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Taylor Hargrove, a Lifelong Spartan

A journey to the pros…and back again.
by Michael Mankoff

    For Taylor Hargrove, who has been there and back, there is no place like home.
     “It was the spring of 1997 and our baseball team just beat Pueblo East in the State Semifinals. We then went up against a Pueblo South team for the 4A State Championship and lost 8 to 5,” recalled 1999 Thomas Jefferson Graduate Taylor Hargrove. As a sophomore in high school he dedicated most of his time to playing the game he loved, baseball; and many of his teammates did the same. The 1997 team composed of mostly sophomores had given up playing other sports to pursue the dream of a State Championship. Among these young men was Roger Ross, older brother of 2001 TJ grad and current Baltimore Raven Cory Ross.
    It was a series of unfortunate events that cost TJ the State Championship; however, it was the turning point in Hargrove’s young life. “It was the most devastating thing because my whole identity was placed into this sport,” he said. Baseball had defined him all his life; if he was doing well on the diamond then he was happy, if he was doing bad then he wasn’t happy. This holds true for the majority of student athletes, although Hargrove describes his infatuation as something greater. “We let our performance on the field dictate who we were as people. I received all my satisfaction from my success on the baseball diamond,” he said.
     However, Hargrove evolved with the help of his pastor Eric Hause and a Christian Evangelism conference he attended in the summer of 1997 in Washington D.C. It was an emotional ride as he committed himself to being a servant of God with the belief that he must give up his dream of playing professional baseball to do so. To Hargrove’s benefit, this was not the case. “Instead of using the gift God gave me to play for myself, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t playing for me but for God,” he explained. Now that he wasn’t playing for his own fame, stats didn’t matter to him, and the reason why he played was because it was God’s gift to him as well as his love for the game.
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Howard Comes to TJ

This year Heaton's student teacher is a standout.
by Julia Harrington
photo by Manuel Perez

    This year Emily Howard has big shoes to fill as a student teacher to the beloved Gordon Heaton, but she has made her own mark and takes everything he has to teach to heart.
     Howard was born in Steamboat Springs in 1981 and with hopes to teach in an urban area, Thomas Jefferson High School is an ideal fit for her to do her student teaching. After graduating from Steamboat Springs High School in 2000 she continued her education at Colorado State University getting a Bachelors  Degree in Speech Communication while minoring  in sociology in 2003. She also has a Masters degree in Speech Communication with a focus in political communication. Howard shared with the Jefferson Journal what she has learned her experiences.
Thomas Jefferson Journal: How did you decide to be a teacher?
Emily Howard: My mom is a teacher, and many of my other family members are teachers. First I thought that there was no way I would become a teacher. In college I was studying political science and speech communication and wanted to become a lawyer. Then I went to graduate school and taught college classes for three years. I loved teaching there but I wanted to teach younger students. Before I had decided I wanted to be a teacher I worked for a marketing team that had many high-end clients, such as the Broncos and Qwest.  Although I made a lot of money and I enjoyed the perks, I knew that that wasn’t what I was meant to do. 
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Journal Spotlight: Scott Thomas

Thomas inspires enthusiasm in each student.
by Andrew Craig
photo by Manuel Perez

    Much like the plants in his green house, Scott Thomas, the sports trainer and life sciences teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School, undergoes a sort of photosynthesis; but instead of using the sun, he obtains his energy from his students.
    Scott Elton Thomas was born in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up in Vail, Colorado with his brother T.J. “Growing up in Vail is, or was, just like growing up in any other place,” said Thomas, who graduated from Battlemont High School in 1990 and subsequently attended CU Boulder as a biology and kinesiology major. After four years of rigorous study, he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and kinesiology.
    “College was definitely a good experience for me. The social and environmental aspect of it was excellent. The academic experience was okay,” Thomas confessed.
  In 1998, a couple of years after Thomas graduated, he applied for the sports trainer position at Thomas Jefferson High School, and was hired. “I found it surprisingly easy to apply for this position. I wasn’t nervous or anything.”
    From 1998 to the spring of 2000, Thomas was a full time sports trainer at TJ. In the fall of 2000, he began his teaching career, after applying for the full time biology instructor position. Read more

A Man Outstanding in His Field

Gordon Heaton carries lessons from his childhood on a farm to his teaching.
by Christina Danek

    While growing up on a farm in rural Illinois, Gordon Heaton never imagined that he would one day be teaching a class of high school students about the Boston Tea Party; young Heaton planned on going into forestry or banking. Fifty years later, Heaton believes that he has truly found his calling in teaching. “It’s what I love to do. I believe that somehow I was meant to do this,” he says.
    It started one morning in early fall when a young Heaton walked into his first day of 11th grade at Jacksonville High School. The unsuspecting farm boy had no idea that his course was about to be changed, by a man named Mr. Moffatt. The educator was astonishingly passionate about teaching history, and spoke as though he recalled each event, and knew each figure, personally. Heaton recalls that the teacher used to refer to President Andrew Jackson as “Andy”, as if they were old pals. His use of humor in his teaching was also quite memorable, and Mr. Moffatt often had his students in stitches. Heaton took much away from that high school history class, and now does his best to express the same passion and humor in his own classroom. Stop by Heaton’s room sometime, and you may get to hear one of his history jokes, such as his account of the famous debate in “Roe v. Wade”: George’s Washington’s dilemma the night he crossed the Delaware with his troops. Read more

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