Tricia M. Poythress
Fashion marketing teacher and Career & Technical Education Department chair
Langley High School, McLean
Years teaching: 33
Poythress holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Virginia Tech. Langley High School named her 2020-21 Teacher of the Year.
I teach an elective class, so I have students who have chosen to be here, to study fashion marketing. Some of them stay on this track through all four years of high school.
Business, marketing, fashion—it’s a creative field. It’s kind of hard to quantify creativity. I want my students to show me and their classmates that they understand things, not by telling me, but by showing me. Anyone can recite something back that I asked them to memorize, but that doesn’t show me that they understand it.
At the start of each class, I give them three terms or concepts, and they have to share their interpretation of the meaning. I ask a lot of opinion and experience questions, so there is no right or wrong answer. If we’re talking about customer service, I say, “Give me an example of a time when you felt you received good customer service or a time when you didn’t.” The other day we discussed employee turnover—what they would look for in employees and how they would retain them, because it’s not just about the paycheck.
It’s also not all about the grade book. They know that I expect them to do their very best, and that I want them to be proud of their work. I want them to have expectations and goals for themselves.
As a mother of two teenagers myself, I’m up on current trends, but also current pressures. A lot of students think they need to be perfect. I explain to them that there’s no such thing as perfect. Do your best and your best is your best—and her best is her best, and his best is his best. It doesn’t have to be the same best.
It’s easier said than done, but I try to model resilience by laughing at myself when I do something wrong. If someone trips, I’ll say, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tripped over a backpack strap.”
Juniors and seniors have the pressure of picking colleges. With juniors, we do college exploration so they can see that fashion marketing isn’t just design, but business. I tell them, “You need to find what you’re interested in, what you’re passionate about, what you’re good at. Where your passion and your interests and your aptitude intersect, that should be where your career is.”
I’ve been teaching for more than three decades and could retire anytime, but I still teach because I love my job. Every day is touching. Kids write me notes. Parents call me. A teacher will tell me something nice they overheard a student saying about my class.
Recently, I went to lunch with four former students who now are seniors in college. I have been to former students’ weddings and baby showers. It’s a great career. –Stephanie Kanowitz