From a Division I soccer player to one of the best physical health & education teachers at West Po, Tracey Vasques has had quite a career.

She wanted to become a teacher because when she was in school, she noticed how other teachers would treat students or talk to them. 

“I had a lot of great teachers, don’t get me wrong, but when I saw teachers treating my brother in a negative way in physical education… he wasn’t an athlete like me I thought, ‘Geez, I can do better than that,’” Ms. Vasques said. 

And that’s exactly what she’s doing. She loves physical education and she knows that not everybody likes the subject, but those are the kind of students that she likes to connect with most.

Ms. Vasques attended the University of Virginia and earned two degrees in teaching and education. Her biggest inspiration is Dolly Parton because she admires how Parton makes everybody happy and stays true to herself. 

“She’s amazingly successful, intelligent, and talented,” Ms. Vasques said.

She also finds it fascinating that Parton manages to maintain a strong fan base and loves mostly that she looks after children with reading issues. 

Ms. Vasques loves to do all kinds of activities whenever she has the time. She enjoys golf the most and wishes she could do more of it. She loves live music, hanging out with her friends and having great conversations in general. 

She likes shopping and TV, and she loves to be active, lending toward her appreciation for going outside for walks and playing with her dogs.

She loves a salty-and-sweet-food combination more than any other one—sea salt and caramel especially.

Over the course of her teaching career, Ms. Vasques has seen her fair share of funny stories. One of the moments that stood out the most, though, revolved around a student who was very outgoing and talkative. One day in class that student was being quiet and closed off, and she had no idea what was going on. At the end of the day, the student came up to her and asked her if she liked guinea pigs. After she said yes, the student pulled a guinea pig out of his hoodie and showed it to her. He had it in his sweatshirt all day and no one noticed. 

“It was one of the funniest things that happened to me as a teacher, ” Ms. Vasques said.

Her music taste ranges through almost every single genre. She loves Motown, classic rock, gogo music, latin and pop. An artist that she heavily appreciates is an alternative country musician named Orville Peck. She said his voice sounds a little bit like Elvis or Johnny Cash, and he dresses up and wears a mask and has even been in vogue for his fashion. She loves his ballads, western songs and his covers.

She has always wanted to play in a World Cup, and while she knows she can’t, her dreams have shifted elsewhere. 

“I live for the day I can hold my first grandchild,” Ms. Vasques said

Her personal motto is that you don’t know what you’re capable of until you don’t have a choice. She had a struggle trying to figure out what her favorite quote was but after a bit she said that her favorite quote is “believe.”

The most inspirational thing she mentioned was what she’s been doing and what her goal is for people with mental illnesses in school. Having ADHD herself, she works on weaving it into her conversations more naturally. But her goal is to create awareness and to normalize similar situations.

“[Due to my ADHD] I talked too much,” Ms. Vasques said. “I was underestimated because of it.”