By Macy Weddle
If you ask any English teacher what their favorite book is, they might have a few they can rattle off from their mind. But for Delta High School teacher Julie Fierce, hers are with her everywhere she goes
Mrs. Fierce, an English and Speech teacher, has four tattoos. Her favorite is the one on her arm. This tattoo is a book with 12 symbols pouring out of it, representing her favorite books.
She plans to add three more books to the tattoo this year. The books included are: To Kill a Mockingbird, Mississippi Trial 1955, The Great Gatsby, Stargirl, Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, All the Bright Places, A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Hate You Give, Into the Wild, The Giver, and The House on Mango Street. The three books she plans to add to the tattoo are Untamed, Giver of the Stars, and Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Mrs. Fierce thought in depth about these tattoos before getting them in adulthood. She knew she was going to want them because she has a strong love for tattoos.
“I love tattoos. I believe they are a very interesting and meaningful art form,” Fierce said.
Like Fierce, Ms. Amanda Craw also has meaningful tattoos.
Craw, also an English teacher, agrees that tattoos are art that represent her and how she wants to be known. She has three tattoos and all represent either teaching or traveling. One is a book, one is an apple, and one is a paper airplane.
She has always wanted an apple tattoo. She ended up getting her first at the age of 30 but she made herself wait five years before getting it so that she knew she still wanted it.
“You never know who you will be, and you won’t be the same person at 18 as 28 as 48,” Craw says.
Mrs. Taylor Lennon, another English teacher, currently has eight tattoos. Some she’s gotten with family, and she has several light/fire themed tattoos because she loves what they can symbolize.
“For me, light represents good and following the right path even when it is difficult, and fire can represent starting over,” Mrs. Lennon said.
Mrs. Lennon’s tattoos all mean something to her in their own ways, but she believes that tattoos don’t need to have deep, personal meanings behind them.
“I think tattooing is important because you are carrying something that is either meaningful to you, or someone else’s artwork,” Mrs. Lennon said. “Tattoos represent a lot of different things for people of various backgrounds and cultures, so I’m glad I get to carry these memories or pieces of art with me.”
Science teacher Mr. Adam Lennon believes tattoos can be done just for the like of the design. He has one tattoo, that being a dissected frog with flowers emerging from it.
“I have one simply because I wanted one,” he said. “They can be very unique expressions of individualism.”
As these teachers have shown, tattoos can mean so many different things and be very personal. They shows in ink what people want to be remembered as.
“They symbolize how I identify myself–as a teacher,” Craw said.
