It’s been 19 and a half years since English teacher Lisa Vaught took BHS by storm, and now her reign is coming to an end. On her birthday, she said, “I’m not coming back next year.” She gave no warning. She had no smelling salts on hand or fainting coaches to, well, faint onto. Instead, she let us as all drop into our chairs and ask simply, “WHY?”
There were three major theories that came to mind,
Maybe she’s taking a stand against the public school education system? Maybe she finally gave into that inner desire to yell “see ya suckas!” and drive down Bruin Lane into the sunset? It’s a common fantasy among teachers, after all. That and punting the kid who turns in ChatGPT essays. So, maybe she was making the fantasy come true? Maybe she was leaving in style? She certainly has the spunk and guts to pull it off; so why not?
Maybe she’s given in to the youth? Maybe she finally caved to all the skibidi’s and rizz’s? Maybe we’ve all driven her insane, and she’s completely lost it? To quote Maya Rudolph in her SNL sketch on teaching, “Y’all won.”
Maybe she did punt a kid for using ChatGPT, and is going on the run?
Turns out, life is boring, and Mrs. Vaught is not some public school Thelma and Louise. Instead, she’s moving for her husband's work.
“My husband took a job as an engineer at an air conditioning manufacturing plant. That’s why I’m moving to Staunton, because they have, fun fact, the largest industrial air conditioning manufacturing plant in the world.”
She tells me of a house they’ll be viewing later in the week, a nice place with a balcony that overlooks a river. I joke that this should be her birthday present. She laughingly agrees. Still, I have a different present in mind. Due to the prowess of Mrs. Vaught’s long and storied teaching career, this article will be a culmination of her life in public education. This is my present to her, for all that she’s taught me in my time as Co-Editor of this publication. So, I got right down to it.
“I hate being interviewed.” Vaught said before the recorder even snapped to life.
Then you’ll love the first question, when did your love of English begin?
“UGH,” she exclaims. We sit in silence, her thinking, me waiting. “I told you I’m not good at being interviewed.”
After a moment, “It started in the summer after my junior year, before my senior year. We got a summer reading list for an AP class that I was gonna take; it was my first AP class. I was not a student, at all, I graduated high school with a 2.7 if that tells you anything. So the only AP class I took was 12th grade English. We had to read Cry of the Beloved Country by Alan Paton over the summer, and I’d never read anything like it before. It was about apartheid in South Africa and it just, changed my life. We were supposed to write about its effect on us, and I got a C on that paper.”
We both chuckled like jackals.
“And I mean, I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever written. And the only comment under it was ‘clearly you have gaps in your foundational learning’. All that did was inspire me to work harder and catch up to everybody that was with me in that class. So yeah, that was the first time I ever felt that concept of being driven to do something, I was never driven to do anything, but I just wanted to catch up with my peers as fast as I could. And that’s what I did.”
Was it just that book that made you decide on English for the rest of your life?
“Just that book. I was like a very party person, if you can imagine, and that’s all I wanted to do up til that point. I had no ideations of college, none of that.”
So, ‘party person’? How much are we talking?
“We are talking a Gen X kid, in fields, telling my parents I was staying the night at a friend’s. The typical ‘what you know about Gen X kids’.”
So basically an 80’s movie?
“Yup, 100%.”
So then, what classes did you take in college?
“Oh I took them all: Teaching Methodology, Teaching Using Technology, etc. And when I took teaching using technology, ‘technology’ was an overhead projector. We had to learn how not to get ink on your hands when writing on the projector; we didn’t have computers when I was teaching. Oh, and I took a class called Teaching Adolescent Literature, it was the only class in college that made me cry.”
Like, good or bad?
“Bad! It was so challenging and so stressful. The professor was just a nightmare. It was a 6-9 class on Monday nights, and I cried on a regular basis.”
So, what made you decide to teach high schoolers?
