Joy In Troubled Times: Iowa Teacher Reflects

Krystal Colbert, a second grade teacher in the Southeast Polk Community School District, was named Iowa Teacher of the year by the state Department of Education in 2023. She spoke Feb. 28, 2024, to a group of education students at Mount Mercy University.

What do I not know about each student? What “invisible backpack” do they carry?

Krystal Colbert, 2023 Iowa Teacher of the Year, spoke this morning, Feb. 28, at the Wente Education Center at Mount Mercy University. The audience was mostly colleges students on their way to becoming classroom teachers, but included education professors, me (a communication professor), several staff and the president of MMU.

Colbert noted that it was her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Anderson, who inspired in her an early determination to become an educator.

A shy kid with speech problems, Colbert said she was made to feel comfortable and welcome in that kindergarten room because of the kind and supportive way the teacher treated her. “Instead of focusing on my deficits, she focused on my assets,” Colbert said.

She remembered when that first school year ended, crying because she didn’t want to leave that teacher, and thinking of her: “I want to be just like you. That is the day I knew I wanted to be a teacher.”

Colbert reminded us that we all deal with students who have all kinds of lives outside the classroom. She noted that she teaches “the littles,” having been an elementary school teacher for 16 years before taking this year off to travel the state speaking about education. Her remarks today were for the college students in the room, and she was speaking of teaching as a mission, a calling.

Krystal Colbert speaking.

But her remarks resonated with me. Honestly, I haven’t been a teacher much longer than Colbert has, since I had a career as a journalist before joining the faculty at Mount Mercy. And I teach, or attempt to teach, “the bigs,” young adults who are well past their kindergarten years, not “the littles” that she says she teaches.

Yet I felt that she was nailing many realities even a professor experiences. It’s easy for me to see the deficits in students and to ascribe all kinds of ill motivations to them, but their invisible backpacks, the things that weight them down, are, well invisible. Of course, my students are adults and have to take way more accountability for their adult choices, but still, as Colbert said, “You don’t know what you don’t know” about their lives beyond the classroom.

And education isn’t something that ever happens in isolation. I’m not a one-man band, but a part of a system that can sometimes serve well, sometimes not so well–but I don’t always remember the team that I’m part of. “This job is too hard to do on your own,” she noted.

I’m not sure what motivated me to attend this session—I didn’t really question my “why.” I like, however, hearing successful teachers ruminating on what makes them do what they do.

“Find your joy,” Colbert urged her audience. I hope that they do. Teaching is among the most noble of endeavors, regardless of whether the students are “the littles,” “the bigs” or somewhere in between. And it may not be the most monetarily rewarding path to be on, but money isn’t everything and it has its rewards.

If one can inspire one other person, well, that’s a lot. That’s what Mrs. Anderson did, and I hope old Joe can do that for a few of his students, too.

Education students and others at presentation by Krystal Colbert at Mount Mercy University.