(This week The Columbian-Progress spotlights Woodlawn Preparatory School teacher John Walters.)
Q: When and where were you born?
A: A: I was born in Laurel Oct. 15, 1965.
Q: Where did you attend school?
A: I went to high school at South Jones, then I went to Jones College, Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Liberty University.
Q: Where do you work? Tell us about your job/company.
A: I’m a teacher at Woodlawn Preparatory School. I’m the middle school seventh and eighth-grade teacher, and I also teach seventh and eighth-grade social studies and English language arts and ninth and 10th-grade American history and ELA.
Q: What led you to your profession?
A: Teaching has always been something that I wanted to do. I’m a strong believer that if we don’t know or understand our history that we’re going to repeat it, and there’s parts of history that I just don’t want to do over. I got the opportunity a couple years ago to go through an alternate route program to get my license, and during that process I came across Woodlawn and have loved it ever since.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A: The opportunity to be a positive influence on the kids’ lives. I worked previously as a case manager and assessor in a crisis mental health team and worked with a lot of suicidal and seriously in crisis people. A lot of my case load were middle and high school students. The thing that got me most about those kids were that almost every single one of them had never been told by anyone that they believed in them, and I can’t stand that. I want to be that person. If these kids have never heard it before, they’re going to hear it from me because I do believe in them. I believe they can do anything they want to do.
Q: What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
A: Teaching four grades right now because it’s four completely different personalities, four completely different lesson plans and different everything. Right now that’s the most challenging.
Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned in your career?
A: That nothing ever stays the same, and nothing ever goes as planned. If you plan it, plan to change because something is going to happen.
Q: When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A: When I was 15 I decided I wanted to be a psychologist, and I worked toward that end and was two semesters away from my professional counseling degree when I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore.
Q: What was your first job?
A: I was a gunner’s mate in the U.S. Navy.
Q: Who is the person who has been most influential in your life?
A: My mentor, Molly Siau. She was the instructor of a chaplaincy program that I went through at Corpus Christi. She has continued to be a voice in my head.
Q: What is your spouse’s name?
A: Susan. Right now she’s working as an assistant office manager at Laurel Cancer Care.
Q: Do you have children?
A: I have three. Amber is 32, Nichole is 30 and Chaz is 17.
Q: If you could have anything for your last meal on earth, what would it be?
A: Spaghetti without a doubt. I like my own.
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
A: I want to go to England because I haven’t been there. I went to a lot of places in the Navy, but England was never one of them. I’d love to go there. On the southwestern coast line, there’s several little villages and towns there that I’d like to go to. There’s also a place that is supposedly the castle of King Arthur, and I think that would be cool to go see.
Q: What hobbies do you like to do in your spare time?
A: I don’t get much, but I like to write. I write young adult fiction, and I read and review books for a couple of websites.
Q: What do you enjoy about Columbia and Marion County?
A: The people. I actually live in Petal, but the people in Columbia have just overwhelmed me with their realness. They’re just real people. The people that I am in contact with don’t put up any barriers or try to be anybody that they’re not. They’re just who they are, and that’s refreshing because you don’t find that a lot these days.
Q: If you could have lunch with anyone from your life or history, who would it be and why?
A: I would want to sit down and talk to Ronald Reagan because he was a very interesting person in that he started his life and spent a lot of his life in the Democratic party, then he switched over to the Republican party. And he’s heralded as one of the best conservative presidents ever. I’d really like to talk to him about the differences and why he changed and just see how that change impacted his life.
Q: If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do all day?
A: I would like to sit on the balcony of a cruise ship all the time. I love cruising.
Q: What moment in your life has had the biggest impact on who you are today?
A: The day I started the chaplaincy class in Corpus Christi without a doubt. I grew up in a household in an area where I was told that I couldn’t a lot. Whatever I decided I wanted to do, I was told you can’t do that. No reason, you just can’t do that. Not like you’re not allowed, but you just can’t actually do that. That got inside me, and I believed it. When I went to Jones after high school I had an algebra class, and the instructor was working a problem on the board and one of the other students asked her, “How did you do that?” and she looked him in the face and said “You should have learned that in high school” and went back to what she was doing. I decided right then I can’t do that. I left college, went in the Navy and lived most of my life. It was not until I was 41 or 42 and got in that program that I was able to learn that I could do what I wanted to do. I went back to college at that point, finished my undergrad and went on to get my master’s. I’m now working on my doctor’s of education.
Q: What is one thing you want to do that you’ve never tried?
A: I’d like to go sailing on a sailboat. I think it would be cool.
Q: Using one word for each, what are your top three morals?
A: Honesty, compassion and trustworthiness.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: As someone who made a positive influence on people’s lives. That’s why I got into teaching because I want to change these kids’ lives for the better. I saw so much when I worked in the mental health crisis team, so much that just didn’t have to be. I lived a lot that I didn’t have to live. I worked about 10 year as a hospice chaplain, and I listened over and over again about regrets of things they didn’t do. Almost no one regretted what they did; it was what they didn’t do. They didn’t have to do that. A lot of times they didn’t do it because they didn’t they could or didn’t seem achievable, but they could have done whatever they wanted to. That doesn’t have to be, and I want people to know that.
— Joshua Campbell
