Joe Fatheree walked into Effingham High School and found a 30-foot sign in honor of his being named Teacher of the Year for 2006-07.

He asked them to take it down.

He said the sign was flattering, but it wasn’t him.

“Those things, they’re very nice to me and I cherish them, but when I got my first Emmy, it wasn’t getting the Emmy that was the experience,” Fatheree said. “It was sitting down and interviewing a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and say, ‘What you mean, you’re going to talk to me?'”

Fatheree has won three Midwest Regional Emmys for his documentaries “A Time for Honor” and “An Uphill Climb.”

Fatheree said one of his Emmys sits next to a Fantastic Four action figure at home.

Fatheree credits Eastern for many experiences in his life.

“Had it not been for the history conference at Eastern, I don’t know if I would have ever gotten into filmmaking and writing, and I don’t know if any of this stuff would have ever existed,” Fatheree said.

Fatheree graduated in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in history and later obtained his master’s degree in educational administration from Eastern.

While at Eastern, Fatheree said he learned the value of education.

“I had some great teachers there,” Fatheree said.

Fatheree said he hates when people apologize for being an educator because of what he was taught at Eastern.

“They told you in class, ‘You be proud of being a teacher, and here’s things you can do outside the classroom,'” Fatheree said.

Fatheree worked his way through college, umpiring ballgames and working at the gym for the City of Charleston’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“There were times when I worked 20-40 hours a week and (was) trying to get through and take heavy loads of classes,” he said. “It was hard.”

Fatheree said Eastern’s small size didn’t make him feel like he was just a number.

“I just felt like it was a family atmosphere, but it was big enough that we had cultural diversity there so that I could meet people from different countries, different cities,” he said.

Eastern is more than just the place he received his education

“It’s where I met my wife,” Fatheree said. “I proposed to her up in the stands of O’Brien Stadium. It’s a very special place to us because it’s been good to us.”

His wife Darlene said it was a very exciting time for them.

They now have a son, Taylor, 13, and a daughter, Haylie, 11.

Darlene teaches second grade and runs the children’s choir at their church. His son plays the drums and runs in track, while his daughter performs in musicals and plays the violin. Fatheree said what he does is not any more important than what the rest of his family does. Everyone has the same priority.

His Teacher of the Year duties and filmmaking projects keep Fatheree busy, so he often brings his family with him.

“When I travel working on story-telling projects, my family gets to go with me a lot and my kids get to meet some amazing people that they would never have the chance to do before,” he said.

Darlene said they share in all activities.

“It’s wonderful because I get to be a part of it,” she said.

They rearrange schedules to make it work as a family unit.

Fatheree does a lot of inner city charity work through Effingham High School that his family gets to go along with as well.

Because of this, Fatheree said his children are already more prepared for the world than he was.

In 1999, Fatheree started a project with three of his students that would eventually lead to the current multimedia program he teaches at Effingham.

He said they were working on an animated storybook for school districts in Zimbabwe. The storybook was sent to Africa for children to use as a reading aid to learn English.

Fatheree and his students also started a program called the No Barriers Project.

About three or four years ago, Fatheree realized his students had a very limited vision of what poverty was like.

Robin Klosterman, an instructional technologist at Effingham, has worked closely with Fatheree and said his classes are not just about subject matter, but also about creating strong citizens.

“He has a very strong vision of what he believes students need to see in the world to be contributors to better world,” Klosterman said.

Fatheree said six kids met with him and wanted to do something. They started collecting coats and, after four weeks, they had already collected 3,000 to 4,000 coats.

The following year, they recruited more students and did a literacy drive.

They collected 4,000 books and found a literacy expert in St. Louis to take the books into the homes of young mothers and teach them to read, too.

Fatheree said after the first two years of the program, the students realized the effects of poverty and wanted to do even more.

Fatheree started working with Anthony Neal, the director of the East St. Louis Charter School, and Willis Young, the assistant principal.

“These are guys that, you know, they live and work in a tough community in East St. Louis,” Fatheree said.

Fatheree said he tells students that living in poverty does not make an individual a bad person.

“It just means you don’t have things. There are a lot of good, hard-working parents there that just can’t make ends meet,” he said.

In 2005, students from East St. Louis came to Effingham to work on a film with two of Fatheree’s students. The film was called “Kick Me” and was about child abuse. The film was shown in film festivals in New York and Barcelona.

“I think that was one of the turning points for that program, because the kids started to see, ‘Wow, everybody can learn; everybody’s significant; everybody has a place in society,'” he said. “The kids from both schools saw that.”