Bartlesville High School Special Education teacher Cassandra Marlar was honored this week for being the 2019 TARC Educator of the Year.

The honor was given to Marlar during the 29th Annual Advocacy Awards and Volunteer Recognition ceremony held at the Marriot Hotel – Southern Hills in Tulsa. Marlar said she believes whole-heartedly that the most important work is advocacy work. She said she feels privileged to be recognized by an organization like TARC.

TARC helps individuals with development disabilities and their families through education, empowerment, support and advocacy. The TARC Advocacy Awards and Volunteer Recognition event honor advocates and volunteers who dedicate their time and talents to make life better for Oklahomans with developmental disabilities.

When explaining what it means to be an advocate for her students, Marlar said it means she has the best job in the world because she gets to spend her days with the most loving and caring students imaginable. She said she has the honor and responsibility of being their teacher, but in the end, she thinks she is the one learning the most through them.

Over the years, Marlar's students have taught her to strive for a life full of grace and mercy, to practice forgiveness, to look for the good in others, to show patience, to always be kind, to live life to the fullest and to keep pushing herself to be better, to do better and to love more each and every day. She said it is an honor that she gets to share her life with them.

Winning the award can inspire others to be better, too. Marlar said she hopes she inspires others to go outside of their comfort zone and look past the disability and embrace the ability in all people. She said she wants to show others that by working in tandem and celebrating our differences, we can build a community that works together for the inclusion and betterment of all people.

In Marlar's classroom at BHS, they refer to themselves as "Ms. Marlar's Tribe" and their class motto is "Together We Rise.” To Marlar, these things embrace the philosophy that she strives to build her life around. She hopes others embrace this attitude as well.

And there will always be areas for us to improve. This is the same for Ms. Marlar. She said there are many areas where she can see a need for improvement.

One that is near and dear to her heart is adding more opportunities for her students to be in the community after graduation. She said the State of Oklahoma needs to work on a long-term solution to reduce the amount of time that individuals with disabilities have to wait for state services, which will allow them to live as independently as possible in their own homes and communities.

As an advocate for people with disabilities and as a community member, Marlar said she would like to focus on building a community partnership dedicated to improve the number of job opportunities and options that are available in our community for the total inclusion of people with disabilities. She said no one is good at everything, but everyone is good at something. Because of that, Marlar said we need to utilize all of those talents to collectively create a community that is accessible as well.

In January, Marlar will begin working towards a Master's Degree in Special Education. She said she is looking forward to the education and to improving in the area of advocacy for her students. For more on the conversation with Marlar, click here.