Elementary teacher Eric Crouch: ‘You got to sell something worthwhile’

Eric Crouch is a product of the Muscogee County school system.

At 30, he has become one of the district’s most celebrated teachers, two weeks ago becoming a 2016 Milken Educator Award winner. One of 35 educators in the nation to receive the recognition, Crouch was the first Georgia teacher in four years to be so honored. It came with a $25,000 prize.

His story is as interesting as his passion for elementary school education. He changed majors at Columbus State University and found his way from the College of Business to Education.

Recently, he sat down with Ledger-Enquirer senior reporter Chuck Williams and chief photographer Mike Haskey.

Here are excerpts of that interview, edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why did you become a teacher?

A: Well, originally I set out to become an entrepreneur. ... Ended up working at a frame shop. Got involved with some photography at that frame shop and then kind of found my niche there. ... So, I changed my major to business and as I got into the business classes I realized it had nothing to do with photography.

I immediately went through, failed all of my classes and so it brought my grade point average way down. And my wife said, “Wait a minute now, you can do photography, but you need to have a career, something that we can depend on too, you know. ...

I was doing a lot of self reflection. End up having a conversation with my grandfather over Thanksgiving. He told me that the key to being successful in business was being able to sell something worth having. You know, you’ve got to sell something worthwhile. And so that was when it kind of hit me. ... I had been doing some things at our church, and I thought maybe (education) would be for me.

I got into it, immediately loved it, but I couldn’t get into the program because I had destroyed my GPA. So I had to go back and retake all the business classes, which is why it took me seven years.

Q: Decisions have consequences, right?

A: Absolutely. But I wouldn’t change it because that’s part of the learning process — it’s part of the way the sequence worked out. And I think if I had just inherently known I was gonna be a teacher then maybe I may not have been prepared to walk into the classroom at 22, as opposed to 25.

Q: Not many men choose early childhood. What made you choose it?

A: Well, education’s really important. In order to make a difference I think it’s critical to start early. I think early intervention is the key. I think in Georgia we lead the nation in Pre-K programs and I think it’s important that we have a great start so that we’re not trying to, you know, perform surgery on things we can’t perform surgery on later on in high school, middle school and our age.

Q: How many male teachers were here (at Double Churches Elementary) when you started?

A: There was one male teacher, Mr. Holland, he was in second grade and he was here with us until two years ago when he retired, and he has left me the only male classroom teacher in the school.

Q: What’s that taught you?

A: Well, I think that goes back to, are you a product of your choices or your environment? ... I chose to maybe try to make it more of an opportunity for other men to see it as a positive thing. Because, you know, when you get into it, a lot of people want to see what’s your 401(k)? You know, the status stuff. And really, you have to make a choice to change lives, and that’s a different mindset. It’s not about money. You don’t get into it for money — you get into it to make a difference, and the biggest way you can make a difference is by having 30 little children that you can call your own, and being able to take them from one step in the process to another. And hopefully along the way, create some sort of lifelong learning.

Q: Are there specific kids you can look up and say, “I know I helped this kid?”

A: Absolutely, and not all of it’s academic. ... Some of the kids, they’re afraid to step out and take that risk.... The goal is to give children that opportunity to fail — give them an opportunity to fail so that they can learn how to pick themselves back up. And I think that’s probably been one of the bigger influences here is that children know that it’s OK to mess up in here, as long as it’s in the common good of growing, as long as we’re trying to get better at what we’re doing.

Q: So you’re challenging them to explore their limits and don’t worry if they fail.

A: Correct. It’s more about the process than it is about the results. The results will come as a part of the process later on. But it doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, when we’re doing math, it’s not ‘Wait till we put the right answer on the board, copy the answer down.’ It’s ‘What did I miss during the process so that I can get the answer right for the future every time?’ ... We need to do a better job of understanding what it is we don’t understand and not knowing what the answer is, ’cause the answer’s not going to help us for very long if we cannot understand what the problems were.

Q: What’s the difference in first graders and fifth graders?

