GRAVETTE -- Mandy Barrett is fired up about her new job and she hopes to pass her enthusiasm for education on to all the faculty and staff at Gravette Upper Elementary School. Barrett was recently hired as the new GUE principal to replace Jay Ensor, who is retiring.
Barrett said, "I knew I was going to be a teacher when I was in kindergarten." Even at that young age she played school with her stuffed animals and whatever neighborhood kids she could round up. "And I always had to be the teacher. I never wanted to give up that role," she admitted.
Barrett's great-great-grandmother, Urma Childers, taught in a one-room school near the Arkansas-Missouri state line. (Interestingly, her father-in-law, Orville Barrett, a retired steelworker who lives on Limekiln Road in Gravette, was one of Childers' students.) But she doesn't think this influenced her desire to teach. "I just knew," she said.
Barrett was born in Gravette and lived the life of a vagabond in her early years. Her family lived in a 40-ft. travel trailer and traveled all over the country until she was in fifth grade. Her father, David Blake, worked for Commercial Metals Company in Dallas and traveled around buying abandoned railroads and taking up the tracks to recycle.
"I loved it," she said. "I loved travel and I love people."
Her brother Matthew, three years older, is now a builder in southwest Missouri. He wasn't so fond of the life. Barrett said they moved every other month when she was in third grade and Matthew didn't like being separated from his friends, but she just easily made new friends in the next location.
Barrett went to school at Southwest City through eighth grade and graduated from McDonald County High School in 1994. During her high school years, she was president of Future Teachers of America. She was also a cheerleader and played volleyball.
Continuing her education, Barrett earned her associates degree from Crowder College in 1996, and her bachelor's degree from Missouri Southern State College at Joplin in 1998. She was hired at Cassville Elementary School that year. Her husband Brandon was a deputy sheriff at Cassville and she also worked as an emergency dispatcher for the Barry County Sheriff's Office during that time to help pay for her schooling. She taught special ed students in first and second grade at Cassville for three years and earned her master's from Southwest Baptist University in 2000 by attending evening classes in Shell Knob.
About this time, Brandon's parents divorced and the Barretts bought the family farm from his mother. They moved to the farm south of Noel, and Mandy taught first grade in Noel for 10 years. Since there were a number of Hispanic students in the school system, she earned her ESL (English as a second language) certification in 2006. Administrators at the school encouraged her to join their ranks and she began her specialist degree at William Woods University in Fulton, Mo., in 2009 by taking evening classes at Neosho. She earned her specialist degree in administration in 2011 and began work on her doctorate in July, 2012. She will earn her doctorate in instructional leadership next spring through online courses from North Central University in Prescott, Ariz.
Barrett has taught fourth grade at Anderson Elementary School the last three years. She wound up the school year there a couple of weeks ago and will be in Gravette this week to help with interviewing new teachers. She says she is really excited about working here.
"I had heard so many good things about Gravette schools," she said, and admitted she was overjoyed when she learned she'd been hired. "I'll never forget that call from Dr. Page." (Richard Page is superintendent of Gravette Schools.)
Barrett's husband is now a detective with the McDonald County Sheriff's Department and volunteer fire chief in Noel. The Barretts are parents of three children. The oldest, Blake, is 16 and a junior at McDonald County High School. He is cadet captain for the fire department and a member of the ROTC color guard. He says he wants to be a firefighter in Dallas. Bailey, who will be 13 this month, is an eighth grader at Anderson Middle School; and Bryer, 5, will be coming with his mother and attending kindergarten at Glenn Duffy Elementary.
General News on 06/04/2014