How is this school year different for Tackett from his other years?
Todd Tackett, a history and economics teacher at VHS has adapted new classes as well as coaching into his schedule for the 2025-26 school year. Tackett is now a co-teacher in the Renaissance class this year and has taken his spot in coaching the girls’ soccer team as well. Tackett took a break from coaching last year and retired from coaching boys soccer. Tackett said, “Coaching [for] 35 years made me want to take a break because [I’ll] have some time to go do things with my family and go travel with them. We got to go to New York over Christmas last year, which you can’t travel when you are coaching a winter sport, so we were able to do that. I had some health issues and I wanted to make sure [the health issues] were taken care of…So one year was just enough for me, and I wanted to come back and finish out coaching as well as teaching at the same time.”
Avery Hale ‘26 said, “[Tackett’s teaching style] helped me because I was more interested because he was always telling funny stories, and he’s just a funny guy.”
The girl’s spot was open, I put my name into the hat for trying to get back into coaching. I had retired from coaching the boys team the year before and the girls coaching spot opened up, that’s the sport [soccer] I knew the most about. I had coached some of the girls in their freshman year, so they would be able to come back their senior year and finish off what we started with something exciting, [and] to try and accomplish getting a league championship.”
Tackett has transferred his teaching tactics into Renaissance. “Mr. Barragon and I are the new teachers [for Renaissance] and it’s a brand new class that we seriously don’t know a whole bunch about,” Tackett said.
“We’re newbies at it and we went to a conference in the summer, kind of learned a little bit about [Renaissance]. To be honest with you, we are just brand new teachers trying to get the ball rolling with Renaissance with what we know about the class.” Tackett wants to bring a lot of school spirit back into VHS through Renaissance, he said, “We’re trying to build a cultural climate here at the school. I’ve always felt VHS students could have more school spirit, and so I am really concentrating on getting that kind of culture back in Ventura.”