A: Ooh. Well, they smell different, that’s for sure. (Laughing) I think the biggest difference is (fifth graders) fill up the room a lot quicker. ... It’s like a wall. You can’t see to the back of the classroom. With first graders, a lot of pockets in between them. They’re just a lot bigger, but they’re still the same. They still want to be loved. They still want to be heard. They have a lot of great ideas.

Q: Do you have any fifth graders that you had in the first grade?

A: I have seven.

Q: So how is that?

A: It’s wonderful getting to see how different they are than when they started. ... You know, I always tease them, it’s kind of a running joke, and I’ll ask them, I’ll say, “Now, remind me again who was your first grade teacher?” when they say something brilliant. (Laughing.)

Q: Let’s talk about your classroom a little bit. The seats are different. The tables look different. You’ve got pictures of you and your family up here. You’ve got Tennessee football stuff, St. Louis Cardinals stuff, American flags. You’ve got all this eclectic folk art. It doesn’t look like a normal classroom.

A: I think the thing that my mom used to say all the time was, “It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just different,” and it’s OK to be different. And the reality is that, with there not being a lot of males, you don’t get a lot of male classrooms. So you don’t get to see that. And luckily for me, I have a principal who lets me kind of run with whatever I want to run with, and so I’ve decided that maybe I don’t like the aluminum trim around the board — I want to put a wooden frame around it and make it into some sort of game show-looking board.

Q: I mean, you have a deer head in here.

A: Absolutely. The kids ask me every once in a while if he just ran through (the wall) right there.

Q: But I suspect some of your urban kids have never seen ...

A: Or touched. And that’s what they want to do — they want to touch the deer, and they’ve never touched one and they want to know what it feels like.

... You know, that’s what I’m here to do. It’s not to influence exactly how they do things, but just to understand that everything doesn’t always have to be done the same way. It starts with math. It starts with history. People do things differently, and that’s OK — that’s OK. I appreciate different. I’m different. I wouldn’t want all of these kids to be in here and be the same. So it makes sense that the environment is unique to them.

Q: You’re entrepreneurial in your approach to education. I mean, you go after grant money and a lot of that. How have you become this entrepreneur teacher?

A: Well, having a business kind of helps you understand that you’re here to solve a problem. And in here it’s no different, really. I mean, my job is to kind of think, create, share, sell. It’s the same kind of aspects but you just switch it to education. ... I’m ultimately just trying to sell them their own education, and they don’t need to really understand that other than it just makes it a little bit different and more fun.

Q: How many iPads do you have in your room?

A: 27.

Q: How did you get them?

A: Donors choose some of them. I have purchased to make up for the ones that we didn’t have ’cause when I came from first grade I only had 20 kids, and when I came up here I had 27. So there was a couple of them that I purchased myself. But it’s important for me for them to have all of that. But we also had a MEEF (Muscogee Education Excellence Foundation) grant.

Q: Is this the most technologically savvy fifth grade room in the district?

A: I hope so. It better be.

Q: You don’t wait for somebody else to solve your problems?

A: No. That’s not an option. We don’t have time to wait. You know, education is continuously moving. Whether they give you another kid, whether they give you more curriculum to teach, you’ve got to meet a deadline.

Q: So you’re constantly looking for outside funding sources?

A: Absolutely — that and just looking for different ways to do the same task and to understand that maybe I did it this year with this group of kids. Well, maybe the next group of kids are just like a different set of clients.

You know, in wedding photography you may shoot a wedding at Oakhurst, and the next time you’re shooting it at the Rivermill. And they’re different. They’re different places. They’re different people. And so you do different things with those people.

And so it doesn’t mean that just because I came in here and I taught, you know, Alvin York and showed “The Battle of Over The Top” over here... that doesn’t mean that I need to show that next year. I may do something completely different because I try not to write everything down so that I have to re-learn everything year by year, based on what their needs are, which drives my wife nuts.

Q: There’s an easier way to do it.

A: Sure. But that’s not the right way to do it. It’s not the right way to do it.

Q: Talk about being a recent 2016 Milken Educator Award winner.

