Competitions often challenge students to try their hardest, channel creativity and work as a team. Texas High’s Texas Association of Future Educators (TAFE) students earned their way to the national level this year. The TAFE students stretch their creativity skills and rely on teamwork to raise enough money to travel to nationals in Portland, Ore.
“Each student has to raise roughly $1,200 by June,” TAFE vice president Victoria Harmon said. “The money we raise will cover plane tickets, as well as rooming, the conference fee and transportation while we are in Portland.”
Gathering local businesses, such as banks and the community, to donate funds for the national competition proves to be fruitful for the TAFE club.
“We have a team builder fundraiser going on right now, and we’ve raised a little bit over $5,000 with it during spring break,” TAFE adviser Lisa McCloskey said. “We had also been baking cakes and putting [them] in the teacher’s lounge for teachers to help out with that. We’ve had a lot of great support from the community.”
As the team looks for various ways to raise money, some rely on family and family friends to help.
“Right now, I’m going to my churches because on both sides of my family, we [have] pastors,” junior Zyon Trotter said. “They’re giving [their] Cash Apps, GoFundMes [and we have] a TeamFunded for the whole team.”
Students’ participation in the state competition allowed several students to advance to nationals.
“I was super proud of all my students for going to state, and they worked very hard,” McCloskey said. “I expected maybe two or three of them to advance to nationals, [but] I had no idea that 15 of them would advance to nationals, so I was quite shocked when the announcements came out.”
The club started small compared to other campuses, but it has grown and excelled over the past three years.
“[This experience] benefits our school and our community, because we’re representing TISD,” Trotter said. “This is the most we [have] had going to nationals anyway, and it shows that we are growing here as a small [chapter].”
As a competitive association, the TAFE program strives to empower students to develop into well-balanced educators and impact the world around them.
“The education industry is ever-changing, and having us, as future educators, go and explore being an educator at such a prestigious conference will allow us to collect new ideas and strategies that we can share with our school, district and community,” Harmon said. “Being an educator doesn’t just happen at a school. We educate the world around us.”
TAFE club members traveled to the state conference in Dallas from Feb. 26-28, 2026. While preparing for the trip, students and advisers alike worked tirelessly. McCloskey prepared her students to perform at their best, so that they would be able to receive high scores from the judges who assess students’ projects.
“Not only does the project have to be top-notch, but they really have to practice because it’s the presentation of their project that really scores the most points,” McCloskey said. “You can have a perfect project, but if in your presentation, you don’t speak loud enough or make eye contact, you don’t score well. We did have two boys, Jarod Junior and Caidan Moore, who had a perfect score this year, which is unheard of.”
In preparation for nationals, students are not only raising money, but are improving their projects.
“We’ve been doing bake sales around Walmarts and asking banks to be a sponsor, like Farmers Bank and Red River Bank,” junior Jarod Junior said. “My partner, Cadian Moore, and I have been practicing for about 30 minutes each day after work on FaceTime [to] rebuild our Billington board to make it look brand new.”
