Willis H. Kimsey, former Associate Academic Dean called Union senior Teresa Luna (‘79) into his office just a few days before he had heart surgery in 1979. He told her she was too busy and made a request.

“Teresa, everyday I want you to stop and smell the roses,” he said. Less than a week later, Kimsey died. 

But Luna has held onto that piece of advice and says she still stops to smell the roses. “I take time with my two teen-agers,” she says. “If they want to go play putt-putt, go to a movie or go midnight bowling, I just drop everything and go. I smell the roses through my kids now.”

Early Years

As a 15-year-old attending Jackson Central-Merry High School, Teresa fell in love with her husband, Tony. In the room next door to where Teresa now teaches her own classes, the two met in study hall. After dating for almost four years, the two were married at West Jackson Baptist Church in Jackson, Tenn. Teresa had completed her freshman year at Union, and Tony had just completed two years at Jackson State Community College. 

For the next two years, Teresa took a few classes and worked about 30 hours a week in Union’s Admissions Department (now the Office of Enrollment Services) while her husband earned a bachelor’s degree in business with an emphasis in accounting. Teresa says she worked hard and attended summer and winter terms to accomplish her goal of graduating with her class in 1979. She earned a bachelor’s degree with a major in history and a minor in English. 

After graduation, Teresa was hired as an admissions counselor at Union. “I loved working at Union and that’s where God wanted me. I really treasure those years,” she says. “But God was moving me on after five years.”

Teaching Today

God did move her on–into teaching. She came back to Union to earn her teaching certificate, and now she teaches at Jackson Central-Merry, where her teen-aged son and daughter attend school. 

“I teach different things, the unusual subjects,” she says as she lists classes such as Honors Modern European History, Honors World History and Contemporary Issues. In Contemporary Issues, Teresa requires her students to read USA Today daily and Newsweek magazine on a consistent basis. Students then discuss events happening around the world every day.

Teresa says she has to prepare for this class everyday, but she adds that it’s worth it when you finally turn someone to learning and they do it for themselves.”

Known in Jackson for her success in coaching the Academic Decathlon Team at JCM, Teresa has helped the team win the state tournament and finish in the top 20 nationally for three consecutive years. 

Nine years ago, the two decathlon team coaches/teachers asked Teresa to help them out by teaching the Super Quiz material to the team. Teresa described the material as “unforgivingly detailed.” During her first year, students were required to “know everything about North American Indians from where they all lived to what kind of government they had and even what they ate,” she says. “This was a new challenge for me, but I was hooked.” 

For the next few years, Teresa served as an assistant to the team’s coaches, filling the first coaching position that came open. Now after leading the team to the national competition three consecutive years, Teresa says the team’s sights are set on higher goals. “We would love to be in the top 10,” Teresa says. “We’re going up against Los Angeles’s top school and Chicago’s magnet school. Four-hundred kids go to the national tournament every year,” she adds as she explains the difficulties her team faces at the competition.

Preparation starts early for the Academic Decathlon Team. Each spring the coaches search through student records looking for high IQs and high test scores. From that list, 30 students are invited to take the team class and then only nine students—three A students, three B students and three C students—are chosen after taking a test at the end of the semester. The national Academic Decathlon requires three A, B and C average students for each team.

The competition, Teresa explains, “is such a thrill, a charge.” She compared the competition to playing football. “Why would a football player go out in the summer heat, sweating like crazy, to practice? Why do they do that? I think it’s for competition,” she says. 

But the Academic Decathlon team offers more than competition to its members. Lance Davidson says his grades improved after he got on JCM’s Academic Decathlon Team. “When Mrs. Luna first asked me to take the class, I was in 10th grade, a C average student and in her World History class. I never studied,” he says. 

As a junior on the team, Davidson recalls the Super Quiz was about the global economy, which Teresa had taught him and his teammates about during the previous months. This former C average student earned the Super Quiz medal at the Rhode Island nationals that year. 

“When I came back to the table, I told her the award was for her,” Davidson says. “I never would have gotten it without her. She pushed me.” Now Davidson is a sophomore at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville working on a bachelor’s degree in business economy and planning to go into investment banking. 

Teresa says one of the most important things the coaches do on the team is encourage students, regardless of their grade point average. “Most of it is somebody believing in you,” she says. 

But she also outlines three main steps to succeeding with the students. First, she says, she and her fellow coach convince the Academic Decathlon Team members that what they are doing is fun. “We get them motivated.”

She then teaches herself the material. Every summer Teresa’s kitchen is stacked high with boxes of material for the decathlon team members to learn. Before she gives it out, though, she makes sure she knows the information. 

Finally, she “loves every kid,” she says. “We’ve just really been blessed. It’s so much fun to work from August to March on speeches and essays and Super Quiz.”

Responding to the Call

Teresa says she has known since she was 12- or 13-years-old that God was calling her for something special. While she had been drawn to teaching since childhood, Teresa’s dreams were often met with discouragement. “Other teachers would say ‘You’re too smart to be a teacher’ or something like that,” she says. “Or they’d say that being a teacher was horrible.” 

By high school graduation, Teresa felt God might be calling her to missions. With this in mind, Union, with its strong missions programs, was the logical place to attend school. 

After graduation, Teresa spent the next five years as an admissions counselor at Union. But Teresa knew God had something different for her.

As a self-described “go-getter,” Teresa still knew teaching was her calling. She went back to school at Union to earn her secondary education teaching certificate and earned a teaching position at Crockett County High School in Alamo, Tenn. The principal told her that he had one position open that she could take if she wanted it, but she would have to teach six straight hours. 

“I wasn’t certified to teach five of the hours, three in economics and two in government, but I didn’t care,” Teresa says as she explains her almost overwhelming desire to be in the classroom. “I knew that that’s where I belonged. I had to teach school,” she adds.

One of the most important roles she plays as a high school teacher is being a Christian to her students. She says she starts every class at the beginning of the year with the same piece of information about her life. “I just tell the students that I’m a Christian and that I try to teach all of my classes that way,” she says. “Sharing Christ is the main goal and that every student feels loved. If they’re not loved, they won’t learn.” 

Teresa says that when she has a problem with a student in class, she tells them she is going to pray for them. Everyday when the student enters her classroom, Teresa reminds the student that she prayed for him or her. “Love will melt the meanest kids,” she says. “You may be the only person that ever loves that child.” 

She has even led some high school students to Christ. “I met this one girl, an atheist, who was trying to reason everything out,” she explains. Teresa says she witnessed to her, but the girl made no decision that day. Seven years later, the girl who came back to Teresa and said she remembered everything that was said that day. She just wanted Teresa to know that she had later accepted Christ as her Savior. 

From teaching in her classes to parenting two teen-agers to playing the roles of a devoted wife and a committed church member, Teresa still clings to the words Kimsey spoke so many years ago as she stops to smell the roses.