At Winslow Township Middle School, she is the teacher of the year this year. She is our TV Production Teacher here at Winslow Township Middle School.  A mother of two, working hard to inspire other kids like her own and in her mission, she was awarded 2025-2026 Teacher of the Year. Now we’ll get a look into her mind and maybe see why she came to be.

You might wonder how long has Mrs. Irvin been teaching and what other subjects has she taught in the past.

 “So this is my 20th year teaching, I started out as a 7th grade English teacher for the middle school. I did that for about 14 years then I went to School Six for about 4 years. I taught Language Arts and Social Studies there. I missed my home at Middle School so much that I wanted to come back here.  When the TV Production job opened up, the prinicpal at the time asked me if I wanted to come back and try it out and I’ve been back here ever since!

While teaching what grades did you find easiest to handle?

  “I love 8th grade. I really do. I’ve taught 6th, 7th, and 8th. I mean I really do love all my students. But I feel like 8th graders are preparing for the futures in high school and are more motivated for that next step.  I also get the privilege of having most of my students for two years and it is great developing those relationships with them and watching them grow and during their time here.”

 Everyone has some type of inspiration, So what was Mrs. Irvin’s to become a teacher?

“My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Eastwood was phenomenal. She really showed me all the awesome things with teaching. “

Keeping students motivated can be a challenge for some teachers, but not Mrs. Irvin.

“Well, I think it’s pretty easy doing the TV production elective because we get to do really fun projects and a lot of things are hands-on. You know, my class sizes are a little bit smaller, so it makes it easier to do fun group projects.”

A lot has changed since Mrs. Irvin first started teaching. We asked Mrs. Irvin how has teaching changed since she started?

“Technology for sure, when I first started out everything was paper and pencil.  We didn’t have smartboards, Chromebooks, many computers. Learning all that as it came was a little bit of a challenge, but it was good because we have so many different tools. Even for research papers, you would have to take students to the library, check out books but that has all changed now. It was very different. Even coming up with lessons, it has become easier because of technology. So that was my biggest challenge.”

Congratulations to Mrs. Irvin for winning this year’s award as teacher of the year! Thank you Mrs. Ivrin for being a great teacher here at Winslow Township Middle school. These questions gave us a glance into her mind, and now we know why she became the teacher she is today and how she did it.