Merrillville building trades teacher honored with state award
That was nearly the case on Tuesday as a surprised and clearly emotional Taylor was presented the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) Minority Educator of the Year award.
Taylor said the honor came as a completely unexpected but wonderful surprise, one kept from him by even his wife, Dr. Marnita Taylor, executive director of curriculum and instruction at Merrillville schools.
'My three words: God is good,' Taylor said after the announcement.
Taking part in the award presentation to Taylor was Bob Phelps, the school's Career & Technical Education Director; Jennifer Smith-Margraf, vice president of ISTA; and high school principal Michael Krutz.
'Mr. Taylor is a role model and an advocate for diversity in the trades which has opened doors for the underrepresented students in the construction trades industry. Terrell brings his industry experience, commitment to education and gigantic heart to work with him everyday which makes him a great choice for this award. On behalf of the high school and central office, congratulations Mr. Taylor,' Phelps said.
Taylor, upon accepting the award, gave credit to his students: 'these young individuals lift me up.'
'He (Phelps) said I'm a role model. I'm not a role model. Some days I'm a good example; some days I'm a bad example. I don't want these kids to be like me. I want them to be better than me. By exposing myself to them transparently, I give them that opportunity,' Taylor said.
He added: 'My responsibility being here is to give them unconditional love and I do that everyday. I do that everyday.'
Smith-Margraf spoke of Taylor's very successful career in the construction trades before deciding to give back to his community by becoming an educator and helping train students and build up their confidence in the field he chose as his passion.
'Since he has taken over the building trades, it's my understanding that it has become one of the most popular classes here at MHS because of the positive relationships he has built with your students, the dynamic atmosphere he has created in the classrooms and the partnerships he has built with community members to create internships and other opportunities for your students,' she said.
Taylor, whose wife, Marnita, was among those fellow educators who were there for the presentation, made history in 2004 when he and Richard Hardaway became the first blacks to serve on the Merrillville Town Council.
Taylor said he had served in the construction industry for 31 years before deciding he wanted to go into teaching.
He has served as an instructor for the past six years.
'My passion was construction and I found my purpose in teaching. To have those align is more than a calling,' Taylor said.
He is also the founder of the Merrillville Education Foundation.
The Taylors have two adult children and three grandchildren.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
6 days ago
- USA Today
Rats, some the size of a cat, becoming a problem in UK neighborhood
A rat the size of a cat was found inside a home in the United Kingdom, and local representatives say the animal is part of a growing problem in the area. David Taylor and Stephen Martin are representatives for the Eston Ward in North Yorkshire, England, on the south bank of the River Tees. The pair shared an image of the large rat on July 28. 'It's almost the size of a small cat. And it's not a one-off,' the pair wrote in a Facebook post. 'Rats are being spotted more and more around our area.' Rats have been seen in alleyways, around bins, on overgrown land, inside homes, and sometimes, even crossing the street, the representatives wrote online. In another post, the pair called the animal the 'Normanby rat.' USA TODAY has reached out to Taylor and Martin more information. Push for government to fund pest control, clean up community Taylor and Martin said the council for their area, Redcar & Cleveland Council, no longer handles domestic rat infestations. They offer advice, the pair said, but residents have to pay privately to handle pest control issues such as rats. 'As your local councillors, we're calling on the Council administration to take this seriously, the people on the ground who do work extremely hard but we need this all round the borough,' they wrote. The two also pushed for a full vermin survey and treatment plan across the borough, funding to handle the infestations, and collaborations among businesses, landlords, and affordable housing providers. 'We make no apologies for acting on behalf of residents,' they wrote. 'As your Eston and Normanby councillors, we raised the alarm because people were genuinely concerned.' 'Time to get rid of the RATS' According to the councillors, there was a meeting with the council's vermin control officer, who said social housing providers and the water board will get together to create an action plan. Social housing providers have also said they'd reintroduce pest control across the homes and land under their jurisdiction. The councillors said while it's not the local government's fault that the rats are there, the government has failed to cut grass, address litter problems, and has failed to properly fund street maintenance. 'Finally, a genuine thank you to the hardworking, overstretched staff on the ground, who continue to do their best under difficult circumstances,' Martin and Taylor wrote. 'Time to get rid of the RATS.' Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY's NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@
