Powell Elementary School Principal Jimmy Sposato knew it the first time he talked to Ann Quarles. "I knew after five minutes of interviewing her I wanted to offer her a job. You could look into her eyes and sense the passion. I knew she'd be where she is today." Where she is, is the Wake County teacher of the year.

Great teachers have a multitude of ways of getting the job done. And yet all the best share the same qualities, the very same. That passion. That love. That steely resolve. They will not allow children to give less than their best. They demand it, and the kids "catch" that passion, almost as if it were some kind of virtuous flu bug. A gifted teacher doesn't need to force-feed learning. Her students are hungry for it every day they walk into the classroom.

It's important not to let "teacher of the year" go by without appropriate recognition, more than, "Oh, that's nice." It's a lot more than that.

And it's never more important than at a time when our public schools are made a political target by some who complain about the taxes to support them or the occasional glitch in the front office or the battles between governing bodies -- here the county school board and the county commissioners. Wake County has seen a lot of that in recent years.

The public school system presents our teachers with this charge: Here are children who live in million-dollar mansions and some from public housing, and some have two well-educated parents who read with them and take them to museums and others have a single parent with two jobs. Here are some who are well-read and others who really are just learning the language. And of course, you know as a teacher that you sort of have a calling, so we aren't going to pay you very much. So ... we give you all these children, now give us back the scholars.

Why don't we just ask them to take an unassisted stroll across Jordan Lake while we're at it? You know, some of them probably could do it.

For they do magic, yes, they do. And North Carolina has been lucky, with Wake County having been particularly lucky, to have in its employ more than a few simply spectacular teachers.

In 1976, the state produced a national teacher of the year, Ruby Murchison of Fayetteville. (She's one of three Tar Heel teachers so honored since 1952, Donna Oliver of Burlington and James Rogers of Durham being the others.) I was working in Fayetteville then and went to her classroom, which was creatively decorated and driven by the students themselves. All of the students pronounced Murchison their favorite teacher ever. She was not an easy grader and was demanding when it came to classroom performance, but the kids loved their Mrs. Murchison, and there were more than a few gone on to great success who pronounced her the difference in their lives.

Raleigh's had some of those. Lou Rosser opened the world of literature and expanded the vocabularies and minds of 10th-graders at Broughton High. Bettie Vann Sharpe remains a legend as an elementary school teacher from her days at Aldert Root (and still introduces yours truly as "one of my third-graders"). Phyllis Peacock demanded the best from her English classes at Broughton and got it from people like writer Reynolds Price.

At Powell, the students and fellow teachers honored Ann Quarles with an assembly. She's a product of UNC-Chapel Hill (bachelor's degree) and the University of Texas at Austin (master's in education). She also in 2001 joined the Teach for America program, which guides graduates to public schools in need of top teaching talent. 'Tis said she used to set up a classroom in the garage of her parents' home when she was a kid and do some teaching.

Public education, surely the most noble of endeavors in this country, this state and this nation, begins and ends with the teachers in the classrooms. There are a lot of annoying bureaucratic things teachers have to do, and even the best of them can catch a hard time from a disgruntled parent or run across a student who simply doesn't want to get it.

For Ann Quarles, who's just 29, the best rewards will be somewhere down the road, when a student of long ago appears in her classroom door and tells his or her story of success and happiness, and closes it out by saying, "And you were the one who made the difference, Miss Quarles." The seeds, many seeds no doubt, for that day are already in the ground.