A teaching career that began in 2008 has seen a few stops and starts, as well as changes in direction, as Jenna Marwitz prepares for a new journey during the 2024-25 school year as a Speech Language Pathology Assistant with Comanche County Essential Services, based out of De Leon.

Marwitz originally began her career as an educator at Zephyr in 2008 as a fourth grade teacher for two years. She and Nicole Sparks then pursued their culinary passion as the Crockin’ Girls before Marwitz returned to Zephyr High School in 2019 to lead the Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) program for five years.

“I decided I wanted to get back in the classroom and my husband is the superintendent at Zephyr and said we really needed to put the FCS program back in, which used to be called home ec,” Marwitz said. “It’s culinary classes, sewing, interior design, things like that. He asked if I wanted to get certified to teach that and I said yeah, that was my dream to teach my hobbies.”

Reflecting on her time teaching FCS, Marwitz said, “I really enjoyed that and built that program back up the past five school years. They had it in the past but that teacher retired and it had been missing for a while. We went to lot of competitions in regard to community service projects with the school.”

A graduate of Paradise High School and later Tarleton State University in 2008, Marwitz cited FCS as the reason she pursued a career in education.

“We got to have a class that was geared toward people that wanted to teach,” Marwitz said. “Through that class I was able to basically be a student teacher at our elementary school. I got to spend a lot of time in the classroom through that and it solidified in me that this is something I wanted to do before I even went to college.”

Always looking to broaden her educational horizons, a new task was presented to Marwitz.

“Someone told me recently that they were desperate for a speech therapist in school, and asked if I would consider going back to school to do that,” Marwitz said. “I had wanted to further my education, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. When that was brought up I tried it and immediately loved everything about it, and then I happened to get a job.”

Marwitz admitted she was torn about leaving Zephyr ISD full time.

“I loved what I did at Zephyr and that position, and being at school with my kids,” Marwitz said. “My son is going to be in high school this year so it was a hard decision. I told my kids at the high school that I expect you guys to do things and grow and keep changing, so I had to live up to the expectations I set for them by branching out and trying something new.”

Marwitz will be at Zephyr one day a week in the coming school year, however, and will also serve students in Early.

“Rather than all the schools have their own speech therapist or occupational therapist, which really isn’t in a school’s budget, they have the special education services co-op,” Marwitz said. “We service 10 schools in the area and I’ll get to be at Zephyr one day a week. I’ll also be at Early Primary and Early Elementary.”

Regarding what she’s looking forward to most in her new position, Marwitz said, “I love the idea of getting to see the growth in kids, and see it in different areas no matter what grade you’re teaching. With speech therapy, it gives you something to hone in on with each kid and know what we’re working on. This is so critical to the trajectory of where they go, correcting something that’s so critical and fixing something they have to have.”

She and her husband Stanton, who is the superintendent at Zephyr ISD, have three children – son Spencer, who will be a freshman; daughter Stella, who is entering seventh grade; and daughter Hazel, who will be a second-grader.