The best teachers have the spirit of a warrior

“Teaching is not just a job; it’s a way of life for me,” proclaims Joy Walton, a fifth grade math and social studies teacher at Dorothy Height Elementary School. Sixteen years into her career, Mrs. Walton is the embodiment of everything good in the education profession.

Passion. Fortitude. Effectiveness.

But even the veterans, even the ones seemed destined since childhood to stand before the classroom, are challenged by certain shifts in American society. Ask any seasoned teacher to remark about the struggles in teaching this fast food eating, video game playing generation, and he or she would most definitely mention the rising apathy in our public school student.

How can I personally compete with the speed and ease of Google when asking my kids the meaning of a poem? How can Mrs. Walton compete with the allure of “The Walking Dead” or “Big Brother” when trying to make the Civil War interesting for a fifth grader?

That daunting feeling of continuously fighting a losing battle causes many teachers to find a new career. Times have changed. The utopian “school” many of us played in the garage with our neighbors as kids is gone.

The thirst for knowledge, the wealth of an imaginative mind, the quest for self-improvement we were reared to appreciate have long been replaced, and the classroom teacher is left to mend the wounds.

Mrs. Walton, a powerful, experienced educator, was faced with this reality last year when she stood before her fifth graders with a well-planned lesson on the Civil War. Her second block rolled into the room with their typical abrasively witty comments and apathetic stares that seemed to scream to her, “OK, Teacher, I double-dog dare you to try and teach me something today.”

No one knows how often teachers face such a duel of wits on a daily basis. No one knows unless time has been spent in the classroom walking in the shoes of a teacher. On this particular day, Mrs. Walton, the seasoned expert, met the challenge with persistence. She continued her lesson despite the fact that not a single one of her students was listening. They were not only ignoring her, but many were talking to each other, drawing, and even horseplaying.

Finally at wit’s end, her expertise and endurance kicked in and she began to freestyle rap.

Pencils dropped with the students’ jaws. Mrs. Walton was rapping! And it caught the attention of her students. Before she knew it, all eyes were fixed on her, and one of her most difficult students was providing the beatbox as she continued to spit rhymes about the Civil War.

That, my friends, is improvisation at its finest. That is the art of teaching.

The education profession is a craft that is molded, refined and perfected every day, every class period. In the midst of resounding and alarming apathy among our children, teachers are forced to stand in the gap for a generation unaware of the bliss of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Teachers are asked to mend the faults of absent or unkind parents, and they are called upon to do whatever it takes to teach children, many of whom genuinely don’t want to learn.

I was thinking about Mrs. Walton as I ate lunch a few weeks ago with Rebecca Braaten, assistant superintendent for the Muscogee County School District, who shared an alarming statistic. Half of the current teaching force will be gone within three years.

My mouth dropped. I asked in haste, “You mean in Muscogee County?” She answered, “No, in the country!” This mass exodus is why teachers like Mrs. Walton at Dorothy Heights Elementary School are such a breath of fresh air and such an inspiration to me.

Sit and chat with an extraordinary teacher like Mrs. Walton. You’ll hear her say things like, “I am a soldier on the battlefield. Teaching is not an easy job. It requires persistence, consistency, and endurance.”

Even a warrior like Mrs. Walton has come close to retreating from the battlefield. Maybe all teachers have considered the possibility, and at least half actually will leave, according to projections.

Stop and think about that for just a moment. Consider the school your child is attending. Imagine all the faces who will not be there in three years. What will we do then?

I’ll be honest. Most often it’s the effective, warrior-spirited teachers like Mrs. Walton who consider leaving the profession.

Doesn’t make sense, does it? The reason is simple: It’s because that’s where the passion is. That’s where the pain hurts worse — when the time, the effort and the heart poured into what they do for their students is not appreciated, received or even acknowledged. For apathetic teachers, student apathy has no effect; the paycheck they work for is enough. The complete opposite is true for the diligent teachers.

The solution? I have no clue. But I, myself, want to compare battle scars with Mrs. Walton and keep on fighting, knowing that such a soldier is fighting with me.

This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 4:39 PM with the headline "The best teachers have the spirit of a warrior."