Educator and author Michael Bonner, who gained national attention when he and his students were featured on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” has become a popular public speaker over the last several years.
But the former Pitt County Schools teacher of the year was at a loss for words Wednesday when he stood to address the audience at East Carolina University’s Rural Education Summer Learning Exchange.
What left the eastern North Carolina native nearly speechless was the appearance of several of his former South Greenville Elementary students and co-workers brought in as a surprise by former principal Shawnda Cherry.
“Y’all got me today,” Bonner said after posing for pictures with students and staff who wore cheetah shirts for the occasion. “This was my first time seeing that crew in about seven years.”
Students like Shanylia Pledger, who were featured with their teacher on DeGeneres’ television talk show as singing, dancing second-graders, are now rising sophomores in high school. Bonner has gone on to teach at the well-known Ron Clark Academy, a nonprofit school and educator professional development facility in Atlanta.
“People marvel at the Ron Clark Academy all the time,” Bonner said of the school founded in 2007 by Clark, an eastern North Carolina native and ECU graduate. “He’s from a small, country town.
“Today, kill your own biases about something big should come from a big city,” Bonner told educators gathered for the three-day event, held as part of an effort to recognize and encourage partnership between ECU’s Rural Education Institute and local school districts. “There’s something special that can come out of rural education.”
Bonner, 34, grew up in Perquimans County, population 13,000. A graduate of Elizabeth City State University, he began his career in education more than a decade ago at South Greenville.
Cherry, who now serves as associate director of teacher residency for the Educator Pipeline in Rural Action for Teaching Equity (edPirate), was Bonner’s first principal. In introducing him as speaker, she recalled the day Bonner interviewed for his first teaching job.
“Probably after the first question or two, I just stopped taking notes and knew, ‘OK I’ve got to get this guy into my building,” said Cherry, who led South Greenville from 2011 to 2014. “That was the consensus of the committee. He got hired right away, and he has always had a special place in my heart since then.”
Despite the accolades he received during his six years at South Greenville, Bonner said the road to success was not a smooth one. He recalled feeling exhausted during his fourth and fifth years in the classroom and wanting to quit.
“Teaching is hard; leading is hard,” he said. “Because of this, every day I do not feel like teaching. Every day I do not feel like leading. There are some moments I cannot get out of the bed because what you’re doing is deeper than teaching a lesson. What you’re technically doing is you’re actually helping your kids change their perspective so they can change their families’ lives.”
Today, Bonner teaches fourth-grade social studies and sixth-grade reading at Ron Clark Academy, where 15,000 to 20,000 educators visit every year to observe him and other teachers. As he spoke, he showed a picture of his state-of-the-art classroom that has a lighted “Bonnerville” sign in front.
“When people look at this classroom that is mine now, they think it just happened,” he said, adding that RCA has high expectations for its faculty members, including requiring them to memorize students’ names before the school year begins and make home visits to every family.
RCA is known for high-energy instruction and unusual features such as Harry Potter-themed classroom spaces and a giant slide that can be used to move between the second and first floor. But Bonner said his effectiveness in the classroom does not come from standing on chairs or playing music for his students.
“Relationships are everything,” he said. “That’s why I appreciate South Greenville. It gave me what I needed to be who I am today.
“You can’t demand a withdrawal from someone you have never invested in,” Bonner said. “We live in a society and system where people are complaining about the behavior of a child, but you’re not putting in any investment to try to make sure that child can grow.”
The author of “Get Up or Give Up: How I Almost Gave Up on Teaching” titled Wednesday’s address to fellow educators “The Perfect Time to Quit.” In it, he outlined practices that teachers should abandon, including hour-long lectures.
“If you’re standing in front of your classroom and speaking for 60 minutes straight, you’re losing them,” he said. “This generation can go through a TikTok timeline in less than 20 seconds and look at 15 different videos, and you’re expecting them to sit through your guided reading lesson or your science lesson ... and not have any behaviors at all. You’re asking for the impossible.
“We’re the only business that does not ask our clients, students, ‘How do you enjoy the environment?’ Then we question why they hate school.”
Pledger, Bonner’s former student at South Greenville, said in an interview that being in his classroom made her love school.
“He was the best teacher I ever had,” said Pledger, who now attends Washington County High School in Plymouth. “He was very fun. He put activities in his teaching and that’s what made us more engaged.”
Beyond instruction, she said, Bonner cared about students’ personal needs, and he showed it by doing things like providing snacks for students who were hungry.
Bonner is still caring for them today. He has established the Michael Bonner Foundation to help fund scholarships when his former South Greenville second-graders are ready for higher education.
“I’ve been speaking for the past seven years to make sure that the kids I served that were on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ will have some type of financial equity when they go off to school,” Bonner said. “By the time they graduate, there will be a substantial amount of money in place for them.”
When a teacher in the audience asked if he and his students could still perform the classroom rap song that went viral in 2017, Bonner said they would need some practice first. But he said he hopes to be able to take the students on a trip their senior year and would like to try to remake the video then.
“I love my kids,” he said. “I’m not even a crier or emotional; I guess it’s the athlete in me. But when I saw ‘Juicy’ and ‘Casper’ and all my babies, it got to me because that’s the reason we do what we do.”
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