An interview with Joy Walsh
Joy Walsh brings love, experience, understanding and patience to her work with children
Joy Walsh has been teaching kindergarten students at St. Albans City School for 14 years. Prior to that she was a special educator and then a stay-at-home mother while she raised her three children. Before attaining her current position she worked as a para-educator at Georgia Elementary School and St. Albans City School. Joy also had three years of teaching 1st grade at Highgate Elementary School before returning to City School to be the long-term kindergarten teacher she is now. On top of her official teaching experiences, Joy volunteered in City School classrooms regularly while her children attended the school. Altogether, Joy has more than 40 years of working closely with children and it shows in the calm and capable way she shepherds her students through the some of their first years of schooling.
The pictures below were taken in Joy's classroom in the Spring of 2017.
The pictures below were taken in Joy's classroom in the Spring of 2017.
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Joy supervising owl-pellet dissection and analysis
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The music for this show was created by Borrtex and Kai Engel and can be found at Free Music Archive.
Artist Borrtex: Track: One Moment. Album: Peaceful Mind. Soundtrack: Ambient, Contemporary, Classical. Source: Attribution-NonCommercial License.
Artist: Kai Engel. Track: Soli. Album: Caeli: Genre Classical. Soundtrack Ambient. Source: Attribution-NonCommercial License.
Artist Borrtex: Track: One Moment. Album: Peaceful Mind. Soundtrack: Ambient, Contemporary, Classical. Source: Attribution-NonCommercial License.
Artist: Kai Engel. Track: Soli. Album: Caeli: Genre Classical. Soundtrack Ambient. Source: Attribution-NonCommercial License.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
This is Mitch Craib for Compelling Lives. In the summer of 2017 I interviewed Joy Walsh about her experience of being a kindergarten teacher. She is a successful and veteran teacher nearing retirement. The whole interview lasted about 40 minutes. During the interview I was struck by her respect for children and her deep understanding and appreciation for their differences. She has faith in people. I have chosen some of the conversation that best highlights her approach to teaching.
What kind of a person really ought to think about teaching? Someone who can handle different personalities. Not everyone fits into the same mold. You have to be creative and you can't follow a set list that you have planned for the day because it's not going to work, and if it does work, great! Then you can keep moving. Find what your kids are interested in, not what you are interested in. It could be totally different. You have to be willing to learn and constantly change your game plan, so to speak, to meet the needs of the children, and the interests of the children, so the kids want to come everyday, so they are saying I love school. I want to go to school.
So what do you bring to the table? What's your gift for teaching or what do you think is your strength? I am able to watch children who have a lot more energy, and be a little more patient than other people whose expectation is sit down stay kind of theory, which is fine which is fine that's who they are, but I tend to have a higher tolerance for children who move. Why? I don't know. I'm able to tune it out so to speak. If a child needs to stand and move while they're reading, so be it. It does not bother me. Has it always been that way for you? That approach? Yes, definitely. That is how I originally was pulled out of high school every Friday to work with children with special needs. I took them swimming and they would learn to count by kicking their feet. It just was a different approach, especially in the 70’s, an extremely different approach to... who cares if a kid learns to count by kicking their feet or by moving elements on a table or by wrote. It just seemed like more fun and more success for the child, and then they were able to transfer that into counting for their parent or another teacher.
Do you feel like you can make connection with almost all of the kids in your classes? Most of the time. Some kids are tough. I have some sort of connection with every child in my room, some maybe not as strong, and at five and six years old that child has probably learned I need this wall to be safe. I can't trust you because I can’t trust others. Why should I trust you? And, you try and chip away at that wall. I feel like probably it took me till April to get through a wall with a child and when you do... it makes a difference, and they know they can depend on you.
Have you seen tough kids that have come here and then really transitioned into solid adults? I have followed a student who was removed from the school, and really was never able to learn in a school setting, and I have seen him grow and prosper. He is a farmer right now and is quite successful at that. I forgot how many head he has in his barn and smiling from ear to ear and the gentleman that hired him puts him up in his home and the child just seems happy and healthy. I asked him what he did on his off time and he said I eat and I sleep. So, he's physically exhausted, and that's what he needed in the classroom. I would be like, can you please go sharpen those pencils? He just needed to be doing. I had that child rearrange the classroom and move rugs. But he had the insight to roll the rug up and not try and lift it whole. So, I knew from that, that there was a lot going on that he was capable of that he was not showing. Most five and six year olds don't have the ability to think like that. Mathamatically, he could build blocks and structures and I said well in order to make the tops sturdy what did you have to do on the bottom, and he used the word foundation. The special educator just looked at me... Foundation?! Well this is his strength. Let’s let him use it. And we got him to figure out how many blocks high the tower was. How big the foundation was. So, he had to measure and know what those numbers were, and that's really the best way for that child to learn. Now he's successful in life and he was handed an awful deck of cards from birth. There was a reason when he came to me at five he did what he did. He was not molded, so to speak, for a public school setting. He just was not.
Do you strive for kindness in your classroom? Oh, it is number one, number one. Well maybe safety, but... You can disagree, just don’t be mean about it. Do you think you have been able to help children understand that kindness is important? If there is a bully at age five or six, I've gone so far as to record them on an iPad and have them watch it, and say how would you feel if this was being said to you? Sometimes that works so you find another way. But kindness is definitely important. And, I think manners. Unfortunately, children don’t always come in with pleases and thank yous and that goes a long way in my world. Respect towards everybody? Sure, yeah, yeah. You can’t just pick on another child or an adult just because they are different. You are different too, you know. Thank goodness we don't all have blonde hair and blue eyes. We are all different. We should not be treated differently just because of that. How would you like it if everybody with brown eyes couldn't sit on the rug? Well that's not fair. Exactly! So what you're doing is not fair. You try and teach and reteach and have them look at it in a variety of ways.
