Alumni of Tyler Junior College are all over the world living their lives, but we have three alumni who came back to TJC as teachers.
Some alumni have decided to come back and teach like Sharon Mowery, graduate of the class of 1986. She is a government teacher who started out as a science major.
“David Ligon is the one teacher who got me interested in government… it was the subject matter that got my attention,” Mowery said.
The same can be said for Shannon Cross, graduate of the class of 1972, from the time of graduating, moving to Colorado and home schooling her kids, the teaching bug hit her.
“I was home schooling my kids and got interested in the content of history,” Cross said.
It was the learning of different experiences and events in history that have happened that appealed to Cross saying it was like one big soap opera.
We even have some famous alumni at TJC.
Noamie Byrum is an English teacher at TJC who also happened to graduate in the class of 1966 and is credited with being one of three teachers to start online classes in 1995.
“Some of the students did not know how to work with computers, so sometimes I would go to their houses to help them learn and set up what they needed for the online classes,” Byrum said.
This is the first semester since 1995 since online classes started that she is not teaching them. Instead, she is back in the classroom.
I wanted to have students who I saw and who I got to know,” she said.
All three of these women went on to get their Master’s Degree’s from various colleges, but all found a home at TJC.
“TJC is a great place to work. I would rather stay here than go anywhere else and teach,” Cross said.
These three teachers have one thing in common, besides coming back to TJC as teachers, they all love teaching the students. To them it is “very, very satisfying,” Byrum said.
“It is a rewarding job to work with kids, to interact with them,” Mowery said.
