Tom Hairston, Ed.S., is a Regional Schoolwide PBS Consultant with the Heart of Missouri RPDC, which is housed in the College of Education, University of Missouri-Columbia. He joins two other consultants to serve 75 school districts.
Prior to joining the Heart of Missouri RPDC, Tom taught five years at Moberly High School. He spent three of these years as a special education teacher and the last two years as a Language Arts teacher specializing in increasing decoding and encoding abilities in reading. Tom was active in the development of the SW-PBS team at Moberly High School, and also was the director of Communications for the school district. For three years, he also worked as an assistant coach on the high school football team that won their district three consecutive years.
Before joining the faculty at Moberly High School, Tom spent a year working in the athletic department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. It was there that he found his passion for helping children that struggle in their environments and decided to pursue a career in education. Tom graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts in History, from Central Methodist University in 2007 with a Masters in Education and again from the University of Missouri in 2009 with a Specialists in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D.in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.