I had a student with a missing finger once. She was picked on terribly. So, I had kids take their fingers and bend them up as if they did not have one. I said now, pick up the pencil and try and write like that. They thought it was all a big game until they tried it. They were like, this is not easy. That’s right. It is not easy. So please don’t make fun of her. You have to teach some of those lessons. Hopefully, it will take them out of my classroom and they remember that when they are out in the world. But, I do not tolerate meanness. Pet peeve of mine, I guess.
Joy plans to spend another few years teaching in her quiet and thoughtful way.
This is Mitch Craib for Compelling Lives. In the summer of 2017 I interviewed Joy Walsh about her experience of being a kindergarten teacher. She is a successful and veteran teacher nearing retirement. The whole interview lasted about 40 minutes. During the interview I was struck by her respect for children and her deep understanding and appreciation for their differences. She has faith in people. I have chosen some of the conversation that best highlights her approach to teaching.
What kind of a person really ought to think about teaching? Someone who can handle different personalities. Not everyone fits into the same mold. You have to be creative and you can't follow a set list that you have planned for the day because it's not going to work, and if it does work, great! Then you can keep moving. Find what your kids are interested in, not what you are interested in. It could be totally different. You have to be willing to learn and constantly change your game plan, so to speak, to meet the needs of the children, and the interests of the children, so the kids want to come everyday, so they are saying I love school. I want to go to school.
So what do you bring to the table? What's your gift for teaching or what do you think is your strength? I am able to watch children who have a lot more energy, and be a little more patient than other people whose expectation is sit down stay kind of theory, which is fine which is fine that's who they are, but I tend to have a higher tolerance for children who move. Why? I don't know. I'm able to tune it out so to speak. If a child needs to stand and move while they're reading, so be it. It does not bother me. Has it always been that way for you? That approach? Yes, definitely. That is how I originally was pulled out of high school every Friday to work with children with special needs. I took them swimming and they would learn to count by kicking their feet. It just was a different approach, especially in the 70’s, an extremely different approach to... who cares if a kid learns to count by kicking their feet or by moving elements on a table or by wrote. It just seemed like more fun and more success for the child, and then they were able to transfer that into counting for their parent or another teacher.
Do you feel like you can make connection with almost all of the kids in your classes? Most of the time. Some kids are tough. I have some sort of connection with every child in my room, some maybe not as strong, and at five and six years old that child has probably learned I need this wall to be safe. I can't trust you because I can’t trust others. Why should I trust you? And, you try and chip away at that wall. I feel like probably it took me till April to get through a wall with a child and when you do... it makes a difference, and they know they can depend on you.
Have you seen tough kids that have come here and then really transitioned into solid adults? I have followed a student who was removed from the school, and really was never able to learn in a school setting, and I have seen him grow and prosper. He is a farmer right now and is quite successful at that. I forgot how many head he has in his barn and smiling from ear to ear and the gentleman that hired him puts him up in his home and the child just seems happy and healthy. I asked him what he did on his off time and he said I eat and I sleep. So, he's physically exhausted, and that's what he needed in the classroom. I would be like, can you please go sharpen those pencils? He just needed to be doing. I had that child rearrange the classroom and move rugs. But he had the insight to roll the rug up and not try and lift it whole. So, I knew from that, that there was a lot going on that he was capable of that he was not showing. Most five and six year olds don't have the ability to think like that. Mathamatically, he could build blocks and structures and I said well in order to make the tops sturdy what did you have to do on the bottom, and he used the word foundation. The special educator just looked at me... Foundation?! Well this is his strength. Let’s let him use it. And we got him to figure out how many blocks high the tower was. How big the foundation was. So, he had to measure and know what those numbers were, and that's really the best way for that child to learn. Now he's successful in life and he was handed an awful deck of cards from birth. There was a reason when he came to me at five he did what he did. He was not molded, so to speak, for a public school setting. He just was not.
Do you strive for kindness in your classroom? Oh, it is number one, number one. Well maybe safety, but... You can disagree, just don’t be mean about it. Do you think you have been able to help children understand that kindness is important? If there is a bully at age five or six, I've gone so far as to record them on an iPad and have them watch it, and say how would you feel if this was being said to you? Sometimes that works so you find another way. But kindness is definitely important. And, I think manners. Unfortunately, children don’t always come in with pleases and thank yous and that goes a long way in my world. Respect towards everybody? Sure, yeah, yeah. You can’t just pick on another child or an adult just because they are different. You are different too, you know. Thank goodness we don't all have blonde hair and blue eyes. We are all different. We should not be treated differently just because of that. How would you like it if everybody with brown eyes couldn't sit on the rug? Well that's not fair. Exactly! So what you're doing is not fair. You try and teach and reteach and have them look at it in a variety of ways.
I had a student with a missing finger once. She was picked on terribly. So, I had kids take their fingers and bend them up as if they did not have one. I said now, pick up the pencil and try and write like that. They thought it was all a big game until they tried it. They were like, this is not easy. That’s right. It is not easy. So please don’t make fun of her. You have to teach some of those lessons. Hopefully, it will take them out of my classroom and they remember that when they are out in the world. But, I do not tolerate meanness. Pet peeve of mine, I guess.
Joy plans to spend another few years teaching in her quiet and thoughtful way.
