Mitchell Joy teaches AP Comparative Politics and Government, AP and Honors World History and is coming up on 21 years of teaching. Outside of school, Joy is an experienced traveler and likes to spend time with his wife and daughter.

“During the school year I don’t really have as many chances to spend time with them.  It’s like – dinner, homework, bed,” he said.  “My wife is my best friend and my daughter is really cool.”

Before teaching, Joy attended college at Jacksonville University for his undergraduate degree and University of Maryland for graduate school. He even participated in his school’s battle of the bands event, where he played the conga drums, and won.

Joy first started teaching because he liked education and liked to learn and enjoyed the experience. He also had a lot of teachers in college who made it easy for him to love it.

“I’m not very good at anything else,” Joy joked.

When teaching, Joy finds imperialism the most interesting unit to teach.

“You really see the strong insatiable greed of Europeans and their philosophy come to terrible blows with another empire,” he explained.

Joy also expressed how he thinks hardships people suffer from today stemmed from imperialism in the past. Joy finds history important because it’s hard to figure out present problems without knowing what the past is.

“There’s an old expression — those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” said Joy.

Joy has done some traveling of his own, especially in Europe. In particular, he has really enjoyed Greece, Italy, and Mexico.

“It can be expensive,” Joy admitted. “Greece was fantastic. I went when I was younger.” However, there are countries Joy has not been to but wishes he could visit.

“I haven’t been to India or China, I wish I had,” said Joy.

In Joy’s opinion, the best part of teaching is seeing his students learn.

“I love to see the light bulbs go off,” he said.

But if Joy could change one thing about school, he would dismiss the grade system.

“I think [grades] should just be based on what you put into a class,” Joy explained.

He said that he dislikes when students don’t put effort into class.

“The laziness factor can really suck the soul from the teacher,” he explained, adding that he doesn’t see too much of it at Walter Johnson.