Teacher Feature: Steven Tarrant

For many teachers, planning out their school year is a difficult part of their job. Doing so on short notice halfway through the semester brings a whole new realm of challenges. This is the exact situation bestowed upon Holy Family’s newest teacher: Mr. Steven Tarrant.

From Philadelphia, Mr. Tarrant came to Colorado with an extensive background in math, teaching, and faith. Tarrant has a bachelor’s in accounting and finance, as well as business administration. His mathematic background really comes from his 10-year tenure as an accountant.

Tarrant realized that being an educator, especially at a Catholic school, was his real calling.

“It was in my family, my brother taught at a Catholic high school. I used to just pop in on my brother’s classroom,” he said.

These visits fostered Tarrant’s newfound love for teaching. “With accounting and finance, math was always my strong suit, I started to teach it and fell in love with it,” he continued.

Tarrant was raised Catholic, but truly found his faith later in life after leaving it for a while. “Through my older brother, and some good books, I rediscovered how important it was. When I started searching, the answers became clear,” he said.

This newfound faith motivated Mr. Tarrant to teach at a Catholic high school after moving to Colorado. After teaching at Machebeuf for a while, Tarrant wanted to switch to Holy Family for a shorter commute, something that makes life much easier when raising children.

However, his start at Holy Family did not come without challenges. Mr. Tarrant started teaching halfway through the fall 2020 semester. Having 12 years of teaching experience definitely helps when faced with a challenge like this. “I knew there was going to be a hill to climb, but being in an environment where there are helpful teachers around me, as well as students that take things seriously makes it easy to come to work,” he said.

Tarrant has enjoyed his time here, and is especially fond of the faith aspect of the HF community.

“I love being able to pray with my students, and it is fun to teach kids who have a genuine interest in learning,” he said.

Mr. Tarrant plans to bring his strong Catholic faith into the community by helping students to experience the same thing. “I hope to help students find their faith at an early age, I didn’t have that in life. I love the opportunity to grow in my own faith while encouraging students to grow in theirs.”

Despite being a math teacher, Steven Tarrant does not miss the opportunity to incorporate faith into his classroom. Tarrant brought up a quote from the great mathematician Galileo: “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.” This beautifully summarizes the impact that our newest member of the Tiger community hopes to bring to the school.