Marked Tree Schools Welcomes Back Terri Clayton

Marked Tree born and bred, Terri Clayton taught business law at MTHS for twenty years. She then went to the Poinsett County Co-op for a year continuing her career in education.

Now Clayton is back in the role of instructional facilitator, working primarily with elementary teachers in a cutting edge tour de force modeling some of the top notch schools in the country.

Modeling the top educators in the country and their writings, and modeling from the schools they helped to create, Clayton's role is to work with our teachers on new ways to reach the students. Simply put, how do you get your students to think. The answer is to engage the students in the classroom, not just lecture them. Easier said than done.

In educational jargon, Clayton helps to work on teachers on curriculum instructional support. Part of her job is to work with a software called The Learning Institute to more efficiently assess the areas wherein a student needs academic help. Instead of waiting weeks for test results, a student's scores are broken down within hours so that teachers will know where to "intervene" to give students specific help they need to build a student's individual proficiency. Clayton helps teachers to find out what their students don't' know, simply put, and teach that to them.

I know I have made a technical botch, probably, of her job, but when I walked through Marked Tree Elementary as a school board member two weeks ago, she was on the floor sitting with third graders and other teachers, down in the trenches, working on reading with the students.

Clayton is the daughter of Helen Morrisett and Tommy Morrisett. Tommy is now deceased and missed by the Marked Tree community. She is married to Denny. Her brother, Allen, is a well known farmer in the area. She has two daughters, Deanna of Marked Tree, and Brandy of Payneway.