When Jason Goodson began teaching in Mineola ISD in 2010, his daughter Zoe was just starting kindergarten.
Sixteen years later, they are beginning another school year together, but this time as colleagues.
Jason is starting his 16th year in education, 15 of them in Mineola, while Zoe Goodson is stepping into her own classroom for the first time. She will teach third-grade math and science at Mineola Primary School.
For both, it feels a bit surreal.
“I can’t believe I’ve been teaching that long,” Jason said.
Zoe grew up in Mineola ISD, attending school in the district from kindergarten through graduation. She recently graduated from East Texas Baptist University, the same college her father attended, and returned home to begin her teaching career.
Some of the people she once had as teachers are now her coworkers.
At the district’s recent convocation, Zoe found herself surrounded by many of them.
“I saw a lot of my old teachers that taught me,” she said.
She hasn’t quite gotten used to calling them by their first names either.
“I’ve still said Miss and Mister,” Zoe said.
Jason’s path to the classroom was less direct.
A 1992 Mineola High School graduate, he spent time in South Florida and South Mississippi working in youth ministry before returning to East Texas when Zoe was about a year old.
While serving as youth minister at Hainesville Baptist Church, his friend Ricky Stephens, then a principal in Mineola, asked him to tutor in the district’s AVID program.
Jason quickly realized he had found what he wanted to do.
“I fell in love with it,” he said. “I was like, ‘This is what I need to be doing for my life. This is what I need to do for sure.’”
He began teaching in Mineola in 2010.
Today, Jason teaches business, marketing and finance at Mineola High School and works with the district’s growing career and technical education program. This year, he is looking forward to launching the program’s first entrepreneurship class and expanding internship opportunities and partnerships with local businesses.
The CTE program also played a role in Zoe’s decision to become a teacher.
In high school, she participated in the education track, spending about an hour and a half most school days at the primary campus. She worked in a first-grade classroom one year and a second-grade classroom the next.
Now she is back on the same campus with a classroom of her own.
Zoe expects to start the year with about 23 third-graders and describes herself as having “a mixture of nervous, excited” feelings about her first year.
“Probably just getting to know the students, like just getting to see them grow and learn more, and just get to know their personalities because they’re really funny,” she said when asked what she was looking forward to most this year.
She also has a veteran teacher close by when she needs advice.
Jason has told her to take it one day at a time.
“Do not expect perfection, but go in and expect to learn, to grow and let that first year be your growth year,” he said. “Be yourself, be your person.”
Zoe expects to lean on her father throughout the year. For now, she is focused on becoming more comfortable in the classroom.
“I want to just grow as a teacher,” she said. “The first year is just definitely a learning whirlwind. So I just want to grow my skills, feel more confident as it goes, but yeah, and just to see my students succeed.”
Teaching also runs in the Goodson family.
Jason’s mother taught when he was young before later working at a local bank after the family moved to Mineola. Jason said seeing how much she enjoyed teaching influenced him.
“I think seeing her do what she did as a child growing up, and her loving it and her being a part of it had a big influence on me,” he said.
There may soon be another teacher in the family. Jason’s younger daughter, Lucy, is beginning college and working toward a degree in education.
For Jason and Zoe, their Christian faith also influences how they approach teaching.
“I think it’s given me just like a lot of peace,” Zoe said. “I feel like this is where I’m supposed to be.”
While she said she can’t necessarily share her faith in the classroom, she can show it through how she treats her students.
“I feel like it’s a chance for me to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the student,” she said.
Jason sees his role similarly.
“For me, I see it as a mission field,” he said.
That can be as simple as standing at his classroom door, offering a fist bump or checking in with a student.
“Part of that welcoming a student into the room is a fist bump. It’s a smile. It’s a ‘How you doing today?’” Jason said. “It’s being involved in tracking who they are as students, and not just a number.”
For Jason, building those relationships is an important part of teaching.
“They don’t care about what you know until they know you care about them,” he said.
Jason said he never doubted Zoe would succeed in whatever career she chose, although he admitted he wondered whether Mineola would hire a first-year teacher straight out of college.
“I was a little nervous,” he said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’ll hire her right away out of college.’”
They did.
Now the daughter who started kindergarten when her father began teaching is starting her own career in the same district.
“For me, it is a little bit surreal,” Jason said. “I feel a lot of the same emotions she feels just because I want her to be successful in what she’s doing.”