Charter Teacher Appreciation Week 2026

For Charter Teacher Appreciation Week in 2026, we’re celebrating educators across Georgia’s public charter schools who show up for their students every day. The nominations below come straight from the principals, colleagues, and school leaders who know these teachers best, and we’re honored to share them.

Danielle Gravatt, Early Intervention Coordinator at Cherokee Classical Academy

In Cherokee Classical’s first year, Mrs. Gravatt has helped build the systems that keep students on track. She runs reading interventions, oversees an MTSS program now serving close to 100 students, and trains teammates on how to deliver those supports well.

As Campus Testing Coordinator, she’s also the person making sure assessment data actually reaches teachers in a form they can use and then coaching them through what to do with it. Her colleagues note that she pairs deep expertise with genuine care for kids, and parents know they can count on her.

Mama Sarpong, 5th Grade Teacher at Cherokee Classical Academy

Mrs. Sarpong leads a quiet, well-run classroom that families and students respect. She’s helped shape Cherokee Classical’s math program from the ground up, giving feedback on scope and sequence, attending trainings, and observing alongside sister schools to bring back what works.

She also serves as the school’s founding cheer club advisor and sits on the Mission Support Team, weighing in on everything from uniforms to parent survey results. Her gift in the classroom is making hard math feel doable: she leans into Singapore Math’s manipulatives and visual models, and her students are showing real growth on assessments—including kids who walked in with gaps.

Megan Gibson, Music Teacher at Cherokee Classical Academy

Ms. Gibson hasn’t missed a beat since day one. She runs one of the best-managed classrooms at Cherokee Classical and has built strong relationships with students who are often the hardest to reach.

She organized the winter concert, student performances for Veterans Day, and award ceremony music—all in the school’s inaugural year! She’s also the founding advisor of the chorus program and routinely volunteers her time to observe and support other teachers. Coming from a traditional public school, she describes her move into the classical model as rediscovering her love for classical music, and that energy shows up in every lesson.

Laura Griffin, Lower School Principal at Lake Oconee Academy

Mrs. Griffin sets the tone for kindergarten the moment students walk through the door. She greets each child by name, brings real energy to the classroom, and creates a space where five-year-olds feel safe enough to take risks and try things they don’t know how to do yet.

Her lessons pull together hands-on activities, movement, storytelling, and play, often combining several subjects into one. Whether it’s interactive read-alouds, learning centers, or imaginative role-play, she gives every student a way in. Families and colleagues see the difference, and so do the kids.

Sadrina Sampson, Science Teacher at Dekalb Preparatory Academy

Ms. Sampson’s science scores beat the state year after year. She gets there by making science something kids actually want to do — hands-on labs, simulations, student-led experiments, and the kind of collaborative challenges that turn abstract ideas into something students can wrestle with.

She’s also a cheer coach, a team lead, and a mentor to other teachers. DPA is stronger because of her, and that’s true at the academic level and at the school-spirit level both.

Drako Wells, 8th Grade ELA Teacher at Dekalb Preparatory Academy

Mr. Wells builds an 8th grade ELA classroom where students feel both challenged and seen. He uses Socratic seminars, real-world writing tasks, and culturally responsive texts to make literature feel relevant — and then asks his students to think harder about it than they thought they could.

He also coaches basketball and track, which means his impact follows kids into their afternoons. For middle schoolers navigating one of the most pivotal years of their education, having a teacher who shows up academically and on the court matters more than people realize.

Savina Higgs, 1st Grade Teacher at Dekalb Preparatory Academy

Ms. Higgs is doing some of the most foundational work at DPA. Her job is to get six- and seven-year-olds reading, writing, and doing math with confidence, and her room feels safe and structured enough that it actually happens.

The work itself is a mix of play and rigor that’s hard to fake — hands-on centers, movement, interactive read-alouds, plus quiet differentiation so that the kid who’s already reading and the kid still sounding out words both get what they need. Parents stay in the loop, and that consistency is part of why her families trust her.

Lashondra White, 2nd Grade Teacher at Dekalb Preparatory Academy

Ms. White’s 2nd graders make big leaps in reading, writing, and math, and her room feels calm even when the work is hard. She holds high expectations without raising her voice, and her families trust her.

Her teaching leans on small-group instruction, interactive notebooks, and real-world math tasks. She blends strong daily routines with creative problem-solving and partner work, so students learn to take ownership of their thinking instead of waiting to be told what to do.

Italy Henderson, Kindergarten Teacher at Dekalb Preparatory Academy

Ms. Henderson sets the tone for her students’ entire educational journey. Her kindergarten room is warm and structured, and full of the kind of purposeful play that builds early literacy and math skills without feeling like work.