Newsweek
03-08-2025
- Newsweek
Working Mom Left in Tears Over What She Sees on Baby Monitor
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A working mom from Texas was left in tears after watching her daughter sit up for the first time through the baby monitor. Sales development representative Brooke Lipps (@adayinaeats) posted the heartbreaking moment in a clip on TikTok—something that felt unnatural as a new mom. "[It] felt like someone took my heart and pulled it from my chest," the 25-year-old told Newsweek. "I watch her fall asleep every day and wake up through the monitor to make it feel like we're together. At the same time, I was so proud of her and dumbfounded how she can sit up on her own." From left: Brooke Lipps sits at work in tears over what she has seen on her baby monitor. From left: Brooke Lipps sits at work in tears over what she has seen on her baby monitor. @adayinaeats Lipps had returned to work when her daughter, Taylor, was just 4.5 months old—a financial necessity leaving little choice for her or her husband, who works full-time and attends graduate school. On the day that Lipps was sat at her desk, Taylor, now almost 9 months old, was with her nanny, who texted updates as the infant sat up on her own for the very first time. "Being a younger mother herself, I know she relates to me," Lipps said. "When I tell her how hard it is, and how at times I've felt jealous of the time she spends with my daughter, she says she can imagine how difficult it is for me to be away." In the United States, there is no federal guarantee of paid maternity leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave—but only for employees who meet a certain tenure and employer-size requirements, which many new parents don't. In Austin, Texas, there are no statewide mandates for paid family leave, leaving the decision up to individual employers. Lipps also shared journal excerpts with Newsweek and said she began writing it to show Taylor how much she means to her. An entry from July 15 read: "Taylor baby, life is so hard right now. I am at work now, and I watched you wake up on the monitor. You stretch back in a child's pose, booty in the air, head turned to the side—you rolled over and stared at your little hands, clapping. It just killed me that I couldn't walk to your crib and pick you up, feed you, hold you." Before becoming a mother, Lipps said she imagined herself being solely career-focused—chasing top marks and accolades. "My baby came, and my whole world changed; I changed," she added. "Now being away from her fills me with so much sadness, remorse, and guilt," Lipps continued. "I wonder daily if I'm making the right choice and if it's worth it; or if I should stay home, knowing that it will set back my future career and put our family under greater financial strain." Now, Lipps says she grapples daily with the emotional toll of balancing work and motherhood. Although she is greeted by her baby's smile and laugh, Lipps can't actually soak up these small moments. "Seeing her and my husband makes my heart full, but I can't just sit there and enjoy her," she said. Instead, Lipps has to make dinner, put dishes away, clean the house, do laundry, wash her pump, prepare bottles, prepare her lunch, change Taylor's diaper—and the list goes on. "I feel spread ultrathin. There's not enough of me to go around," Lipps said. "I'm doing a lot of things but not doing them all well—or at least a judgmental voice in my head tells me that." Lipps, who did not receive paid maternity leave, is vocal about the need for stronger parental support. She and her husband navigated the postpartum period on one income, without qualifying for FMLA or other safety nets. "I wish it were standard to get paid leave, not just FMLA's guaranteed 12 weeks off," Lipps said. "Most people can't afford to take three months off without pay, especially as such young parents." Though her current employer has been supportive, she said she still feels the emotional whiplash of being both a new mother and early-career professional. "At the end of my days, I don't think I'll have wished to make my name great through my career, but I do aspire to make a great impact on the world," Lipps said. "I wish workplaces embraced mothers and pregnant women instead of feeling like we're a burden or don't belong," she continued. "Babies need their mothers."
