By Charley Shelton
As students leave FHS, few crave to come back. One of the few is the new FACS teacher. Mrs. Thackrey is excited to be one of the few to return to FHS because of her school spirit. Flora is her home and she feels beyond blessed to return.
After graduating from FHS, Mrs. Thackrey attended Eastern Illinois University and graduated in 2007 with her Bachelor’s Degree. She is currently obtaining her Master’s Degree at EIU and will graduate this summer.
When deciding on a career, she thought education was a good choice because of her personality and love for people. Her father was a teacher, so she knew many things about the teaching world already. At first, she thought of becoming a band teacher because her father, Mr. Kontz, was the band director and FHJHS and assistant director at FHS, and she called herself a “band-nerd.”
Her idea of teaching music stopped during her senior year. She took multiple FACS classes and fell in love with all the activities, projects, and the real life skills that each class teaches the students.
Mrs. Hamilton and Ms. Bible both were a huge inspiration to her.
She recalled, “ I can remember sitting in Adult Living in High School with Ms. Bible and wanting to be just like her!”
For the past 14 years she has been teaching at Salem Community High School. She has taught Orientation to FCS, Adult Living, House Design, and many Foods classes.
For her classes at FHS, she has many great ideas. She plans to create a Valentine Chocolate Buffet with her Advanced Foods class, establish fun days, assemblies, and many exciting field trips.
As she will also be a part of FCCLA, she is enthusiastic to start planning activities with Mrs. Atwood. They do not have any plans set in stone, but she is thinking of many ideas. A few ideas would be bowling, cook-outs, concerts, karaoke, and so much more.
As she starts at FHS, she hopes she knows that she cares for each student that will walk though her door. She loves to have fun and work hard. Mrs. Thackrey also loves a good attitude from students.
Her goal for each student is “to be kind to one another, respect their peers and teachers as well as love their community. For Foods class specifically, I would like the students to be able to read and execute a recipe on their own and be able to cook and provide for their families.”
Mrs. Thackrey is very excited to be back in the circle of FHS. She and Mrs. Atwood will both be using their great ideas to make sure the FACS stays amazing as it already is. They hope to do an amazing job of keeping the legend alive!