MHP 21'-22' Teacher of the Year Deanna Blount on the Need for Caring in the Classroom

In the run up to the announcement of BCSD's 22'-23' Teacher of the Year, we spoke to our 21'-22' year winners about their commitment to teaching and what makes Baldwin School District stand out. This blog series highlights those incredible teachers and what they do to make a difference.

Midway Hills Primary 2021 - 2022 Teacher of the Year, Deanna Blount, came to teaching from an unlikely place. She began working with children as a juvenile probation officer, where she would often visit youthful offenders to ensure compliance with the orders of the Juvenile Court. “I was getting 15 and 16 year-old kids on my caseload that were already felons,” she said in a statement, “I felt like even though I was doing all that I could to help them, that it was not enough and I did not like the feeling of not being able to do enough.”

Blount shifted her attention from working with juveniles after they’d already committed felonies to working on preventing them from going down that road in the first place. “I decided that I needed to reach these kids earlier,” she said. It was quite a departure after having initially received her bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from the University of North Georgia, but once the decision had been made, she went back to school for her Masters of Arts in Teaching at Georgia Southern. “I decided to go back to school so that I could work with younger kids and hopefully prevent them from ever getting on someone’s caseload.”

"I felt like even though I was doing all that I could to help them, that it was not enough and I did not like the feeling of not being able to do enough."

She began teaching the second grade in the Fall of 2018 at Midway Hills Primary, where she would earn the Teacher of the Year award in just three short years. During that time, Blount worked vigorously to facilitate her second-graders through the pandemic. Taking as her inspiration Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Blount used her talent to do the work to the best of her ability, and to show her students that they are loved, that they are smart, and that they are capable of success. She’s demonstrated that all things are possible through love and education.

When the Baldwin County School District began its rigorous process for selecting educators as finalists for Teacher of the Year, Blount was among the top of the list. Her focused attention and care to the students in her classroom were witnessed by TOYT committee members from the schools, central offices, and the BOE Partners in Education, who found her to be caring, kind, and a wonderful example for students and teachers alike. In November of 2021, it was announced that she’d won Teacher of the Year for Midway Hills Primary and was in the running for Teacher of the Year district wide. Her stalwart belief that “teaching and learning should be fun and exciting,” contributes to her philosophy as a teacher, and to her winning the award.