Jeffery A. Walls is married to Lisa Alaine Walls. They reside in Fort Payne. Jeff attended Morris Street Elementary and Fort Hill Junior High School in Dalton, Georgia. He is 1976 graduate of Dalton High School. While in high school, Jeff was in the National Honor Society, was Junior and Senior class favorite, MVP of the baseball team his Junior and Senior years, voted Best All Around, won the Leadership Award in basketball as a senior and the Sportsmanship Award in basketball as a junior. After high school, Jeff attended Mercer University for four years and in 1982 received a B.A. in Political Science. While at Mercer, he was a member of the Sigma Nu Fraternity. He received a Master's degree in Elementary Education from Jacksonville State University in 1995 and in 1999 he completed his Education Specialist degree in Elementary Education from The University of Alabama. He taught at Cory Middle School in Gadsden for one year and has taught fifth grade here at Cedar Bluff for the past four years. He has also coached volleyball for four years and Junior High Basketball for three years. He is a presenter for the Alabama Reading Initiative, Cherokee County Elementary Teacher of the Year nominee and winner in 1999. Jeff's hobbies include reading, traveling, and current events.

Philosophy of Education:
"My personal beliefs with regards to teaching can be best summed up in the following statement: The only reason a teacher exists in the classroom is to modify human beings. If I have lectured with the greatest of skills and provided the best experiences that money could buy, I have still been a failure if students leave my classroom unchanged. Teaching must result in learning. No learning means that there has been no teaching, regardless of the activity. I always try to keep in mind that teaching does not necessarily result in learning. I must always focus on the outcomes, not the activity. If students are not learning the way that I teach, then it is my job to teach the way that they learn. With regards to learning, probably the most fundamental principle of learning is that brighter people can learn things that less bright people cannot learn. The brighter people can also learn at a faster rate. As a fifth grade teacher, this notion is crucial to my success. It is virtually impossible for me to get everyone to work on the same grade level. This would violate the most fundamental of the learning principles. I should never allow myself to try to play catch-up. Therefore, the number one priority of all teachers, including myself, should be to diagnose and provide tasks that are appropriate for individual ability levels. I should look at each student as an individual and try to move each student as fare as I possibly can, based on their individual ability levels. Admittedly, it is much easier to toss out the standard fifth-grade curriculum and expect everyone to learn under those conditions. Sadly, it appears that this method is the norm. When students to not conform to the standard, expected curriculum, failure is usually the result. We tend to disregard the research concerning the effectiveness of retention. Concerned educators must recognize that the traditional, top-down curriculum does not rally help us in our efforts to reach all children. Effective schools would be those that were able to implement the bottom-up curriculum, one that would allow us to adjust curriculums to ability levels. Every teacher would look at every child individually and move that child as far along as possible. This is the approach that I try to take in my classroom. If I have moved each of my students as far as possible, then I feel I have accomplished something as a teacher. This movement is my reward. This belief really impacts the way that I deal with my students. I try my hardest to look at each child as an individual and do my best to teach that child as much as possible. I try my hardest to disregard all labels and help that child to succeed as much as humanly possible. If that student has moved as far as possible, then there should be no failures. Successes should be the norm. I often hear teachers commenting that this student is going to fail because he or she is not doing the work. I often wonder who is really failing. Students do not enter school wanting to fail. They simply enter school with differing ability levels. Schools cannot overcome this obstacle by insisting that every student possesses the same skills by the time they reach the twelfth grade."