Greensboro, NC -- Kids were crazy over Hot Wheels and the Beach Boys' song 'Good Vibrations.' It is also the year Barbara Moffitt began teaching.
"Thank you for coming in quietly and getting ready for the day," said Barbara Moffitt, to a class of 4th graders.
Greeting students and preparing them for learning is a lesson plan Moffitt knows well.
"When I was in 4th grade, is when I decided I wanted to be a teacher, and my mom says I never changed my mind," she said.
Not only did Moffitt stay the course, she has carried on for decades.
"This is not a job to me, it's a calling," she said. "So that's what makes it so easy to do. For 40 years," she said, laughing.
When her students learn how long she has been teaching, their response: "That's a long, long time," said 9-year-old Jordan Williams.
Her classmate Gregory Clark agrees. "Right now, 40 years would be a long time," he said.
Those years of experience taught Moffitt what works.
"You have to be firm, yet fair, in your dealings with everybody," she said. "You have to have good classroom control. Get that from the very beginning."
Numerous studies point to job satisfaction, turnover rate and pay as the primary reasons educators leave the classroom.
But a recent report by the National Center for Education Statistics finds 93 percent of teachers with 10 years or more of classroom experience are satisfied with their jobs.
"As far as sitting around, worrying about any of those things, and I want to quit teaching because of those things, they're not every day things," said Moffitt. "The everyday things are actually being in here in the classroom with the children."
And her students enjoy having her as a teacher. "She's lots of fun," said Williams.
"She does some fun stuff here and she doesn't make you do work every single day," said Clark. "That's the good thing."
Some things are different since the 1960s:
"Teaching is more data-driven now, than it was when I first started teaching. We're into the numbers now. We look at their numbers when we do their benchmarks and when we do our testing," said Moffitt.
Students are more experienced:
"You look at all they can see on TV now. They do know a lot more now," she said. "Used to be, we'd go to the encyclopedia and look it up. But now, we just go on the computer and look them up."
Some things, like changing classes, are exactly the same:
"We're doing it now, and it's supposed to be new and different in 4th grade," said Moffitt. "It's not new and different; we've done it before."
When asked if she had it do all over again, Moffitt said, "I wouldn't change a thing. I would still do it, just like this."
Moffitt has worked at six different schools in her career. She has spent 35 of the 41 years teaching 4th graders.
She currently has no plans to retire.
