Teacher Feature: Johnson believes happy students are good
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“It’s important no matter what age – kindergarten, fourth grade or high school – that children have a happy school environment because you can’t teach a child anything if they don’t want to be there. If you give me a child who doesn’t feel threatened and is happy and comfortable, I can teach them,” Johnson said.
She first experienced this truth during her own third-grade year when her teacher and inspiration to teach, Mrs. Johnnie Walker, had a rocking chair in the classroom.
“That chair made me feel like I was at home. When I was first hired, my parents brought me a rocking chair for my classroom and it’s been here ever since. When I taught kindergarten, I spent several moments comforting children in my chair,” she said, adding with a laugh “now that I teach fourth grade I don’t rock students anymore.”
Johnson began her teaching career 17 years ago with Murfreesboro City Schools after graduating from MTSU. After two years there, however, she and her husband returned to McMinnville. She spent one year at Centertown Elementary before being transferred to West, where she has been ever since.
The first nine years of her career were spent as a kindergarten teacher. But when West went from K-2 to K-5 in 1994, principal Troy Jones asked her to move to fifth grade. Although happy to oblige, she admits she was somewhat apprehensive. Once she made the move and got over the initial “culture shock” though, she discovered, as much as she loved the little ones, she had no desire to go back to teaching kindergarten.
For the past six years she has taught in the school’s intermediate program (third and fourth grades).
Johnson said she has no regrets about becoming a teacher. “I love my job. In my eyes it’s only the most rewarding profession anyone could be in. You get out of it what you put into it,” she said.
When not at school she said she will most often be found doing “family things” with her family, including husband, Steve, and daughter, Taylor.