Commending Tamara Mace’s efforts as an inclusion specialist for students and classrooms around the school, she earned the award for Paraprofessional of the Year.  She works in “different classrooms, different grade levels, different subjects,” and goes as far to support students with extracurricular events, visiting school games and UIL competitions.

“I enjoy seeing our students, seeing how much they love being on the field,” Mace said. “I felt very honored by all of my peers and especially the administration.”

Mace works by visiting classrooms and helping students with the material taught in her sessions where she uses various teaching strategies to better help those students understand the material taught in class. Teachers work with Mace so that their students get as much assistance as possible. 

“The staff has been great, teachers have helped me to be a better person in the classroom,” Mace said. “[They] teach me things that I struggled with. I appreciate all of them.”

This is Mace’s fourth year at McNeil. She was at Deerpark Middle School for four years, so her “senior students now” were her “eighth graders then.”

“We work together, there’s times when one of us cannot pull a group of students for a test, they’ll call one of us and ask for help with the test,” Mace said. “I appreciate the administration, they are all wonderful. They are great to all of the paraprofessional staff and I appreciate them very much.”