2024 Difference Maker: Tonya Skinner’s unwavering dedication to student success through business education

(Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer)

Tonya Skinner never thought she would be a teacher. Throughout her early life in Bloomfield, Missouri, she watched her mother, Becky Eskew, climb the ranks of First Midwest Bank. She planned to follow her mother’s path and go into business. At the same time, she learned responsibilities and the value of hard work from her father, Kevin Eskew, preacher at the First General Baptist Church. As a “preacher’s kid,” Skinner helped with vacation Bible school and other church activities.

When Skinner went to Southeast Missouri State University in 1993 to pursue a business degree, her professors Dale Haskell and Linda Wiggs took notice of her desire to help those around her. They recommended she change her major to business education. Now, Skinner is approaching 30 years in the classroom, with the past 17 in Jackson, Missouri. She is a business/computer educator at the Jackson High School. For her, teaching is more than a job, it’s a passion.

“I find those kids [who struggle with grades] and say, ‘I know school is a struggle for you, but this class is going to be one of your highest grades because I’m going to push you,’” Skinner said.

Skinner began her teaching career in a small town outside of Kansas City in a small, rural high school with few resources for new teachers. Her classroom only had 10 desks and no air conditioning. At that time, turning to the internet for easy solutions wasn't an option either.

“You just had to hope you ran across resources, or you had to know somebody who had them,” Skinner said.

Skinner made up for the lack of resources with ingenuity. In the late 1990s, there wasn’t an easy option for bookmarking or saving websites; instead, each address had to be written down or, in Skinner’s case, saved on a floppy disk to be viewed later. Finding this process inconvenient, she decided to learn how to build a website to store useful teaching information and lesson plans.

“As I would find things, I started to catalog them. I would copy and paste the links in there,” Skinner said. “Randomly, [the early search engine] Web Crawler picked up my site, so people started seeing my links. It was completely by accident.”

Skinner's name started to be mentioned at national conferences as a resource for business teachers developing their lessons. She received emails from teachers nationwide asking for new ideas, which inspired her to upload her lesson plans to the website.

Her accomplishments as an educator, her drive to keep up to date with technology, and the success of her website led to speaking opportunities at dozens of conferences across the nation.

Now, Skinner also uses social media to help business educators around the country. Her Facebook page has more than 5,400 followers, who turn to her for lesson guidance and innovative ideas, as well as inspiration.

Through the resources she creates, Skinner also helps teachers better understand and use Adobe software.

“I’ve done technology training for a long time because going to a professional Adobe training is extremely expensive. Schools aren’t going to spend that kind of money to send you to learn Photoshop,” Skinner said.

Despite the workload brought on by educating educators, Skinner still makes extra time for her high school and college students. She routinely stays late into the afternoon to ensure her students fully understand their subject. Watching a student grasp a difficult concept or gain the courage to help one of their classmates with a problem is one of the reasons she pushes herself.

Business would have been more lucrative, Skinner said, but pushing students to succeed is her calling. After nearly 30 years teaching high schoolers, college students and business teachers, she keeps her passion alive by “finding joy in the little things.”

“As a teacher, it’s really hard some days,” Skinner said. “But I have a little drawer of notes from students throughout the years … I pull it out whenever I’m having a rough day.”

Tonya Skinner’s impact extends beyond the classroom, shaping not only the minds of her students but also the future of business education. With nearly three decades of dedication and innovation, her impact is a testament to the power of passion, resilience and the joy found in helping others succeed.

Editor's note: This story has been edited to correct the name of Tonya Skinner's mother.