A good teacher honestly and deeply cares about what his or her students learn in the classroom — both about the subject matter for class and about life. At least, that’s what Dwight Daugherty believes.
Daugherty, an Advanced Placement physics and chemistry teacher at Cabot High School, plans to retire at the end of the school year after 20 years with the district.
Daugherty will be this year’s honoree at the Cabot Scholarship Foundation’s annual Roast & Toast Banquet on March 7. The foundation was formed in 1992 and gives scholarships to seniors each year. This year, the foundation will award scholarships to 116 Cabot High School seniors, totaling $119,300.
Not only is Daugherty the honoree of this year’s event, but he is an avid supporter of the Cabot Scholarship Foundation. Several years ago, he came up with the idea for district employees to fund scholarships through donations directly from their paychecks.
“I was motivated by a desire to give back,” he said. “I had a niece who came through the school system. A person associated with the foundation contacted me and said, ‘I would like to fund your niece — separate from the foundation — but I want you to administer the funds.’ … This person gave my niece $2,500 a semester to get her through school. I knew on a teacher’s salary I could never pay that back, so this was the only way I could think of to give back.”
The first year, employees gave a total of $800 in the two months before the banquet. The scholarship foundation agreed to contribute to round the amount to an even $1,000. This year, the teachers have contributed $22,000 for scholarships.
The Roast & Toast Banquet is the foundation’s only fundraising event throughout the year. Individual tickets are $30, and a table of eight is $240. Tickets may be purchased at the Cabot High School office.
To Daugherty, imparting knowledge to his students is his primary aim.
“To me, education is not about a bunch of tests or how well you do on some kind of standardized evaluation. It’s how much you know,” he said. “For me, I want my kids to understand something rather than do really well at a three-hour test at the end of the year.
“I couldn’t care less about that test. I get really excited when a kid texts and says, ‘I just walked in to take my college final in chemistry, and the professor told me to go home because I already had a 99 in the class.’ That is my affirmation.”
Daugherty’s path to teaching was a roundabout one that he began almost two decades after graduating from high school.
He spent the first few years of his life moving around, following the harvests that supported his family.
“I went to about four different schools a year up until the fourth grade,” he said. “We’d start in Arkansas with strawberries, go to Indiana with strawberries, then go to Michigan for apples and cherries. Then we’d go back to Indiana and tie strawberry plants for sale, and then make our way back to Arkansas to start over again.”
From the fourth grade on, Daugherty’s family settled in Judsonia. Daugherty said he was a well-rounded child in high school — he ran track, played basketball and was involved in several clubs — and he already knew that science was important to him.
“Science has always been a passion of mine, mainly because of the Apollo program,” he said. I remember as a little kid watching the launches on television, and that’s what really got my interest in science going.”
After his high school graduation, Daugherty tried to go into the Air Force to chase his dream of one day going into space.
“Even at 18, I wanted to be an astronaut,” he said, “but I found out with my eyesight — I’m virtually blind — I was not eligible.”
For the next 18 years, Daugherty was a salesman, selling everything from Wonder Bread to American Express stocks and bonds.
“I looked around one day and realized you don’t see a lot of 55-year-old male salesmen,” he said. “I had gotten to a point where I really did not like my job. I credit my wife because she said to me one day, ‘You either need to find a job you like, or you need to get psychiatric help because you stay depressed all the time.’”
Daugherty told his wife, Debra, that he would like to teach, but that took a four-year degree, and he would probably not finish school until he was 40 years old. She retorted by saying that in four years, he would be 40 anyway, so why not go for his dream?
“I paid off everything I owned except for my house, quit my job, took my first and only ACT at ASU-Beebe and started college in July 1991, 19 years after I graduated high school,” he said.
After one year at Arkansas State University-Beebe and two years at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Daugherty graduated with a teaching degree and started working at Mount Vernon-Enola High School in Faulkner County.
“I was the only high school science teacher,” he said. “I was the entire science department. I probably learned more chemistry and physics there than I ever did in college. I had to make my own chemicals.”
For example, Daugherty found out that phenolphthalein — an indicator for acid-based experiments — used to be the active ingredient in Ex-Lax chewing gum.
“So rather than buy phenolphthalein for $10 to $15, I would go to Walgreens and get a four-pack of chewing gum. I could take it out, drop it in alcohol, and I could make my own indicator,” he said.
Daugherty was at Mount Vernon-Enola for three years before he considered taking a job in Cabot. He said he felt a significant sense of loyalty to his students in Faulkner County, but with his wife pregnant with their daughter, he knew it was time to make a change.
“My wife was an accountant at the time, and she supported my habit of teaching,” Daugherty said. “The principal [at Cabot High School] had been trying to hire me for three years, so when we got pregnant with Brianna and she was born, I made the switch to Cabot.”
Daugherty said he was not happy his first six months in Cabot — he felt he had abandoned his students at Mount Vernon-Enola — but he learned to embrace the students in Cabot and has enjoyed his 20 years in the district.
Beyond the periodic table, physics formulas and other science lessons, Daugherty said, he hopes his students learn to reach for their dreams. A few years ago, he led by example by going after his lifelong dream to go into space.
“In 2003, [the space program] opened up to teachers. So teachers, engineers and pilots can apply,” he said. “On Jan. 26, 2003, at noon on a Sunday, the application [process] opened. Forty-six pages of application, and I filled it out that Sunday afternoon.”
One week later, the Space Shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry, but Daugherty knew he couldn’t abandon his dream.
After the shuttle’s disaster, the applicant pool for the program dwindled to 7,000. In the middle of the summer, Daugherty got a notice that his application had been sent to the Johnson Space Center. After some digging, he found out he was one of 178 finalists.
“I kept my kids involved in the process because I want my kids to know that I don’t care how preposterous a dream sounds — you chase it,” he said. “Sometimes you’ll get it, and sometimes you don’t. But you have to try.”
Daugherty knew his vision would be a problem, so he memorized his eye doctor’s charts and even got some guidance from the woman checking his eyesight once she heard why he was being tested.
Ultimately, he was disqualified because his medical history showed he had experienced ocular migraines eight years before.
“When I got the rejection letter — which was probably the worst day of my life — I realized after it was all said and done, if NASA came to me and said, ‘We’re going to let you be an astronaut, but you can never teach again,’ I would have turned it down,” he said. “That’s hard because that’s like saying your greatest ambition in life is to be a high school teacher, which doesn’t seem like an awesome ambition. … But this is my calling.”