“I Know What My Mission Is”
Tom Sherwood: Teacher, mentor, friend
Tom Sherwood loves to teach. You see it first by the intensity in his eyes. The way they dart from face to face. How they turn from serious to twinkling in an instant. You see it in his manner, by his energy. The way he prowls his classroom, dragging students into discussion by the sheer force of his soft-spoken but obvious enthusiasm. You see it in the way he talks, but more by the way he listens. You’ll notice that about him: Tom is always listening.
Tom is also very good at what he does. You can see it in his students. By the way they look at him. By the way they respond. By their respect. It’s a beautiful fall day outside, but against all the powerful forces of weather and adolescence, they’re surprisingly tuned into what he’s saying. Not that there isn’t some fidgeting. Not that there isn’t an occasional whisper or wisecrack. These are normal teenagers, after all, and Tom prefers it that way. But they’re paying attention, asking questions, and seeming to care about the answers. They’re 7th and 8th graders, and yet they’re actually … listening.
It’s just another normal day for Tom at Tri-City Junior Academy in Pasco, Wash. Like the thousands of days that have come and gone since he made the unexpected decision to become a teacher, he sees it as another in a series of opportunities to inform, entertain, facilitate, inspire. A 1985 Walla Walla College graduate, Tom is in his 17th year in this profession, a fact that simultaneously amazes and sobers him. “It’s incredible how time flies,” he says. “It’s been a good experience, though not without its trials. But talk about incredible rewards.”
The truth is, Tom’s surprised to be here at all. He was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minn., and never remotely considered a career in education. By the time college rolled around, he’d made up his mind. “I was definitely going to enter and stay in the pastoral ministry,” he recalls. “I never imagined teaching.” He left wwc armed with both a theology and speech communication degree, but gradually over a three-year tour of duty as a pastor/teacher became convinced he belonged in the classroom permanently.
When he walked apprehensively through the front doors of a one-room school in Nevada to begin his first full-time teaching assignment, he had no education degree. No formal training. No experience on which to draw, and no nearby colleagues to emulate. “I started out at rock bottom,” he says with a laugh. “But I kept practicing, like a chef working on a recipe until it’s perfected. Seventeen years later I’m still teaching, so something must be going right.”
That early memory is one he returns to often, and it’s a recurring theme whenever he talks with students about their futures. “Once you get over that fear of failing, you can begin to have fun with your talents,” he tells them. He credits wwc for helping him learn that valuable lesson, and two classes in particular made an indelible impression. One was Greek, taught by “the ultimate taskmaster,” Lucille Knapp. “She encouraged me to keep on, and the discipline I learned still guides me today.” The other was Paul Grove’s course in Biblical exegesis. “The gift he gave me was to learn by trying,” Tom says. “I tell my students not to be afraid if it doesn’t work out the first, or even the tenth time. When you want it badly enough, it will come.”
After almost two decades dedicated to the development of young minds for success and Christian service, Tom still approaches the start of each new school year with the energy and commitment of the first. Along the way, he’s learned and reaffirmed that most important of lessons: that how he cares for his students and chooses to live his life are far more powerful than textbooks and tests. “What I say to my students is important, but if I’m just here to dispense information, they could go look it up in Encarta,” he says. “I know what my mission is: to introduce them to God.” W