“Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.” To quote John Wayne is to sum up Tracey Roberts’s outlook on life very easily. “John Wayne [is my inspiration]. He’s the ‘Duke.’ Enough said.”
Sarcastic and witty, Tracey Roberts is a ninth-year teacher here at Jacksonville High School, and not one has been dull.
“After I graduated high school, I went to MacMurray, graduated, worked in town for a few years before I got married to my lovely wife, and we moved to the northwest suburbs of Chicago for a year,” tells Roberts. “We escaped the ‘Burbs,’ moved back to Jacksonville, and have been here ever since.”
Still, Roberts had thoughts past a place as an unofficial zookeeper. “If I weren’t a teacher, I would like to have been a Marine helicopter pilot,” claims Roberts. “That way I could retire after twenty years as an officer and then travel the world.”
When he was younger, Roberts didn’t imagine himself quite where he is now, although he’s not far away at all—in fact, he’s just down the hall.
“I got my job in a ‘Series of Unfortunate Events,’” admits Roberts. “Nobody said that there would be one hundred P.E. teachers trying out for each job that came open. So I became a meat cutter to pay the bills and took a part time job in Mt. Sterling as a P.E. teacher for a maternity leave. I took a job as a manager of a local business for twelve years total and then went back to school to become a math teacher.”
Despite the hurdles he had to jump in order to get to his current state, Roberts doesn’t see his life being any other way. The road to his success has been full of treacherous turns and exciting horizons, all jumbled together in perfect chaos, or more aptly described as “insanity run amuck,” in the words of Roberts himself. He wouldn’t change a thing. “I had wanted to teach/coach since junior high school,” says Roberts. “I like kids and sports. This way I could participate in both.”
Stemming from various degrees in various fields, Roberts has many different interests in many different things; he likes to spend his free time coaching basketball and soccer, as well as fishing and doing construction work.
After all, it’s not about what you teach. It’s about how you teach it.
A piece of advice from a resident math teacher? “Get an education or learn a trade. It’s a very difficult job market.”