Wendy Tisdel comes from a family of educators. Her father is a math teacher in San Antonio and her great aunt was a teacher in the Northeast Independent School District. Growing up, she realized that teaching was "what I always wanted to do."

Currently in her fifth year of teaching, and her second year at Ronald Reagan High School, Ms. Tisdel leads two Algebra II and two Advanced Placement Statistics classes. She taught all other math classes at her previous school, John Marshall High School.

Her day at Reagan consists of a morning planning period, two classes, lunch, and an afternoon curriculum writing block. The school is on an every-other-day block schedule: on "A" days Ms.Tisdel teaches her two Algebra II classes; and on "B" days, she teaches AP Statistics.