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Suzanne Terry has dedicated the past 37 years to the Morristown-Hamblen High School West’s Speech and Debate Department and now she officially bids it farewell.

After retiring in 2022 she returned for the 2022-2023 school year for a 100 hour contract with West High, but after fulfilling her contract she decided not to return for the upcoming year and re-entered retirement.

“Let me first say that I’m a very lucky girl,” Terry said. “I have been blessed with an amazing experience teaching speech and debate and I have met some amazing students over the years.”

However, Terry didn’t always have a passion for theater. It was a high school crush that gave her the opportunity to learn more about the activity.

“I was at West High School and followed a young man into theater class and I knew the only way I would be able to get close to him is if I joined the Theatre class,” she said. “I thought I would just show up to flirt with him and that’s it. I didn’t like theater. Well, I showed up and immediately fell in love with the environment.

“It was the first time that I had ever been a part of something where everyone worked together for a common goal, where everyone was passionate and everyone was smart. I just loved being a part of it.

“I took a theater class my senior year with Kathy Webster and I still have my progress report from her class. She wrote on it that ‘She is wonderful.’ and I said ‘If you think that was wonderful, I’ll show you wonderful’ and that really changed my work ethic.”

Her passion continued throughout college where she learned more about directing and learning to one day coach her own team.

“Theater was just a passion for me, so in college you could find me in the Walters State Community College’s theater until 11 p.m. at night or see me directing things at University of Tennessee Knoxville,” Terry said.

“I didn’t get to do a lot of theater there, so I turned to directing. I requested to be placed for student teaching with Betsy Mashburn who was the coach at Knox West High school and also someone my professors would always talk about.

“When working with her I thought she was the magical person I met. She really threw me into the deep end of the pool. I taught English, taught theater, worked with the speech and debate team after school and then would do play practice until 9 p.m. It was really hard, but I learned a lot and felt very prepared when it was time to step into my own classroom.”

After graduating she learned about an opportunity to teach at West High School and soon after the school’s speech and debate department fell into her lap.

“In 1986, I went to a going away party for a professor at Walters State and my best friend Kathy Jones Terry and she told me there was a need for an English Teacher at West and so I taught just English for a year and I helped the speech and debate coach with her team.

“The next year she left for Maryland and I took over and I said in a year I would kill speech and debate and will have the best theater program in the state and we will be done with speech and debate.

During the year her perception of speech and debate shifted to become a new found love.

“It took me about a year to say ‘theater is great, but speech and debate is amazing,” Terry said. “You can be in a play and only have one line but with speech and debate you have 10 minutes of performance, speech or debate where you get to be heard and you get to pick the words you get to say. So speech and debate is a very powerful opportunity for students to grow.”

She still has a great love for theater and supports local theater companies; she compared the two by saying, “Theatre is water and speech and debate is Miracle-Gro.”

Looking back over the years at West High School, her greatest accomplishment is the many students who she watched grow and the bond she built with them.

“The best thing I got out of my 37 years are the connections that I still have with my students,” she said. “When you’re riding on a school bus for more than eight hours you really become a family.

“It’s the most rewarding when you have a student who walks through your door as a freshman and they face challenges you couldn’t imagine, such as a difficult home life or family members battling addiction,” she said. “But when they walk into a speech and debate classroom and they are loved unconditionally and all of sudden their head comes up and they find their voice. They are now determined to make a difference and make a better life for themselves; that is pretty amazing.”

As she leaves education she encourages current and future educators to allow themselves to evolve and be open to helping students evolve.

“Teachers and educators allow you to evolve and allow yourself to be impacted by your students’ stories and lives because they will certainly grow you like Miracle-Gro,” she said. “Never give up on a kid, even when there are days you want to. Years ago I was challenged to hug the porcupines in your class, and I thought I would hug so many porcupines, but there’s one that I will not hug and I want that kid to finish their time with me and head out the door.

“But I followed the advice and came in every day for two weeks spending some time with them and by the end of the second week they were not a problem for me. I had no issues or behavioral issues with them and he became someone who grew to care for me.

“Years later I found out he was in a film and was doing exciting things and that taught me that porcupines can evolve, too. We all need to be better to each other and love each other, especially on the harder days.”