Salon Provides Free Haircuts

RACHEL DICKERSON/MCDONALD COUNTY PRESS Tanya Stone, left, of Shag-a-delx Salon gives a haircut to McDonald County High School senior Castro Samson. Stone and another employee donated haircuts to students of the English language learners class at the high school.
RACHEL DICKERSON/MCDONALD COUNTY PRESS Tanya Stone, left, of Shag-a-delx Salon gives a haircut to McDonald County High School senior Castro Samson. Stone and another employee donated haircuts to students of the English language learners class at the high school.

A group of McDonald County High School students received free haircuts at school on Monday thanks to Shag-a-delx salon in Anderson.

Ann Parish, a paraprofessional working with teacher Rebecca Pullen in the English language learners class, said they discovered that some of the students in the class had never had a salon haircut.

"In their culture, maybe they rely on someone in their family to do it," Parish said.

With school picture day coming up, the educators thought it would be good to have real salon professionals come into the school and provide haircuts. Two members of the staff at Shag-a-delx came during the class to cut and style students' hair.

Tanya Stone, owner of Shag-a-delx, has been in the business for 18 years.

"We're excited to help the kids and give them a good salon experience," she said.

Mackenzie McAdams has been cutting hair for about three years. She said she was excited to help the kids as well.

Stone said the stylists at the salon normally go to events at churches in the fall before school starts and donate free haircuts. She said they normally do about 200 haircuts, however, this year the churches did not do their back-to-school events because of the covid-19 pandemic.

Castro Samson of Noel, a senior, was first in Stone's chair. He said normally his cousin or his mom cuts his hair or he gets it cut at a salon or barbershop.

Stone asked him what he wanted to do when he graduated, and he said he wanted to go into the Army. He said he had talked to a staff sergeant who was setting up a test for him. He said he wants to be in field operations.

Ali George of Noel, a freshman, was getting a cut by McAdams. He said this was his first professional haircut. He normally gets his hair cut at home.

After seeing some of the students get their haircuts, Parish said, "I think it's pretty cool to see these kids get excited about something. Seeing their smile and happiness after experiencing this is great."