Taylor Myrick, Ms. Farmer and the impact one student can make

As students and families across Northwest ISD celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, teachers and staff are being recognized for the impact they make on the lives of students. Ruth Farmer, kindergarten teacher at Kay Granger Elementary, is seeing it the other way around, however, as she reflects on the impact one student in particular has made on her.

Ms. Farmer will retire later this month after spending 15 years in NISD, including the last 13 teaching kindergarten at Granger Elementary. In April, the staff at Granger Elementary organized a retirement celebration for Ms. Farmer. When a photographer was needed, Ms. Farmer knew exactly who to call.

Taylor Myrick is a sophomore at Byron Nelson High School, and was one of Ms. Farmer’s students early in her teaching career. She is now on the yearbook staff at Byron Nelson and has a passion for photography, so Ms. Farmer made the call to Taylor’s mom, Heather Myrick. 

The Myrick’s were excited to help celebrate Ms. Farmer, just the same way that she has celebrated Taylor throughout the years.

Taylor has alopecia, a condition that happens when the immune system attacks hair follicles and causes hair loss.

“When Taylor began to lose her hair in second grade, Ms. Farmer and all the teachers at Granger were so amazing and supportive,” Heather said. “I don’t even know how we would’ve gotten through it without them, so Taylor has stayed very close to them.”

Heather remembers the campus celebrating an Alopecia Day and truly embracing Taylor’s differences, something that is most certainly the roots of the school’s Unique Week tradition. Unique Week serves to show all students that while differences do make us unique, at our core, we all want to be loved and accepted.

“Our school was so supportive of Taylor,” Ms. Farmer said.

“What happened to her really helped us openly talk about people’s differences and helped other kids who were struggling with differences." 

“It could’ve been as serious as the loss of a family member, or really anything, but we could talk about it. It opened the door to conversations that really helped kids, and I loved that.”

During that second-grade year when she began losing her hair, Taylor wrote a letter to Ms. Farmer, and on the outside it was titled “the one and only best teacher.” Eight years later, Ms. Farmer still has the letter in her classroom, and Taylor still admires her kindergarten teacher. 

“She’s very open with kids,” Taylor remembers. “She talks to kids like she would talk to a friend. She never talks down to them, and you can tell that she cares about them a lot.”

The admiration in this unique teacher-student relationship is a two-way street.

“What I admire most about Taylor is that she’s always happy and encouraging,” Ms. Farmer said. “She handles all she does with courage and grace.”

Although still a sophomore, Taylor already knows that she wants to attend Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and study marine biology. Plus, she wants to continue to sharpen her photography skills and work on the side as a marine photographer.

For Ms. Farmer, her retirement is going to include lots of time with her grandchildren. However, in a few years when she travels to Corpus Christi for vacation, she’s already looking forward to catching up over lunch with a “one and only best student.”