A smile comes to Melissa Arnold’s face when she reflects on the good times of the past five years. Not only has Arnold developed into one of the best English teachers at Coppell High School, she has built friendships and created memories with students and colleagues.
Arnold, a 2004 graduate of New Mexico State University, will be taking these good feelings of student success and pranks with fellow teachers with her as she is leaving CHS at the end of the school year.
What she leaves behind is much more than her classroom.
“This is a stellar school,” Arnold said. “I’ve had the opportunity to teach on level, pre-AP and AP classes. I now have a lifetime of knowledge.”
Arnold is moving to Florida to be with her husband, Blake Arnold, who currently works as a golf professional management specialist. A few weeks into the 2009-10 school year, her husband received a call from TPC Sawgrass Golf Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. TPC Sawgrass has been rated one of the Top 10 Golf Courses in the World by Travel + Leisure Golf magazine.
“I’m very happy for [my husband]. This is the best thing for him professionally,” Arnold said. “[CHS] has been my home for five years; I’m very sad.”
Although Arnold is leaving CHS, she plans to continue teaching in Florida. Arnold has applied for a job and already had an interview at Ponte Vedra High School.
Arnold became a long-term substitute for GT English teacher Kelly Stanley in 2004 which ultimately led to her hiring at CHS in 2005.
“She went into the classroom and did a good job and developed a rapport with the children,” English teacher Kim Pearce said. “[Hiring her] was a no brainer. She had already demonstrated her ability to work in a classroom. It was an easy hire.”
Senior Morgan Selph was Arnold’s student and is now her second period teacher’s aide.
“She’s the one teacher that I can relate to; she knows how to be a teacher and a friend,” Selph said. “I’m sad that I won’t be able to come back and talk to her when I’m home [from college] because she’ll be in Florida.”
In her five years at Coppell, Arnold has become close friends with fellow English teachers Tracy Henson and Nannette McMurtry, both inside and outside of school. The three engage in shenanigans, such as performing Mission Impossible schemes down the hallway and stealing cow heads which were a part of homecoming hall decorations or kidnapping Toni Acher’s hula man.
“She has a passion for doing things great and a willingness to always try what’s best for her students,” McMurtry said. “[I’ll miss] teaching with her everyday and running into her classroom at 8:20 and asking ‘What should I do in class today?’”
Along with developing lifelong friendships, Arnold, Henson and McMurtry all have 1-year-old daughters who have been raised together since the earliest stages of their lives.
The teachers plan to visit each other and use Skype to keep in contact.
“I’m going to miss running down the hall to talk to them every chance I get and being able to vent to them,” Arnold said. “They’re my support system. I don’t know how I would have made it through the last five years without them.”
Even though a change is coming for Arnold, the impact she has made on the people at CHS will last forever.
