W.Va.’s Teacher of the Year Competing for National Award
People kept trying to steal the stop sign in Boston, Ohio, when she was a kid. There was only one back then, so there were bragging rights to consider outside by the people in the tiny community outside of Barnesville in Belmont County.
Tiffany Barnes remains proud of her tiny town, a petite patch of America where farmers farm and gas drillers drill for gas. “But no one knows about it unless you’re from there,” she said. “You blink and you pass it. That’s Boston, with its one little stop sign.”
Her world sure got larger soon after she graduated from Barnesville High School in 2006, though, and that’s because she joined the U.S. Army soon after her commencement and was deployed for combat in the Middle East soon after she completed boot camp. Initially, she was assigned to the 391st Military Police Battalion and was a member of the 354th Military Police.
“For a million reasons, I joined the Army, but if you would asked me when I was in kindergarten what I was going to be when I grew up, I would have told you, a soldier,” Barnes revealed. “It’s just something I always wanted to do. I wanted to be one of the guys, and I had the urge to serve my country, and I still do.
“I’d watch war movies when I was young and I’d tell everyone that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up,” she said. “I always felt like I had a lot of things other people didn’t, so I guess I wanted to give my part back.”
Barnes served two full tours in Iraq during her 13 years, the first in 2007-08 and the second in 2009-10. Detainee operations were part of her service, and while stationed near Basrah in southern Iraq during her second deployment, her unit was dispatched on more than 150 combat missions.
“It was very eye-opening.”
More than 4,400 American soldiers were killed in action in Iraq, and nearly 33,000 were physically injured; these statistics represent reasons why Sgt. Barnes decided to discharge following her second tour.
She placed her family first.
“I did,” Barnes recalled. “My oldest son was a year old when I went to Iraq, and I missed some significant moments in his early life. And then I had the twins (in 2015) and my unit was getting ready to deploy again. I had to make a choice. I missed too much.
“Do I stay in the military for another seven years and retire but miss a lot of what children were doing, or do I get out and be a mom? Of course, it was an easy decision, and I love being a mom and doing what I do at Wheeling Middle,” she said. “It’s different, but it’s just as awesome.”
Gassed in a Mask
There were headlines about her back in April, when she was awarded “Teacher of the Year” in Ohio County Schools, and then again in early September after Barnes was named the same in West Virginia. She’s the special education teacher at Wheeling Middle School who began her career in education as a cook and educated her way to her current role as an Autism specialist.
Barnes, a resident of Colerain, Ohio, will now compete for the national award in the spring, right around the same time when Barnes suits up in her BDUs (battle dress uniform) to march during the annual Ogden Wellness Weekend. The course for the half-marathon begins and ends in downtown Wheeling, and in between, participants and spectators once again will witness her tribute to those who served and those who gave their country the ultimate sacrifice.
Not only does she walk the 13.1 miles while wearing her “rucksack” back, she attaches photographs of soldiers killed in action to her fatigues.
“I thought that was my chance to do my part,” she said shyly. “So, I put pictures of my friends on me, and then someone saw them, and they were like, ‘Hey, do you mind carrying my son?’ And then someone saw that, and it kind of became a thing. So, if someone wants to add one, that’s OK.
“I’ll wear ’em. I’ll represent ’em. So, then a lot of people send me their pictures of their family members, and it’s awesome because whenever I turn around, people see their faces. That’s not a number. That’s a person. It connects everybody and brings the spirit of Memorial Day weekend because it’s not just about the barbecue.”
But wait, there’s more. Barnes wears her gas mask, too.
“I’ve worn the gas mask for the last three years because I met this guy while running the Columbus Marathon in 2023,” Stephen Barnes recalled. “I saw him wearing a gas mask and a drinking tube, and he ran the whole marathon in it. When he passed me, he had a CamelBak, and it had two pictures on it of his buddies who were in his unit that died in Iraq.
“And I saw him, and I was like, ‘Man, I’ve had a gas mask on, and there is no way I could wear it for a marathon.’ And he said, ‘I watched my buddies suffer, and to honor their memory, I can suffer for four hours.’
“So, I was inspired by that.”
Got Your Six
Of course, her time in the U.S. Army has benefited her teaching career.
Barnes utilizes the same organizational skills and discipline when planning her daily lesson plans, but she also employs the “right way is the only way” military mindset and the “get it right the first time in the name of life or death” approach to her duties with her students on the spectrum.
But how?
“I’m glad you asked that question,” she said with a smile. “Every day, every teacher at my school says to me, ‘I do not know how you do your job.’ And I tell them back that I don’t know how you couldn’t do my job. I have the best job in the world. One way my experiences while serving overseas has helped is because it gave me an ability to withstand crazy situations and spur-of-the-moment activities and discipline. Trust me, that helps a lot.
“It’s not like my students wake up and say, ‘Hey, I wanna be frustrated today,’ but there are situations they don’t handle well,” Barnes explained. “I’ve been in a lot worse places, seen a lot worse things, and heard a lot more horrible noises than a child having an issue.”
That’s right, Barnes felt war, and she saw it, heard it, smelled it, and she did it, too.
“And going to war changed me. Significantly,” she admitted. “I did have a tough time adjusting after I came home from the Middle East because, when you’re in a combat zone, you have nothing but what’s on your back and what you have in your hands and the people around you have nothing but the friendship they can offer you. It’s not about skin color and it’s not about religion or politics at all.
“But when you come home, it’s not like that. People want to know what you can do for them all the time,” Barnes added. “And there are people who don’t want to be your friend because of where you’re from or because you have tattoos, or whatever. They want to stereotype you and have excuses not to like you, and everyone has their moments.
“But in war, you know that someone has your back because there’s a chance you might not make it through the day if they don’t. So, I definitely miss that part of serving.”