A: I didn’t know anything about it. It’s not something you can apply for. ... I remember getting emotional and I remember the First Lady of Georgia was there and then I remember sitting in a room afterward where I got pulled to like a secret meeting with all of the other winners in the state of Georgia. And they told me all the things that were about to happen and ... the reasons why it may have happened. And you’re trying to process it all, and all I could think of was “Designated survivor.” It just kind of dropped out of nowhere and now, all of a sudden, everybody wants to talk to me and I don’t really understand, still, part of it.

It’s special because it’s a validation of everything that everybody’s done in my life to get me to where I am. A lot of the people that I mentioned earlier with these grants, these people are the people that are giving me the money. These people are the people that believe in the hope that we have at Double Churches, and they’ve given us that platform to be able to go and give things for our children because they believe in these children, too — they gotta take over.

Q: What do you do with this? Do you become an administrator and try to do this for the whole school? Do you stay in a classroom? What do you do from here?

A: You know, I’m getting the degrees now so that I can be prepared in the future. Obviously, with children it makes it a little bit more difficult to go back to school. You want to focus on them, and with a second baby coming, I’ll be wrapping up a specialist degree and hopefully be able to go back and get the doctorate degree as well. But really, right now the plan is to stay focused on the classroom. And part of their motto, if you will, is to celebrate, elevate and activate.

That’s what Milken does for teachers. They celebrate them, which was the big celebration we had with all the kids. Elevating by pushing, you know, maybe their status up a little bit so that people can recognize. And then activating. That’s what I’m supposed to do as things go forward. As I thought about that and kind of reflected on what that meant for me, I think it means more to my kids than it does to me because me getting more opportunities gives them more opportunities.

Q: Define teacher.

A: I think it’s lover of children. I mean, you gotta love children. That’s what a teacher is to me: someone who loves children, who will go to the end of the world for them.

Q: Talk about your principal, Paula Shaw-Powell. It was clear during the Milken awards ceremony that you have a very close relationship with your principal.

A: So, for those who don’t know, when I started and I had the photography business, I had finished my degree in early childhood and I got to a point where I was about to quit, giving up looking for jobs. There was kind of a hiring — it wasn’t a freeze — but it was very limited, the opportunities that were available. I went to 18 different school in a matter of about three days and door after door after door. ... And they were either not hiring or the principal wasn’t in. I mean, I didn’t as much get my foot in the door. It was very discouraging. And so I had pretty much given up and so my wife had told me, “You’ve got to pay on the loans. They’re coming back in six months, so you need to try and get something or you’re gonna sub in the meantime. You know, we’re gonna do something.”

So I just happened to say, “I haven’t hit any of the schools on this west-to-north side of the town. So you know, I’ll go give that a shot.” And so I had grabbed some pants and a belt and a shirt, went to work, took photos that day, and then my wife called and said, “Well, how is it going? Have you gotten any interviews yet?” And I said, “Well, Babe, I’m on my third school and I haven’t got to talk to anybody yet but I’m really hopeful.” And at that point I realized I better go put on my clothes and actually go do an interview. And at that point I realized I had on my wife’s belt. I had grabbed the wrong belt.

Anyhow, I ended up coming here. Miss Shaw-Powell saw it — ended up being a running joke — and we hit it off from there. And from that point, I let her know that no matter what, that I would make her proud. I get emotional talking about it. But, sorry, she’s the one that gave me a chance. She’s the one that lets me do whatever I want in here ’cause she trusts me. I love her for that. I really do.

Q: Is the key word here “trust”? You trust these kids. Your principal trusts you.

A: Absolutely.

Q: Is education about trust?

A: Yeah, and it’s about hope. It’s about believing in each other. It’s about understanding that these are the future. I trust that if I do the best that I can do, then my hopes and dreams will come true and that they’ll do everything that I want them to be able to do. You know, I want them to have — you’ve got me all choked up! — I want them to be able to have every opportunity that I had or better. You know, the goal isn’t to teach them to be as smart as me. It’s to teach them to be better than me. And I really hope that’s what I do.

This story was originally published December 10, 2016 at 7:12 PM with the headline "Elementary teacher Eric Crouch: ‘You got to sell something worthwhile’."