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Yahoo
Can you change your personality? Psychology research says yes, by tweaking what you think and do
Have you ever taken a personality test? If you're like me, you've consulted BuzzFeed and you know exactly which Taylor Swift song 'perfectly matches your vibe.' It might be obvious that internet quizzes are not scientific, but many of the seemingly serious personality tests used to guide educational and career choices are also not supported by research. Despite being a billion-dollar industry, commercial personality testing used by schools and corporations to funnel people into their ideal roles do not predict career success. Beyond their lack of scientific support, the most popular approaches to understanding personality are problematic because they assume your traits are static – that is, you're stuck with the personality you're born with. But modern personality science studies find that traits can and do change over time. In addition to watching my own personality change over time from messy and lazy to off the charts in conscientiousness, I'm also a personality change researcher and clinical psychologist. My research confirms what I saw in my own development and in my patients: People can intentionally shape the traits they need to be successful in the lives they want. That's contrary to the popular belief that your personality type places you in a box, dictating that you choose partners, activities and careers according to your traits. According to psychologists, personality is your characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving. Are you a person who tends to think about situations in your life more pessimistically, or are you a glass-half-full kind of person? Do you tend to get angry when someone cuts you off in traffic, or are you more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt – maybe they're rushing to the hospital? Do you wait until the last minute to complete tasks, or do you plan ahead? You can think of personality as a collection of labels that summarize your responses to questions like these. Depending on your answers, you might be labeled as optimistic, empathetic or dependable. Research suggests that all these descriptive labels can be summarized into five overarching traits – what psychologists creatively refer to as the 'Big Five.' As early as the 1930s, psychologists literally combed through a dictionary to pull out all the words that describe human nature and sorted them in categories with similar themes. For example, they grouped words like 'kind,' 'thoughtful' and 'friendly' together. They found that thousands of words could be accounted for by sorting them between five traits: neuroticism, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness. What personality is not: People often feel protective about their personality – you may view it as the core of who you are. According to scientific definitions, however, personality is not your likes, dislikes or preferences. It's not your sense of humor. It's not your values or what you think is important in life. In other words, shifting your Big Five traits does not change the core of who you are. It simply means learning to respond to situations in life with different thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Can personality change? Remember, personality is a person's characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving. And while it might sound hard to change personality, people change how they think, feel and behave all the time. Suppose you're not super dependable. If you start to think 'being on time shows others that I respect them,' begin to feel pride when you arrive to brunch before your friends, and engage in new behaviors that increase your timeliness – such as getting up with an alarm, setting appointment reminders and so on – you are embodying the characteristics of a reliable person. If you maintain these changes to your thinking, emotions and behaviors over time – voila! – you are reliable. Personality: changed. Data confirms this idea. In general, personality changes across a person's life span. As people age, they tend to experience fewer negative emotions and more positive ones, are more conscientious, place greater emphasis on positive relationships and are less judgmental of others. There is variability here, though. Some people change a lot and some people hold pretty steady. Moreover, studies, including my own, that test whether personality interventions change traits over time find that people can speed up the process of personality change by making intentional tweaks to their thinking and behavior. These tweaks can lead to meaningful change in less than 20 weeks, instead of 20 years. The good news is that these cognitive-behavioral techniques are relatively simple, and you don't need to visit a therapist if that's not something you're into. The first component involves changing your thinking patterns – this is the cognitive piece. You need to become aware of your thoughts to determine whether they're keeping you stuck acting in line with a particular trait. For example, if you find yourself thinking 'people are only looking out for themselves,' you are likely to act defensively around others. The behavioral component involves becoming aware of your current action tendencies and testing out new responses. If you are defensive around other people, they will probably respond negatively to you. When they withdraw or snap at you, for example, it then confirms your belief that you can't trust others. By contrast, if you try behaving more openly – perhaps sharing with a co-worker that you're struggling with a task – you have the opportunity to see whether that changes the way others act toward you. These cognitive-behavioral strategies are so effective for nudging personality because personality is simply your characteristic way of thinking and behaving. Consistently making changes to your perspective and actions can lead to lasting habits that ultimately result in crafting the personality you desire. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Shannon Sauer-Zavala, University of Kentucky Read more: Here's what to do when you encounter people with 'dark personality traits' at work Personality tests with deep-sounding questions provide shallow answers about the 'true' you CBT? DBT? Psychodynamic? What type of therapy is right for me? Shannon Sauer-Zavala receives funding from that National Institute of Mental Health to support her research.
