Walking through the halls of SHS, anyone that encounters English teacher Paige Wyatt can see tattoos on her arms of butterflies, flowers and other things important to her. She feels that the purpose of her tattoos are to openly express her truth. 

Wyatt says each tattoo is symbolic in some way, and she isn’t afraid to show them off. 

“All of them kind of mean something…It reminds me of my friends and my family,” Wyatt said.

According to Wyatt, when she looks at her tattoos, they remind her of why she doesn’t do drugs. Wyatt has family members that went through the struggles of addiction, so her tattoos are used as motivators to stray away from that path. 

In high school, both of Wyatt’s grandparents passed away, and her tattoos of stars hold a deep meaning as a tribute to them.

“My grandpa always said that when he passed, he’d watch over me through the stars,” Wyatt said.

Though Wyatt has never worked in a facility where her tattoos were an issue, her mother was concerned for her professional opportunities when she got her first tattoo at 19 years old. She is not ashamed of her tattoos, but if it’s necessary, Wyatt says she will cover them for professional purposes.

In the classroom, Wyatt believes that her tattoos allow her to connect with her students faster. Students with tattoos often share their tattoo stories with her, and she does the same with her tattoos. 

“A lot of my students that are kind of harder to get to know have bonded with me over tattoos,” Wyatt said.

Though junior Hayden Puckett has never gotten any tattoos, he wants to get some in the future. He feels the same way about tattoos that Wyatt does.

“I’ve always thought they were cool,” Puckett said. “They could have a story and a meaning behind them.”

Expressing herself is important to Wyatt, and she views tattoos as a form of expressive art. She believes that as long as the body art isn’t offensive to a group of people, there isn’t anything wrong with showing off the art on anyone’s body.

“If you show them off, people come to appreciate them as actually what they are, which is art,” Wyatt said.