TYLER — What do you give someone as a retirement gift after 40 years in the classroom? Tom Rhodes, fourth grade teacher at Tyler’s Douglas Elementary, knew exactly what he wanted as a retirement gift from his students. Rhodes challenged his students to read six million words. The students ended up reading 6,079,472 words. \u201cThey had individual goals and I give them all of the credit,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cThese are the most awesome readers I have ever had! And I had the good fortune to be their teacher. There is nothing in life they cannot accomplish. I couldn\u2019t be happier. They busted the goal!\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday was Rhodes\u2019s last day with Tyler ISD. He has been with the school district for 35 of his 40 years in education as a teacher at Camp Tyler, Hogg Middle School and Douglas Elementary. Rhodes is looking forward to his retirement, especially spending a lot of time with his young grandson and reading to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TYLER — What do you give someone as a retirement gift after 40 years in the classroom? Tom Rhodes, fourth grade teacher at Tyler’s Douglas Elementary, knew exactly what he wanted as a retirement gift from his students. Rhodes challenged his students to read six million words. The students ended up reading 6,079,472 words. \u201cThey … Continue reading Students Conquer Challenge on Teacher\u2019s Last Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 08:17:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65437"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65618,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65437\/revisions\/65618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}