Shortly after Vice-President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Ceri Everett, a special-education teacher in the state, got texts from two of her childhood teachers celebrating the news: One of their own had made it to the Democratic ticket. And they weren’t the only ones to reach out. “I don’t always check my work email in the summer, but I looked and a couple of co-workers had emailed me just to say how excited they were,” she says. “Some of them I don’t even talk to regularly. Other teachers messaged me on Facebook. It was really uplifting.”
Everett, now 39, has been involved in Minnesota’s state Democratic Party since she was 18. But she’d never seen such enthusiasm from fellow educators about a politician. Teachers across the country are feeling the Walzmentum, and in the first 24 hours after he joined the ticket, the campaign says it raised $36 million from 450,000 people. Educators were the top profession among those who donated.
Walz spent 20 years working as a public high-school teacher and football coach before being elected to Congress in 2006. He first got interested in politics after his students were turned away from a George W. Bush rally in 2004 when organizers noticed one of the teens had a John Kerry sticker on his wallet. Walz was so angry that he signed up to volunteer for the Kerry campaign and later launched his long-shot congressional bid. His students volunteered for his campaign. “It was my students who encouraged me to run for office. I never thought that much about it,” Walz said at a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday. “But they saw in me what I was hoping to instill in them — this idea of a commitment to a better world, a common good. A belief that one single person can actually make a difference.”
Students remember Walz fondly, calling him a “passionate and service-oriented” social-studies teacher. Some said they struggled in school and the now-governor took the time to ensure they could succeed in their studies. Former student Noah Hobbs tweeted that he “wouldn’t be who I am today had Mr. Walz not taken the time to connect with me in a genuine way and showed that I mattered as much as the ‘A’ students.”
Walz’s wife, Gwen, is also a teacher, and former students noted they were supportive of LGBTQ+ teens in the late 1990s, with Walz becoming the faculty adviser for the school’s nascent gay-straight alliance. “Even as a closeted kid, just knowing that there are at least two teachers here that I know are safe people — that probably meant more than I could comprehend,” former student Micah Kronlokken told the Washington Post.
For Christina, who teaches high-school social studies in New York City (and like other educators in this story asked to go by her first name to protect her privacy), these anecdotes are “a sign of a good teacher — a teacher that humanizes their students and does everything that they can in their power to make sure they feel included.” She’s excited that Walz also taught social studies, which she sees as a way to help students learn empathy and how to work with others who may hold different views. But his education agenda as governor has also made her root for him. “I am a fan of his school-meals program,” she says, referring to the measure Walz signed into law in 2023 to ensure students receive free breakfast and lunch at school regardless of their household income. “I also appreciate that there’s been an emphasis on state college funding.” Walz signed a bill last year that invested $650 million in higher education in Minnesota, including the creation of a program to cover the cost of tuition for students from families that make less than $80,000 per year who attend public institutions.
Laurie, a high-school Spanish teacher in North Carolina, has been an educator for 25 years. She describes teaching as a calling but also as a lot of hard work: preparing lessons, breaking down complex topics, and bringing papers home after the school day ends. She knew nothing of Walz’s background before he was announced as Harris’s running mate. “The German teacher sent me a message about him,” she says. “I looked up some things about him and I fell in love with him right away.” The fact that Walz taught for two decades, Laurie says, means “this man can think on his feet.” “He has to be patient, he can handle a crowd. He has a sense of humor,” she says. “You have to know how to adapt — he went through teaching before there were cell phones and technology to after they came. That lends him tons of credibility, and I know he’s got a work ethic. You don’t put in 20 years of teaching and being a coach without working your butt off.”
Teachers across the country have been struggling with burnout, low pay, how to address the bullying and mental-health issues facing their students, and right-wing attacks on both the material they teach and themselves. Everett’s voice trembles a little when she talks about how the potential future vice-president of the United States “understands the struggle and understands those little fights that we always have to put up with — with our administration to get resources, against misinformation, for our kids’ needs and what the next generation’s gonna need.”
Meghan, a high-school English teacher in Ohio, agrees that Walz will act on what he’s seen as a teacher if elected. “So many societal issues either start manifesting in or are highly reflected in schools,” she says, adding that she has students struggling with substance abuse, incarcerated family members, teen pregnancy, or bullying. “I’m not just teaching novels and writing essays. I’m also a mentor and a counselor. I have a snack cabinet and a supply cabinet, where kids come to take tampons and hair ties and lotion and snacks. A lot of times, we’re the only stable, functional adults that kids are around.” Walz has earned the nickname “Tampon Tim” from conservatives for similarly working to ensure menstrual products are available in school bathrooms for Minnesota students in grades four through 12.
Meghan says that anyone regularly dealing with teenagers is qualified to handle Congress. “If you can do lunch duty, you can preside over the Senate,” she says, echoing a joke Walz made about losing his hair while supervising the lunchroom. “One of the most important things that it reflects in him is an ability to not take things personally. Because let me tell you, when you’re around teenagers all day long, 180 days a year, you understand it’s not about you,” she says. “You understand it’s all about relationships, seeing multiple sides of things, and making everything work for the greater good.”
To her, the choice this November is clear: Vote for a ticket whose advisers want to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, or vote for Harris and Walz. “I have never felt more grateful and more hopeful than I do right now,” Meghan says. “Tomorrow I’m going out to knock on doors to campaign, and I haven’t done that since President Obama ran for the first time.” She pauses, adding that even though this feels like the most consequential election of her lifetime, she’s not scared. “I’m not just voting for the lesser of two evils. Instead, I have candidates to vote for that I’m actually excited about.”
