A writer’s biggest challenge is meeting a deadline, as it will either make or break a person. However, 41 years ago, Stacy Short found a passion in journalism, which led to her successful and inspiring 31-year career as a high school English, journalism, and film teacher. After inspiring students with a passion for teaching unlike any other, Short is taking her leave and retiring at the end of the 2023-24 school year. While she has come a long way from her high school journalism career, she explored several professions along the way before finding her love for teaching.
“I went to eight different colleges and I struggled trying to figure out what I wanted to do,” Short said. “I was always good at English, so I took a few journalism classes. After that I just wanted to find the quickest way out of college, so my husband suggested getting my teaching degree.”
While it may have not been her first choice for a career, Short became a student teacher at Nichols Junior High in Arlington, Texas in 1990 as part of her final degree plan from the University of Texas at Arlington.
“Nichols Junior High in Arlington was a really rough school,” Short said. “There were fights every day, and it was so sad. I just didn’t know if I could deal with seeing those kids in such pain, but my husband encouraged me not to quit and try to follow through with teaching.”
After working in advertising and design, Short finally began her teaching career at Keller Middle School where she taught remedial reading, English Honors, and technology classes for district staff.
“I stayed at Keller Middle School for 5 years,” Short said. “But when my principal moved up to the high school, he convinced me to go with him. There I was asked to write the National Blue Ribbon application, which won the national award in 2002.”
While this did allow Short to rekindle her love for literary criticism, writing and English, it also sparked an aspiration to teach upcoming journalists for academic competitions in UIL.
“Journalism was still in my blood from years ago,” Short said. “In 2002-03 when I taught at Argyle High School for the first time, I spent hours researching every aspect of journalism so I could get my kids to be successful.” Short returned to Keller High
School to take over as ELA department chair and continued coaching journalism, literary criticism and academic decathlon. When an opportunity arose to teach in the community where her own children attended school in 2010, she headed back to the Argyle High School classroom. There she was given an assignment as dual credit and AP English teacher, as well as a UIL journalism coach and a new class to springboard the high school print newspaper class, The Talon News.
“The expectation when I started was that we produce one or two newspapers a year,” Short said. “So we did eight that first year.”
After a few years at Argyle, Short began to reshape the program’s focus as media worldwide, was going digital.
“From that point forward, we were really legit and had to make sure that we followed the rules,” Short said. “We made sure that all of the things were fact-checked and we had good stories.”
In addition to The Talon News, Short continued to coach UIL journalism. In 2014, while with a group of students at a national journalism competition in Washington, D.C. her sister abruptly passed away. Unfortunately, she had faced the same type of struggle while at Keller High School when her mom died of pancreatic cancer in 2007.
“A couple of weeks after my mom died, we had our first district meet and I had four really good team members,” Short said. “It was horrible, but we came and we competed.”
Short and her students competed to the best of their abilities and left their legacy on the program with their state championship win.
“My mom’s death, and that whole year was the hardest year I’ve ever had,” Short said. “It was also the best. Just everybody learning to lean on each other, struggling to get through to the end. Without the kids I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Throughout her career, Short has encouraged her students to learn from each other just as much as they learn from her, shown by her 10 state championships and over 50 state finalists in UIL academic competitions. She also earned the Secondary Teacher of the Year award three times, multiple state and national journalism honors for her contributions in the field, and most recently the 2024 Edith Fox King journalism for the Interscholastic League Press Association.
“I think we should own our mistakes and embrace the challenge, but also learn from each other,” Short said. “I can never do anything halfway, and I want my students to get the most out of everything they attempt, whether that means learning from me or their peers.”
Short believes that teaching is more than just a curriculum, it’s also about learning our gifts and using them for the greater good.
“I think teaching chose me,” Short said. “I think that we have callings, and I think that we have to rise to whatever that is. We all have gifts and we need to be able to share those.”
For her journalism students, Short hopes they learn their passion, and truly grasp that learning is truly about finding your talent. She gives this message to all her students starting a new journey in life.
“In five years, no person is going to care what your grade was,” Short said. “But they do care about your ethics, your passion and drive and your ability to learn and to move forward. Students need to adapt and change and take in the world in the here and now. Yes, look to the future. Always have a plan, but live in the here and now. Make the most of it while you’re here, because we don’t want to take this life for granted.”
