{"id":27160,"date":"2019-05-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.tarleton.edu\/news\/tarleton-commencement-speaker-highlights-the-importance-of-teachers\/"},"modified":"2021-11-12T00:59:53","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T00:59:53","slug":"tarleton-commencement-speaker-highlights-the-importance-of-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/tarleton-commencement-speaker-highlights-the-importance-of-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarleton commencement speaker highlights the importance of teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/p>\n<p>Monday, May 6, 2019<\/p>\n<p>STEPHENVILLE, Texas &mdash;Karen Boyd Greenhaw is a seventh-grade math teacher at Henderson Junior High School in Stephenville.<\/p>\n<p>She knows the value of education, both personally and universally.<\/p>\n<p>She gets her master&rsquo;s degree in education at Tarleton State University College of Education Graduate Studies commencement exercises at 7 p.m. Friday, May 10, where she will also be the featured speaker.<\/p>\n<p>She plans to share with the audience the importance of her job.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very personal,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to figure out how I&rsquo;m going to get through it without being emotional.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The premise of the speech is that I got this degree for me, but in getting my master&rsquo;s for myself, I&rsquo;m really doing it for others. For my parents, for my kids, for my husband and for my students.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Karen came to Tarleton after graduating from Stephenville High School in 1991. She was a tennis player in high school and took lessons from some of the Tarleton players.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I kind of developed a relationship with the players and with coach (Dr. Craig) Clifford. When I graduated, I was given the opportunity to play a little tennis for Tarleton. That&rsquo;s what really drew me here.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>She competed for a couple of semesters before deciding she needed to work instead of play tennis.<\/p>\n<p>Now, besides teaching math, she coaches tennis and tutors young students, jobs she has prepared for at Tarleton.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always felt like my education here was relevant and the rigor was high,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It prepared me for what I was going to face, not just academically, but knowing I had the support of the community and everything that goes with it.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Her commencement address features some information about university founder and benefactor John Tarleton.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I found out he was a teacher, too,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We know as teachers we can change the lives of others. It&rsquo;s obvious how he&rsquo;s done that.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Her master&rsquo;s is the culmination of a desire to do more professionally and as a mom.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always wanted to get my master&rsquo;s degree. There are a lot of elements to it. I&rsquo;ve been teaching for 15 years, and along that time I felt like I&rsquo;ve missed some opportunities not having it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want any more of those opportunities to pass.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I have four boys, too, so it&rsquo;s personal. I did it to model for them.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>With her master&rsquo;s degree accomplished, what&rsquo;s next?<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tossed around the idea of a Ph.D., but at this point I think I just need to get through and reflect a little bit before I decide if I want to keep going.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Tarleton is part of a Texas A&amp;M University System statewide campaign, &ldquo;We Teach Texas,&rdquo; that encourages education as a career. A&amp;M System&rsquo;s 11 universities produce more fully certified teachers than any other university system in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Tarleton, founding&nbsp;member of The Texas A&amp;M University System, provides a student-focused, value-driven education marked by academic innovation and a dedication to transform today&rsquo;s scholars into tomorrow&rsquo;s leaders. It offers degree programs to more than 13,000 students at Stephenville, Fort Worth, Waco, Midlothian, RELLIS Academic Alliance in Bryan, and online, emphasizing real-world learning experiences that address societal needs while maintaining its core values of tradition, integrity, civility, excellence, leadership and service.<\/p>\n<p>Contact: Phil Riddle, News and Information Specialist<br \/>817-484-4415<br \/><a href=\"mailto:priddle@tarleton.edu\">priddle@tarleton.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karen Boyd Greenhaw is a seventh-grade math teacher at Henderson Junior High School in Stephenville.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>She knows the value of education, both personally and universally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[423,425],"tags":[432,437],"class_list":["post-27160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics-research","category-campus-community","tag-alumni","tag-college-of-education"],"acf":{"image":null},"author_meta":{"display_name":"keegan","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/author\/keegan-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2021\/11\/image-720-300x200.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/category\/academics-research\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Academics &amp; Research<\/a>","<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/category\/campus-community\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Campus &amp; Community<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Academics &amp; Research<\/span>","<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Campus &amp; Community<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/category\/campus-community\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Alumni<\/a>","<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/category\/campus-community\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">College of Education<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Alumni<\/span>","<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">College of Education<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 7 years ago","modified":"Updated 4 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on May 6, 2019","modified":"Updated on November 12, 2021"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on May 6, 2019 12:00 am","modified":"Updated on November 12, 2021 12:59 am"},"featured_img_caption":"Graduate receiving diploma at a ceremony, with Tarleton State University banner in background.","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}