Tomayko, Carole

Name: Carole Tomayko
Department: English
Education: Undergraduate University of Michigan, Masters equivalency from Hood College
Year started at MBHS: 1986
Previous Jobs: Composition assistant at Blair, taught at Paint Branch
Hobbies: Camping

Carole Tomayko is an English teacher at Blair, originally from Detroit, who received a degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan "to have something to think about while I washed dishes."

Tomayko, who is "very firmly committed to the importance of an intellectual life," minored in botany and German, although she said she aspired to be a housewife. After college, she married, had three children and was a full-time mother until she realized that it was not possible to put all of her kids through college on one salary.

When her youngest child entered first grade, Tomayko got a job as a composition assistant at Blair. She was "shocked to discover that I really liked teenagers." She also learned a bit about teaching; she remembers thinking, "I can do this, and I want to do this."

Before working at Blair, Tomayko had no intentions of becoming a teacher. All four of her grandparents, her aunts and her mother were teachers, and she thought that teaching was more work than she was willing to do. Now that she is a teacher, she says teaching is "more [work] than I ever dreamed, but it's highly rewarding."

"I never worked as hard in my life as when I was a student teacher," she asserts. When she first began as a full-time teacher, she clocked 60 hours of work per week. She currently keeps busy by sponsoring clubs in addition to teaching. Last year, she created the Blair Literary Society for Students (BLISS). She previously started Blair's creative writing classes.

One of the things Tomayko will miss the most when she stops teaching is reading student writing. She feels that good writers use their true voice to create unique pieces and advises students not to be pompous or verbose just to make their work look better.

Her plans for the future include retiring to a life of community service and communing with nature. She and her husband own a cabin in Pennsylvania, and they intend on spending a lot of time outdoors camping and traveling around the country "by wheel." "Living outdoors is what interests me," she muses. "I like having the sky as my ceiling… the earth as my floor."