“What made me decide to teach period was my parents came to Radford to take me out to dinner one night. On the way home my dad was driving and he, very more than necessary, was just craning his neck like a lunatic. And I was like ‘What are you doing?’ and he said, ‘Looking for English factories’.”
I think I can see where this is going.
“I was like, ‘There are no English factories, English isn’t something you make’. He said, ‘Well then I need to know where the hell you’re gonna work, because I don’t understand where people with an English degree work’. Apparently he and my mom had this whole thing planned out, and they were like, ‘We think you need to get a teaching certificate just so you have something to fall back on’. So I did all the stuff, and they accepted me, and I did an internship kind of thing at Shawsville (Eastmont now). And it was just the most amazing thing ever. The kids were great; the teacher I was with, he was a coach at the time and he taught English, was awesome. I drank the kool-aid immediately.”
So, what’s been your teaching philosophy?
At this she cracks a tired grin, “My teaching philosophy is it’s better to plead for forgiveness than ask for permission.”
Her laugh echoes around the room, “No, my teaching philosophy is to give meaningful lessons, give kids the benefit of the doubt, and stay out of everybody's way. In order to be a good teacher, you have to change with the students. They immediately recognize when you’re doing something for the sake of doing it, or when you’re doing stuff that actually enhances what you’re teaching; kids sense that. So you have to move with the way kids move: if you don’t, the kids aren’t gonna buy into what you’re doing.”
Yeah, we like to call out your crap.
“Yup! Kids do!”
We have a mutual understanding at this moment, a clarity that comes from both sides of education. The gap between teacher and student is bridged, and the acknowledgement of our own society is forged. High school, after all, is a culture that none but those within can understand. We nod, and watch the revelation float away. We move into a different rhythm.
What’s one of your favorite books to teach?
“Life of Pi, because I like everybody’s essays, and Things Fall Apart because of all the yams!”
I still have nightmares about those yams.
“Exactly! And then there’s always Of Mice and Men. I had one student who, in the last line of his essay said, ‘Way too many men, not nearly enough mice’. I’ll remember that line forever,” She repeats the line to herself again, still guffawing, “That’s the greatest final line of an essay I’ve ever gotten.”
From there I asked her about Journalism, about why she brought it back to life. My first year at the Bruin Broadcast was before we even had this website, before our articles could even be published anywhere. Mrs. Vaught and fellow Editor, Mac Owczarski, alongside myself, were the first to truly get the website fully functional. It feels intimate in that regard, because we made it.
“It makes me sad that I’m not gonna be here to see the three year vision that I had for this, or even the five year vision. That makes me sad.”
What was it?
“I’d like to have this fully operational video side to it, where we do morning announcements through the paper and all that. I want us to be VHSL competitive.”
She goes on to state various plans and schemes, all of which would drive our publication to be entirely self-sufficient and all encompassing. It’s a beautiful dream, one that I hope will continue in honor of her legacy. The Bruin Broadcast isn’t going anywhere, and according to her plan, it’s just getting started. Vaught or not, the show must go on.
Still, the idea that generations of BHS students won’t grow up under the tyranny of Vaught brings a tear to my eye. She’s been a mentor, a teacher, and a pleasure to work with, and I can’t imagine her empty classroom replaced by another. But not to fear, her teaching career is far from over. In the immortal words of the Vaught the Great, “I’m never gonna be done with teaching, I’m gonna die in education. That’s my retirement plan: there is no retirement plan.”
Is that by choice?
“Oh it’s choices: bad choices, just a series of bad choices.”
She laughs and smiles and sits back in her chair, the aesthetic befitting of her. She is nothing in her soul if not a teacher, a damn good one too. I can tell in that moment, there’s nothing she’d rather be. We’ll miss you, Mrs. Vaught! Thank you for all your wonderful years at BHS, and good luck in Staunton!
Written by Thomas Repass
Graphic by Thomas Repass
Photograph by McKinley Owczarski