TOM DEAL began our conversation by talking about his daughter. For years, their family has navigated the long, uncertain road of spinal cord tumors together. They have endured surgeries, setbacks, and the everyday vigilance that comes with living inside medical unpredictability. At one point, one of the rods holding her spine straight snapped — while she was at school.
Now, her health is on the upswing. Tom talks about her recovery quickly, almost breathlessly, but what carries through his fast-moving words is unmistakable — pride and relief. You can hear it in his voice. She is healing. She is thriving. She is soon to be back in class.
Tom speaks the way he lives — quickly, moving from topic to topic, propelled by a frenetic energy that pairs curiously with a matter-of-fact calm. He does not dramatize. He does not linger. He simply tells the truth about their life and moves forward.
That rhythm fits him. It matches the many hats, lanyards, and shoes he wears as a teacher responsible for students from pre K through 12th grade. If that range sounds like a gauntlet, it does not to Tom. It sounds like a day.
In the afternoons, he teaches high school students, including his daughter’s art class. In the spring, he leads a yearbook course, guiding students as they build a record of their year page by page, with the class itself carrying much of the creative responsibility. Earlier in the day, he teaches elementary computer classes. When needed, he steps in for second grade recess. He does this not because it is required, but because that is how Riverside Christian Academy (RCA) operates.
At RCA, the principals also teach. Everyone steps in when help is needed. It is a place that functions less like a hierarchy and more like a living system. Tom described it simply as a community — one where responsibility is shared, and support is always within reach.
That environment suits him.
Tom holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in commercial and studio art, a degree that led him into the familiar rhythm of freelance creative work after college. He took project-based gigs, finishing one job and moving on to the next — as many artists do. To stabilize that work, he began substitute teaching. The classroom offered consistency without sacrificing creativity.
Full-time teaching arrived by chance. Tom and his family attended the church connected to Riverside Christian Academy, and he learned the school needed an art teacher. He stepped into the role, and what might have been temporary became a calling.
No day, he said, is boring. Teaching multiple grades requires constant translation — taking the same concept and reshaping it for a 5-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a teenager. It demands imagination and patience. It also offers a rare reward — watching the same student grow year after year, building confidence, language, and identity through making.
Tom is currently working toward a master’s degree in education, focusing on both art education and special education. That pairing reflects how he already teaches — aware that every classroom is a collection of different needs, abilities, and ways of seeing.
Education runs in his blood. His mother spent her life teaching, and Tom sees Fayetteville as a reflection of the small town where she raised him. The rhythm is familiar. The relationships matter. The school is not separate from the community; it is part of it.
Because RCA does not currently offer music or drama programs, Tom has become a builder of spaces where creativity can still thrive. He leads a Lego club that grew so large it had to be divided by age group. He also oversees the chess and crochet clubs. The latter began after a swell of interest from elementary and middle school students — some of whom now teach him techniques as they learn together.
These clubs are not filler. They are laboratories of hands-on learning, where some students discover what truly engages them for the first time. Tom understands that not every child finds themselves in textbooks or standardized lessons. Some need to build. Some need to craft. Some need to move their hands before their minds open.
That philosophy shapes his classroom. It is visible in the two pottery wheels, in the ceramics and clay, and in the permission he gives students to experiment, fail, and try again. Art, in his care, is not about perfection. It is about process.
He models steadiness. He shows up. He adapts. He teaches.
And when the day ends, he returns to being a father watching his daughter reclaim her routines and her strength, speaking quickly because there is so much gratitude packed into each update. That same energy — the one that lets him move from recess duty to ceramics to yearbook layouts — is the engine behind everything he does.
Tom Deal is not defined by a single subject or age group. He is defined by range — by his willingness to meet students where they are, whether that is at a third grader’s computer desk, a pottery wheel, a crochet circle, or a high school art table.
In a community built on shared responsibility, he is a connective thread — proof that teaching is not confined to a classroom and that care, like creativity, multiplies when offered freely. GN
