September 12, 2007
Charles White: (770) 472-8437
 

Anna Cox announced as Clayton County’s 2008 Teacher of the Year
 

It was a morning full of excitement and surprise as Clayton County Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year patrol visited the classroom of the 2008 district wide honoree, Anna Cox of Jonesboro High School.

Accompanied by members of the selection committee, an assortment of cameras, and bearing gifts, Bobbi Ford, a former district and state Teacher of the Year and coordinator of the process, congratulated Cox on being selected.

Best known throughout the community as one of the faculty sponsors of Jonesboro High School’s national champion Mock Trial team, Cox is a teacher of Latin. She has been teaching in Clayton County schools for her entire teaching career of seven years. She holds a bachelor’s from the University of Georgia, and is completing requirements for a Master’s in Liberal Arts from Clayton State University.

In her application packet, Cox said that she comes from a family of teachers adding that her desire to teach was molded by the “wonderful experience I had been exposed to in high school and college.”

As a teacher who sets high standards for all of her students, Cox believes that students need to take control of their learning and that teachers need to help them to achieve this. “Students need to understand that teachers care about them and the instruction that they are giving. If we act as though the subject we are teaching is valid and interesting to us and to their lives, they will follow the path we set out as educators,” she wrote. Cox also believes that education should be a holistic approach in which students learn to observe and understand everything is inter-connected.

She was chosen Teacher of the Year from a field of six finalists. The other finalists who were considered were Ginia McMillan, a Latin/English teacher at Morrow High; Michael Washington, a math teacher at Mundy’s Mill High; Kristie Heath, a science/social studies teacher at Lovejoy Middle; Nichole Brewer, a kindergarten teacher at Mount Zion Elementary; and Peer Syed, an ESOL teacher at Forest Park High.

Cox now moves to the next level in the Teacher of the Year process. She must complete state application materials and submit them in November. The statewide Teacher of the Year will be announced during the spring of 2008.

Cox will be formally recognized as the 2008 Teacher of the Year by Clayton County Public Schools during a special program on November 15, 2007, at the Performing Arts Center at which time all of the district’s school-level Teachers of the Year will be honored.