become part of the launch of North Hi Mount Elementary’s two-way program, placing Spanish-speaking students and English-speaking students in the same classroom, learning a bit of both languages. 

Approaching 25 years in her career, McCarty currently teaches kindergarten, saying the most rewarding part of teaching such a young age is watching the students’ growth, from not knowing how to read or write at the start of the year to seeing them doing so by the end of May — and what’s more, in two different languages.   

“You really can’t replicate that feeling,” she says.

Weird is how Larissa Sosa, a fourth-grade teacher at Trinity Valley School, describes her teaching style.

On any given day, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to see Sosa dressed up as Bob Ross, wearing a detective cap, or singing about the Texas history to the beat of the theme song from “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” (In case you were wondering, she shows her students clips of Bob Ross, so they are able to identify the ’80s public access channel star.) 

Sosa, who didn’t realize she wanted to be a teacher until her second year of college, regularly uses characters and puts on outlandish acts for her lessons — playing guitar and ukulele and randomly bursting out into song.

“I try to keep it light,” Sosa says. “I feel like school needs to be fun and engaging. I think that’s when kids learn best.”

This tactic makes the lesson memorable while creating a safe space for children to be goofy. Even when Sosa recounts a failed attempt to teach the geometric definition of “area” to the tune of Fun’s “We Are Young,” she can at least admit that students are now more likely to remember what “area” is.

“I think one of the most important things we do is modeling our own behaviors for kids,” Sosa says. “So, when we model empathy, respect, kindness, understanding, and being goofy and owning it, then those are the things we see reflected in our own kids.”

Nineteen years ago, Cindy Woodward, who’s currently the fine arts director and acting teacher at Southwest Christian School, was asked to start a drama club at SCS. Having been an actor herself — including starring in multiple productions at Casa Mañana and Bass Hall — and with a child on the way, Woodward not only took them up on their offer but convinced the school they needed an entire theater program.

“When I first arrived, they didn’t have any of the arts except choir,” Woodward says. 

So, Woodward, a first-time teacher, was charged with not only building the theater program but also building an arts program. 

Her theater class quickly took off. In her first year as the new theater teacher, she had nine students in her class. By the following year, she would have 120 students auditioning for the school play.

“There was such a hunger for [theater],” Woodward says. “It was really exciting to be a part of it at that ground level.”

An advocate for all arts — whose mantra is “we’re better together” — Woodward says she empowered the school’s understanding of the arts, and SCS now embraces it as a core element in the development of a child.

“In all industries, they’re hiring creatives right now,” Woodward says. “They’re looking for people who can engage and understand humanity. The important thing with acting is that it allows people to know who their audience is and engage with them. It makes people more empathetic. And that’s something that can help a person no matter what career they pursue.”

Vanessa Morales says the second grade is her niche. Since arriving at All Saints’ Episcopal School lower school 10 years ago, it’s the only grade she’s taught at the private school, and she’s never taught anything over third grade.

“I feel like, at this age, they still need me, yet they’re independent enough where we can have conversations,” Morales says. “They become far more inquisitive.”

Morales explains that in kindergarten, students learn phonics; in the first grade, they tackle reading; and in the second grade, well, that’s when students learn why they’re reading. As she puts it, second grade is a sweet spot.

Morales uses small groups and project-based learning for her class instructions. Rather than teaching from a textbook, students instead learn through active exploration of a problem or challenge that Morales poses to them. For instance, Morales will assign a small group of students a habitat such as a desert, and within that habitat students can explore and pose questions of their own, essentially leading their own learning through their inquiries. 

“While doing project-based learning, we’re not touching a textbook,” Morales says. “It’s all something they want to learn while also making sure that we’re covering all the things that we need to cover.”

To Morales, success looks different for every student. She’s had students who have come in who could barely read who, once they leave her class, are reading short stories. While there are others who entered her class reading at a third-grade level but leave reading at a fifth-grade level.

“It’s my job to push [students], challenge them, and even frustrate them into thinking ‘I can do this,’” Morales says. “That’s the most important part of my job.”

Joe Parthemore is no stranger to being recognized for his teaching chops. In 2018, the sixth-grade math teacher received the Region 11 Teacher of the Year award and was one of the top finalists for the state. He attributes these accolades to his teaching style, which is more applicable to real-life circumstances.

“I was always the kid asking why. Why are we doing this? Why are we learning this?” Parthemore says. “I’m more of a real-world, problem-solver type teacher. So, I enjoy making things really practical for the students, so they understand why they’re learning what they’re learning.” 

Applying this method to his math class — which includes teaching percentages, statistics, and data — Parthemore teaches strategies for students to find out how much they should tip without using a calculator and whether Amazon reviews are truly trustworthy.

“My hope is that students can see the connection of what they’re learning to stuff they can relate to in their lives,” Parthemore says. 

We’ve all seen certain word problems at some point in our own education journeys — “You have half a pizza, and you cut it into eight equal slices. What fraction does this create?”

“My students always react the same way,” Parthemore says. “‘I mean, don’t pizzas already come sliced?’ students ask. And I’m, like, ‘Yeah, this isn’t a very good word problem.’”

Using more relatable and modern ways to teach improves a student’s ability to grasp the concepts.

Parthemore made the jump from elementary school to middle school only a couple years ago, but he’s found his niche teaching those entering their teen years. Next year, Parthemore will be adding more on his plate when he begins teaching eighth-grade computer science in addition to his math class.

Lee Ann Mobley, who teaches special education at J.C. Thompson Elementary School (located in far North Fort Worth), wasn’t initially drawn to teaching. The 25-year teaching veteran went to college in Wichita Falls to receive a degree in psychology. As Mobley put it, one of her psychology classes made its students volunteer for a local organization, and Mobley chose Circle of Friends, where Mobley was paired with an adult with special needs. After this experience — along with volunteering at a special needs camp for many years — Mobley became inspired to devote her life to helping those with special needs.

Mobley has since taught at every level except middle school and has taught the entire spectrum of what one might call special education, including resource classrooms, life skills, classrooms with kids with autism, and job skills. 

Teaching special education presents a particular challenge for teachers and requires Mobley (along with her three paraprofessional teaching assistants) to apply various methods she’s picked up during her teaching career. These methods include structured teaching (which involves using a lot of visuals in a structured environment that promotes greater independence), applied behavior analysis, and teacher talk, which applies play-based learning.

Many students, when they enter Mobley’s classroom, arrive with no functional language, “but by the time they leave, they’re talking up a storm,” Mobley says. “While others might be using pictures or technology to communicate. The measure of success is really different for each kid.”

Even the slightest improvements and a consistent building of life skills are what will open a window of opportunity for Mobley’s youngsters.

“Ultimately, there should be expectations for these kids,” Mobley says. “They still can do things — we just have to figure out how they can do them.”  

---FOO BAR