Student can tell Davis, ‘You taught my grandma’: Longtime educator has been at Irving College 50 years
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For Irving College Elementary teacher Jo Eva Davis, this unlikely occurrence came about this school year as she is teaching Taylor Tittsworth. After her mother, Becky Tittsworth, and her grandmother, Judy Tittsworth, Taylor becomes the third generation of Tittsworths to come under Davis’ tutelage.
“Over the years I’ve told my students that it’s OK if they told me I taught their brother or sister or even their mom or dad, but I always said it was time for me to quit when some one told me I taught their grandma or grandpa,” said Davis. “But I don’t think I’m ready to quit just yet.”
To call Davis an Irving College institution would be an understatement. Now beginning her 38th year teaching at the school, she began her time there as a student in the early 1950s, for a total of 50 years spent in the confines of the county’s smallest school.
After graduating at the top of her class in 1962, she continued her education at Tennessee Tech where she earned a degree in business education in only three years. Though she had offers to teach elsewhere, Davis accepted a position at Irving College in order to be closer to her ailing mother.
In the following years, she taught at both the elementary and high school levels at Irving College until the county schools consolidated in 1969. Since that time, she has remained at the school teaching mostly math and language arts in grades five through eight. She currently teaches these subjects to the school’s sixth-graders.
When she returned to the school as a teacher, she said it was odd to have as co-workers teachers she herself had just a few years before. “Now it’s come full circle,” she said.
“I’m teaching with many of my former students.”
Included among her former students she now works with are teachers Carrie Sherrill, Martha Kirby, Carol Roberts, Sherry Smith, Vicky Burch, as well as attendance clerk Jeanie Boyd and many of the school’s cafeteria staff.
In her half-century at the school, Davis said she has seen many changes, particularly in matters of curriculum.
“Now there’s so much pressure on you based on how your kids score on standardized tests. There’s no time to get personal with them, or to do fun things. In my opinion, too much emphasis is put on testing and rising test scores, but I do it,” she said.
Asked why she still continues to teach, when a number of her peers retire the day they get their 30 years in, Davis said she couldn’t imagine not being in the classroom.
“I love it. It’s my life. To tell you the truth, I’d be lost without it. If I stopped, I think would get old or older any way,” she said with a laugh.