LaWanna Jackson is “teacher goals” for many of her younger colleagues at Galaxy Elementary in Boynton Beach.
She’s got decades of experience but still retains enough enthusiasm and verve to connect with the young people she teaches. And she has the type of total classroom command one would expect of the Palm Beach County School District teacher of the year, which is precisely the honor she won on Jan. 29.
Jackson, 44, had wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer when she was younger but decided on a different path after a student teaching project she had to complete as part of her biology pre-med/early education double major at Florida A&M University.
Now, at a point in her career when educators with similar levels of experience are chafing at the endless expectations and underwhelming pay of the profession, Jackson is pushing on. She’s pushing on for the eager eyes and bright young faces she sees each morning in her fifth-grade math and science class. She’s pushing on for her 13-year old daughter, who sees in her mother a determined, professional Black woman who somehow got up after she got knocked down. And she pushes on for her cheerleader in heaven, the boy who was rounding the corner into manhood when he was lost to her.
“Come on, Mom. You got this, Mom.”
Sitting in her classroom talking about him, Jackson’s voice wavered but did not break as she spoke of him. “He’s in heaven, holding a spot for me.”
One blow after another
Jackson’s family had gathered to celebrate the life of her father, a Bahamian immigrant who had arrived in the United States with a dollar in his pocket and determination to make something of himself. He had, and, on Oct. 23, 2024, his wife and children, his grandchildren and other relatives had gotten together to honor him and solemnly note his death.
But one person was missing: Jackson’s 18-year old son, Jayson H. Brown, a Palm Beach State College student looking forward to making it to his mother’s alma mater, Florida A&M University.
Jayson was on his way back from a skating trip to Orlando he had taken with a friend. He never finished the drive.
“I got the call no parent wants to get,” Jackson said.
There had been a horrible car accident in Port St. Lucie. Jayson had been airlifted to a hospital in Miami, but, on June 3, he died.
Jackson was shattered. Her father, who had found success in real estate after first working as a tailor and butler, had died. And then, as Jackson and her family had gathered to honor him on his birthday, she learned of her son’s accident.
“We didn’t expect him to pass away,” Jackson said of her son. “That knocked us off our feet. I thought I was going to die.”
But Jackson grinded her way through the searing pain of that loss, finding one reason after another not to give in to the despair. Her daughter. Her mother. Her sister. Her ancestors.
“I am their wildest dreams,” Jackson said of them.
“It’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do about it.” The words of her parents came to her when she needed them most.
Hadn’t she spoken at the funerals of some of her students? Hadn’t she comforted other students who had lost loved ones and were trying to find their way forward? Jackson kept coming back to her students.
“I know how to keep going,” Jackson said. “I couldn’t stay home and hide forever. My kids, my students, they’re the reason why.”
Jackson has set up the Jayson H. Brown Legacy Foundation to promote car safety, how to address burns and cope with grief. She’s writing a children’s book, too, drawing on her experiences as both a teacher and a mother.
‘I have high expectations’
Jackson’s fifth-grade math and science class was working on a project using paper plates and crayons to draw how Earth looks from outer space.
“Go ahead and color in the sun and the moon,” she told the students, who remained focused on their work despite the presence of the school principal, Vonda Daniels, a district official and two journalists there to see how a Palm Beach County School District teacher of the year works.
None of that mattered to Jackson’s students.
“Let me see that orange,” one boy said to the other students at his table.
Jackson walked around the class, pointing out good work from some students and asking questions of others.
“I told you, you guys are scientists in your own right?” she told them.
As the class neared its end, several students had not completed the assignment.
“Whatever you don’t finish, it’s homework, right?” Jackson said to the head nods and sighs of her students.
Soon, it was time to wrap things up and send the students to their next class. Jackson needed to get their attention.
“Class, class,” she said.
“Yes, yes,” her students answered.
The students collected their work, with a few staying behind to clean desks with wipes.
Daniels said Jackson’s younger colleagues see her as an example of what they can do.
“Her level of commitment and love for the kids is her strength,” Daniels said. “She pushes past everything else to meet their needs. They see that, and they rise to the occasion.”
Even Daniels has relied on Jackson.
“This past summer, I was injured and was out for two months,” Daniels said. “She stepped up and said, ‘I’m going to have your back.'”
Jackson mentored colleagues and answered questions that would typically be addressed by the principal.
“She’s awesome,” Daniels said. “She’s the type of person who has a big voice, but people hear that big voice. People are drawn to her.”
Jackson has used that voice in the classroom and in community endeavors, including helping to coordinate a mentoring program with a Black fraternity and working with the Frances J. Bright Debutante Program, named in honor of the first teacher at what was the “colored school” in Delray Beach.
More than 85% of Galaxy’s students are Black, and Jackson said she takes special pride in being both an example for them and a loving prod insisting on excellence.
“I’m very firm,” Jackson said. “I have high expectations.”
Jackson said she has high expectations for herself, too. She wants to be named the statewide teacher of the year when that honor is announced in June or July. But Jackson said she doesn’t just want that title to honor her own work.
“I want kids from Boynton to look at me and say, ‘Ms. Jackson did it. I can do it.'”
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education and Riviera Beach development for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at wwashington@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County Teacher of the Year finds strength after son’s death
Reporting by Wayne Washington, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
