Top teacher John Tibbetts urges partnerships, better leadership in schools

ALBANY — When Georgia’s 2018 Teacher of the Year and Worth County High School economics teacher John Tibbetts walks into a room, he doesn’t just light it up. He irradiates it. His passion is teaching, and his goal is to give each student he touches a chance to be successful in life.

The Dougherty County Rotary Club got a taste of that passion Tuesday.

“Partnerships between the community and its schools are one of the keys to success in education today,” Tibbetts said. “Great partners are made up of people like you. Your partnerships amplify our ability to achieve greater results with our students. Communities really need to partner with their schools.”

Tibbetts spent 21 years as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army before retiring. His major concern for the state’s schools right now is an acute shortage of teachers — and by that, he notes, he means good teachers.

“I’m very concerned about a teacher shortage in Georgia,” Tibbetts told the civic club. “Studies show 44 percent of new teacher hires leave at the end of five years. I am fortunate that I am able to teach because I am retired. Keeping good teachers in the system is critical. We have one of the strongest retirement systems around in the Teacher Retirement System of Georgia. We must protect it from legislators who want to get their hands on that large pool of money.”

Tibbetts, 56, said many schools lose their best teachers to administrative positions within their school systems.

“Leadership is a problem. I don’t know why the state encourages its best teachers to get into administration,” he said. “That usually happens in systems with high poverty rates, and in urban and rural environments.

“Georgia has not met its own funding formula for QBE (Quality Basic Education) in the past five years, and that formula hasn’t changed since it was written in the early ’80s. We need you to help hold the legislature’s feet to the fire on funding issues.”

Tibbetts, who lives in Tifton, holds an undergraduate degree in computer science and a master’s degree in history from West Point Military Academy. In 2004, he applied for a job with the Tift County School System, but that system didn’t have a position available.

He later spent a year working in the Dougherty County School System with Albany Early College. Two years ago, Tibbetts took a position as an economics teacher in worth County.

“I took this job because it cut my commute in half,” Tibbetts said. “It was a no-brainer, and Worth County has turned out to be a great place to teach. The best part about my job is that I get to walk in every day and I teach a class that has a great deal of relevance to what goes on in the daily lives of my students. They don’t usually know that or recognize it, but I have an opportunity to try and pull them in and teach them a little bit about what is going on in their lives. The kids are always the best part of my job.”

“We have great teachers in Worth County. I have colleagues who care about the kids as much as I do, and that is a really neat thing to be a part of. There are many, many days that I’m not the best teacher in the hallway.”