Bonnie Hardaway (’79 M.A.) has spent most of her life in classrooms. She began to consider becoming an educator in the fifth grade, inspired by her teacher that year. By the sixth grade, Bonnie was fully taken under the wing of and mentored by another beloved teacher, even helping grade spelling tests after school.

Her decision at a young age resulted in a 40-year career as a dedicated teacher — mostly with seventh and eighth graders — sparking ideas in young minds and developing writing and reading skills that would last them a lifetime. Now retired, Bonnie has decided to leave her entire estate to the University of North Texas — a gift that ensures scholarships for future teachers graduating from UNT.

By the time she was a decade into her career, Bonnie had taught at the secondary level in Texas, California and Bermuda. While teaching in the Highland Park school district in Dallas, she was required to pursue a graduate degree.

“I looked around and decided that the best program was up at North Texas,” Bonnie says. “So, I became a commuter and it took four years, including a thesis and all. But I loved learning and writing in all of my journalism classes.”

While coursework was heavy, Bonnie found opportunities to engage with campus life by sitting in on some One O’clock Lab Band practice sessions and writing for the school newspaper, the North Texas Daily.

“One of the articles that I wrote in the North Texas Daily made the front page,” she says. “I still have a copy that reminds me of seeing my byline in print for the first time.”

Upon graduating, Bonnie continued to teach in Dallas for several years, before moving Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, she utilized her master’s degree and added teaching an introduction to journalism class to her roster.

“I was also a newspaper sponsor several times, and that was really fun, working with the students,” Bonnie says. “Of course, it was their paper and I was just leading.”

Bonnie has continued to write. While living in East Texas, she wrote for two small town papers — one series of articles resulted in chefs taking over school district food programs while another series of 12 articles detailed the 2004 election. In addition to news, Bonnie also enjoyed interviewing subjects for feature articles and continues to send in letters to the editors of various papers, and most recently getting a byline in the Washington Post — after which she says she was on “cloud nine for about three days.”

Bonnie retired from teaching in 2001, but education has remained at the forefront of her interests. More than a decade ago, she became concerned about the student debt crisis.

“I felt like I could make a contribution and help out some of the students who were going into teaching,” Bonnie says. “I reached out to UNT, because of my master's connection there, and was sent on to the UNT Foundation. We set it up, and it's a scholarship that will go to juniors and seniors who have taken all their education courses and intend to become teachers when they graduate.”

Bonnie is a career teacher who wants to make becoming a teacher more accessible for young people coming out of college.

“I want them to be able to have some money to start out with that they can use or try to keep,” Bonnie says. “I hope this will help reduce any amount of debt that they're going to have by the time they're starting to teach.”

Bonnie’s passion for teaching shines through in every part of her life.

“It's a wonderful profession, I’d do it all over again,” she says. “My hope for the students who receive my scholarships from UNT is that they will love teaching and have the strength to deal with the unique challenges which teachers face today so that their careers will be long and successful.”