Danielle Whittington started down a road that led her one way, but God had other plans in her life and used a twister to do it. Whittington went from doing a job she loved being a neuro occupational therapist, to being this year’s Columbia School District’s Teacher of the Year.
With her energy, love and passion, she was nominated, she believes by State Sen. Angela Hill, and was appointed to Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s Advisory Committee as a teacher as well. The committee was formed at the first of the year when Hosemann took office.
Whittington is proud of the appointment because it gives her an opportunity to be an advocate for the children.
The change in professions came about because of the deadly EF-3 tornado that caused extensive damage to Columbia on Dec. 23, 2014. At the time, she was working at Forrest General Hospital. At the hospital she was assisting patients who had strokes and spinal and traumatic brain injuries. On that Tuesday afternoon, she was at work and was in a patient’s room when she saw newsflash come across the T.V. stating a tornado had hit Columbia. Watching the news, it came across two businesses were destroyed, including the daycare where her 12-week-old baby, Finn, was located.
Immediately she tried to call the daycare; there was no answer. She tried all of the teachers’ cellphones, and there was no answer. As calmly as she could, she called her husband, Jordan, and told him what she has seen on the T.V. and heard. Jordan, who works with the Mississippi Department of Transportation, said everything looked fine in Foxworth. Whittington now says, she believed she was too upset at the time to make much sense. She asked him to go get their son. He went to get him and about halfway from Foxworth to the daycare in Lakeview, he called to tell her that he had to turn away and get a bigger truck because of the debris. After an hour, he made it to the daycare, and thankfully other than being wet from where the roof had been torn off, the baby was safe.
“When you drove through Lakeview, that was one of the only places standing,” Whittington recalled of that fateful day. She still gets teary-eyed thinking about it.
With her job, she was on call all the time and would have to work holidays. From her home to the hospital, it would take an hour each way. She would be the first one to drop the children off at the daycare and the last one to pick them up.
Whittington and her husband had dealt with fertility issues for years. One day God spoke to her saying to her, “You have prayed for these babies all these years and where are you? You are not in your community; you work an hour away.”
She battled with the decision. Getting her degree was hard, even for someone who graduated ninth out of a class of 215 at Picayune High School. She was very passionate about the job. After many prayers, she realized she had to listen.
Several teachers had reached out to her encouraging her to become a teacher. To her, again God was speaking with her. In her job at the hospital she always loved working with students learning to be occupational therapists.
Her husband thought she was crazy. He knew how hard it was to be a teacher between dealing with parents and students, but they as a family prayed about it.
“I remember telling the Lord that this was not something to be ambiguous about. I needed a talking donkey or a burning bush,” she said.
Not long after her son, Harper, came out of his Wednesday class at church with something. He told her he had made her a present: a burning bush. It just so happened that was the lesson being taught in his class. She has it framed and hanging in her living room.
“Jordan just looked at me and said, ‘I guess you are going to be a teacher’,” she said.
Not sure how to go about it, she called William Carey University. She learned about the alternate route program and applied. She was able to get a scholarship to attend. After taking two classes a week through June and July, come August she was in the classroom. She is able to teach fourth through 12th grades.
She started her teaching career at Prentiss High School, but is now a fourth grade reading teacher at Columbia Elementary School.
“Columbia is where we wanted our kids to go, and they have an amazing school district,” Whittington said on teaching in the school district.
She became a teacher because she wanted to make an impact on her community. There are very few professions where you have the ability to connect with children, parents, adults and students all at one, she said.
“Schools make a strong community, and a strong community makes good schools,” she said.
She loves teaching the fourth grade. “They’re coming in to being their own. They’re curious, they love to investigate. They love to be silly and still have fun. Yet I still have the ‘momma eyes’ to scare them,” she said with a laugh.
She said her experience as an occupational therapist has been a big help. She also worked with student therapists at the hospital so she was already teaching.
“An OT is such a cool profession because you take what a person needs to do and you break the barrier and reteach them how to do that,” Whittington said.
Whittington said come January the Columbia School District will be the first school in the state to put a doctoral capstone student in the classroom. She will have an occupational therapist who is working on their doctorate degree in her classroom teaching. She said there is a lot of similarities on how occupational therapy and education coincide, and she is looking forward to that opportunity.
She said she is blessed because she works with the best team.
