Earlier this month, Indiana parent Krysten Moon saw 2009 WW Teaching Fellow David Johnson on a local TV show. Here’s what she had to say:

I’m a mom on winter break in central Indiana, watching a [local] television program … with my teenagers.  It is a discussion by teachers of their goals, disappointments, hopes, but seems to keep dissolving into a list of complaints.  Here’s what’s wrong with legislators, here’s what’s wrong with parents, here’s what’s wrong with communities…

It was frustrating and depressing to watch.  By the time you get to a television program, don’t you chose the brightest and best thinkers you have, to best represent education?  But is was a sea of blah blah treat us like professionals, blah blah there’s no way to evaluate teachers, blah blah blah.  We were drowning in this sea!

However, there was a bright spot, a man who spoke with clarity about interesting new ideas about how to improve education.  That man was David Johnson of Wayne Township schools, who identified himself as a part of your program. (We saw his picture on the front page of your website.)

We were so impressed.

When David Johnson spoke of a need for customer satisfaction in education, we cheered!  When he spoke of using technology (texting, YouTube) as an ally, instead of an enemy, we paused the television and had a full-on discussion.  We thought it was sad when we felt the moderator was dismissing his creativity as if it were too much work.  We loved his ideas about working with teachers outside of his classroom.

We want to see more  teachers like David Johnson in our schools. If producing teachers like this man is what Woodrow Wilson Fellowship does, then we want to say this: bravo!

Mrs. Krysten Moon

Have a look at Sheila’s 90-second commentary below:

Teachers–have you mentored folks who are new to the classroom? Did you have a mentor whose advice you still rely on, and if so, what was that advice?

Every year the opening of the WW Teaching Fellows competition —and yes, the application is now open—inspires hundreds of phone calls to our offices with similar questions. It’s great talking to each and every candidate who calls about the Fellowship; most of those calls come from talented, altruistic, committed people who are doing some amazing things.

Now, you don’t have to live at the Genius Bar to make a good Fellow, or even be a corporate scientist.  It does help, however, that Fellows like to work—and work hard—and have a really strong understanding of their subject going into the program.  Most have undergrad degrees in math, biology, physics, agriculture, technology, computer programming, sound editing, science, life science, earth science, mathematics, chemistry…. you get the idea!

While hard work and an undergraduate major or minor in a STEM field are a given, there’s more. As Candace Kissinger, WW Indiana Teaching Fellow, a corporate R&D specialist for 35 years, and now a biology teacher, wrote in a November 2011 op-ed for the Lafayette Journal & Courier:

I chose this new direction because I wanted to apply my experience and convince young people of the merits and significance of science, a topic that I cherish. … If you’ve thought about teaching, understand that this is not easy. It’s not something to do while you look for other work, or—despite the persistent urban myth—a ticket to extra vacation time. Sticking with this job requires more than subject expertise. You have to dig deep…. Teachers do this job because we worry about the future of this country and want to make a difference.

In other words, the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows also have a more elusive, but infinitely more important quality: grit. They go into teaching knowing that their weekends will be spent grading papers and creating lessons and their summer vacations devoted to developing themselves and their connections with kids.  They don’t give up easily and they are prepared for the long haul.

Many Fellows come into the program after having volunteered with groups like City Year, the Peace Corps, Boy Scouts, Kiwanis. They want to connect with kids and inspire a love of learning. Most Fellows are lifelong learners themselves—training dolphins, researching in chemistry labs, working in the rainforests.  They work with the community, students and the school, and apply the lessons they have learned themselves to their own schools and classrooms.

So, there’s no trick to being selected as a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellow. While the Fellows have their own unique strengths, there are common threads of commitment, work ethic, resilience and subject area content knowledge that all Fellows tend to share—qualities and attributes that make for successful teachers!

WKKF-WW Fellow Melissa Karjala ’11 (left, in blue) with three members of her English Channel swimming relay team (from Swimming World Magazine).

Talk about world-class. While the 2012 Summer Olympics have shown the world some amazing swimmers, the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships have their own world-class swimmer: Melissa Karjala.

On July 27, Melissa, who’s a 2011 W.K. Kellogg Foundation-Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellow, helped set a new world record for a two-way crossing of the English Channel by a six-woman relay team. The women swam the 42 miles across the Channel and back in 18 hours and 55 minutes—4 minutes faster than the previous record, according to the Detroit Free Press. And they did it just hours after the opening of the Olympics themselves.

But Melissa and her team didn’t just swim for glory. They took on the challenge in honor of their friend and neighbor, University of Michigan professor Bob Schoeni, who was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 2008. The swim served as a fundraiser for Schoeni’s Ann Arbor-based ALS foundation, A2A3. Melissa’s team is still accepting donations towards their $120,000 goal at www.channelforals.org. You can watch an interview with Melissa and three of her teammates online at Swimming World Magazine.

Melissa did master’s work in education this past year as a Fellow at Eastern Michigan University. She’s a former captain and All-American for the women’s water polo team at U-M, where she completed both her undergrad degree and a master’s in public health.

Now Melissa is gearing up to teach biology as a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellow. Never mind what she knows about biomechanics and marine environments—imagine world-record determination in a classroom with kids. That’s guaranteed gold.

We’re proud of you, Melissa!

At the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, those of us working with the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship are in awe of some of the Fellows who have joined the program. Not only are they willing to give teaching a shot in spite of the challenges, they actually want the challenges. They don’t want to do the easy stuff. They want to do the hard stuff, for the kids who need it most, and they want to do it right.

These Fellows have a lot to say about the art and science of teaching, about what it means to transition into the classroom, and about the difference that their experience as Fellows makes. They also speak with laughter and clarity and sometimes a little melancholy about how tough the challenges really are. And, being expert problem-solvers, they come up with solutions that we think others can learn from.

So here at Woodrow Wilson we decided to start this blog. It’s meant to be a forum for the perspectives that our Fellows can offer, and a clearinghouse for some of their suggestions and resources. It’s also aiming to pull in some of the best advice and tools that mentors, peer teachers, and education leaders offer. Beyond that, from time to time it will also feature major policy issues related to the teaching profession and run announcements about the Fellowship. Contributors will include not only Fellows, but also an array of guest bloggers… and sometimes just us, the Woodrow Wilson staff.

Comments are welcome—in fact, comments and maybe even guest posts on substantive issues are very important to us, and to the Fellows. We really want to engage the education community. And since everybody in this country, one way or another, is a constituent of education, that means we want to engage you.

So stay tuned.