Shepard honored by Tamassee DAR School
Amy Shepard, a 2012 Southern Wesleyan University Human Services graduate, received the Teaching Parent of the Year award at Tamassee DAR School.
Shepard is completing her first year at the school, located in Oconee County. Tamassee accepts school age children within a residential program. Many of these children seek out Tamassee’s services for educational reasons and others due to abuse, neglect, abandonment, divorce or other family crisis. Their residential program has 50 children residing on campus and the school also serves approximately 100 children daily within all programs.
Shepard is one of 10 full-time teaching parents who reside on the campus in a cottage with 10 students. A teaching parent takes on a huge commitment, since it’s a job that has many of the challenges faced by a natural parent. For five days each week, Shepard is with the children in her cottage around the clock – preparing snacks, taking them to church and, overall, helping them with their psychological and physical needs. Shepard senses a brokenness among many of her girls, as well as a hunger in several of them to know God.
“One of my kids says the best part about Tamassee is her teaching parent. Every night she says ‘I love you, Miss Amy.’ Some call me ‘Miss Mama.’ It’s rewarding when you see your work changing their lives,” Shepard said.
“The weight of the issues some of our kids have is a challenge. Spiritually you are so aware of the battle that’s going on before you,” she said.
Shepard points to some highlights of her time with the girls – little reminders reaffirming that she was brought to Tamassee for a reason.
“You see things that you’ve taught your kids and they start applying it to their lives,” she said. “After telling them to brush their teeth every morning and every night for six months, then six months and a day later, they’re brushing their teeth morning and night.”
Shepard is the first parent teacher to receive such an honor in the first year of teaching at Tamassee. She serves with other Southern Wesleyan graduates at Tamassee – Beth Irby, Kae Bridges and Bethany Burrow.
Tamassee DAR School was established in 1919 by the South Carolina Daughters of the American Revolution. They are one of only two DAR Schools in the nation, founded with the objective of providing an opportunity for a formal education to children in the rural Appalachian Mountains. Details about Tamassee can be found online at tdarschool.org.
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