Moore has a yarn or two to tell about teaching

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

DELORES MOORE

After her daughter graduated from college, Delores Moore decided she might like to earn a degree as well. Several years later, she did and is now a fifth-year teacher at Dibrell Elementary.

“Teaching was a mid-life career change for me, and to be honest, I wish I had done it sooner. Going back to college and becoming a teacher was one of the best things I’ve done,” she said.

Moore spent her pre-teaching career in the working world. For 15 years she was employed by Athletic Den sporting goods store, and later found office work before returning to school. Wanting something more rewarding, and encouraged by lifelong friend Dibrell principal Sherry Trotman, she enrolled in a couple of classes at the local Motlow campus. Discovering she wasn’t too old to learn new things, she decided to complete her education at Tennessee Tech, earning a bachelor’s degree in elementary education.

Her first year in the classroom saw her teaching seventh and eighth grade at Dibrell. The next year, however, she was transferred to the second grade, where she has remained since, and which she admits she likes much better.

“Second-graders are so eager to learn, and pure. They’re easily influenced though, so you have to be careful,” she said.

While now accustomed to teaching, Moore said she faces the perennial challenge of teaching to the maximum level of each of her students’ learning styles, a challenge which never gets any easier.

To help her in this capacity, she sometimes goes outside the traditional academic box, so to speak, by incorporating into her teaching her favorite hobby, quilting.

“Quilts are a fun way to teach and kids love learning that way. Quilts are part of our heritage — including their use in Underground Railroad and the Westward Migration — and making them is becoming a lost art,” she said.

In her annual quilting unit she has her students to each bring in a piece of fabric that is special to them, perhaps a piece of a loved blanket or old shirt. She then sews them together to make a class “memory” quilt, which she says she and her students always treasure.

When not at school, Moore said she spends most of her free time at home with her husband, Raymond, and preparing interesting lessons for her class. She also manages, she added, to do a little quilting.