Q & A: Lisa Dudding

What was your life like before Wando?

“I have been in education for 37 years, and so I spent 28 years in the classroom. Then the last nine years, I’ve spent out in administration. In our district, at Lubbock Independent School District in Lubbock, Texas, is where I was at before, and I served as the Assistant Director of Career and Technical Education. Then from there I went into the administration, and we have a Byron Martin Advanced Technology Center, so I served as the administrator there for the last two years and had about 34 teachers under me and saw over 1,750 students a day. The students came from five different high schools that bused in. It kept me really, really busy, but I loved it. I love CTE… I had a wonderful experience in Lubbock as an educator… I was teacher of the year in 2006 and 2007 for Texas. The state teacher of the year… for Texas Business Teacher’s Education Association.”

Where did you grow up? 

“I grew up in eastern Oklahoma in Jay, Oka. It’s a really small little town… We’ve converted from a stop sign to a stoplight. It has about 2,100 people… It falls on the border of Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas, and you can go either direction and within 15 minutes you’re into another state.”

What are some of your hobbies?

“I love all sports. I love to play golf in the summertime… I like to garden. I love to plant flowers and just mess with the outdoors. I love to read. I don’t really read during the school year because I’m always grading papers or planning, but in the summertime I really like to read. My goal is always to read three or four books.”

What is your family life like now?

“We love to fish. My daughter doesn’t play golf. We’re going to get her started playing golf, but she likes to go to the golf course… As a family, we love sporting events. When we were back in Texas, we had season tickets to the football games at Texas Tech and to the basketball games, so we’re big sports fans, all of us… We’re going to take a trip this summer all four of us, my son’s married and his wife and then my daughter and myself. We’re going to go to Amsterdam and Belgium. My son’s planned it all. We’re all going to go together, and we’re just really excited.”

What was it like doing rodeos and barrel racing?

“I grew up and rode horses. One of my favorite pets would probably be my horse. I had a horse named Kitty… I loved her. I used to rodeo and run barrels. She was my go-to horse. I had two older brothers, and they rode bulls. My oldest brother rode saddle broncs too… I did a lot of the all-girl rodeoing too where I did the breakaway roping, and I’ve even actually ridden a bull in an all-girl rodeo. I’m telling you I was terrified, but I did it. I did it a couple of times, but back then I was a lot tougher than I am now. I don’t even think about doing that now. I used to pole bend, and I used to do flag race… but primarily I did just the barrel racing. I started riding… I don’t even remember. I just grew up on a horse. I’d ride in the morning, and I’d ride in the evening time too.” 

Do you have any interesting pet stories?

“My dad had a farm, and he built an arena for me to practice in. She [the horse] bucked me off, and there was nobody there, and she drug me… My dad had just purchased her… and she bucked me off and drug me in the arena , so they found me unconscious, hung by the stirrup, and the horse was just standing with its head in the corner… I just remember the very next day my dad sold that horse… It didn’t make me want to stop. I still continued. I did it until about age 19.”

What was it like on the farm where you grew up?

“We raised cattle. We also raised hogs too… We were in FFA [Future Farmers of America] and 4-H, so we showed steers, and we showed pigs as well. That’s just kind of how we grew up in a small town… we grew weaning-sized pigs. You grew them until they weighed about 100 pounds. Then we would sell them… my dad really bred the pigs to be really good stock as far as for show animals. We ran about 200 head of cattle… The only thing we did with our land was we just baled hay… It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot. I think it probably instilled the hard work and determination that I have today and the work ethic that I have today.”