She uses centers, sensory activities, music, and storytelling to keep five-year-olds engaged, and she differentiates so thoughtfully that every kid finds something they can succeed at. Her families say she helps them through the transition into school as much as she teaches their kids — which is the whole job, when you really think about it.

Meghan Cottrell, Art Teacher (K–4) at The GLOBE Academy

Mrs. Cottrell does more than just teach art: she teaches kids to push themselves, think creatively, and trust their own ideas. A colleague recently mistook 1st grade work for 5th grade work in her room, which speaks to the level she’s pushing her students to and the innate gifts she’s pulling out of them!

Her lessons are open-ended on purpose, so kids learn to make decisions, revise, and connect creative thinking to the rest of their lives. She also fought to bring a kiln to GLOBE so students could learn pottery, plans field trips and student art shows. In addition, she stretches herself into media she’s not yet comfortable with, modeling for kids what learning actually looks like.

Christy Peavy, HS Math Teacher at Pataula Charter Academy

After several successful years teaching 3rd grade, Christy stepped up when Pataula couldn’t find a qualified Algebra and Geometry teacher—knowing full well she’d need to relearn the content herself! She spent the summer (and most of the school year) digging into state standards and learning plans, and her students posted the highest high school math growth Pataula has ever measured on MAP.

A standout example of her teaching: during a schoolwide Holocaust study, she built a Geometry-based statistical investigation called “Remember the 6 Million,” where students used statistics to understand the scale of what happened. She also coaches cheer, runs the spelling bee, and mentors many of the same kids through her church youth group. Christy is the definition of someone who shows up.

Veruanikka Newsome, 5th Grade Science at Ethos Classical Charter School

As a founding team member, Ms. Newsome stepped into the kind of build-it-from-scratch challenges most teachers never have to face. She designed and executed Ethos’s schoolwide testing strategy, and she was the first staff member named Staff Member of the Quarter.

In her own classroom, she’s running owl pellet dissections, circuit-building investigations, and a cell analogy project where scholars demonstrate complex concepts through real-world connections. Engagement in her room runs near 100%, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. She also shares resources across grade levels and campuses, generous with her time in a way that lifts everyone around her.

Kendra King, College Room Teacher at Resurgence Hall Charter School

Kendra runs a college room where families feel looped in and scholars feel known. She reaches out to parents proactively, plans intentional activities, and her interim assessment results — 80%+ mastery in both math and ELA — show what that consistency adds up to.

When she noticed a gap in the 1st grade writing curriculum, she didn’t wait around. She built a 5-minute creative writing warm-up that’s now part of the curriculum, and 1st grade writing scores have steadily climbed. She also ran a PD session for staff on building relationships with scholars — generous with what she’s learned.

Camryn Salter, ELA Teacher at Resurgence Hall Middle Academy

Camryn’s middle school ELA results speak for themselves: she led her content team to the top 4% of all public schools for 6th grade ELA proficiency in 2024–25, and her current MAP data suggests she’ll exceed those numbers this year.

What makes that possible is the classroom she builds. She lets scholars co-design their own incentives, which shifts ownership of the learning onto them — especially in writing. Her facilitation of class discourse pushes students to think out loud and defend their ideas, and she mentors new teachers on top of all of it.

Morgen Gay, 7th Grade ELA Teacher & Middle School Gifted Coordinator at Lake Oconee Academy

Mrs. Gay is a natural bridge-builder. As both a 7th grade ELA teacher and the middle school gifted coordinator, she has to advocate for kids across a wide range of needs — and she does it by keeping the lines open between students, parents, teachers, and administrators.

Her lessons give students real voice and choice while still hitting rigorous ELA standards. She differentiates carefully so that each scholar gets challenged at the right level, and her students leave her class as stronger, more confident readers and writers.

Najula Jackson, Gifted Teacher at Centennial Academy

Mrs. Jackson is the kind of teacher who shows up before school, after school, on weekends, and through the summer. Former students come back to mentor younger ones — that’s the legacy she’s built.

Her classroom is genuinely a wonderland: a “tree” learning nook, mold growth experiments, catapults and robots for STEAM competitions, a nationally registered Monarch Waystation her scholars helped build. She brought Kangaroo Math to Georgia (Centennial was the only school in the district participating at the time), runs an in-class economy called “Mrs. Jackson Bucks” to teach financial literacy, and launched Science Olympiad at the school. In year one at Emory, her scholars earned 13 first-place medals, 5 second-place, and 1 third-place — outperforming charter schools long known for their STEAM programs. She does all of this while turning the spotlight back on her kids: “Are you proud of yourself? You worked so hard.”

Kihmberly Jackson, 8th Grade ELA at Centennial Academy

Ms. Jackson is the grade-level chair for Centennial’s “Emerging Legends” — the 8th graders preparing to leave a school many of them have attended for nine years. She’s intentional about helping them close that chapter with confidence and a strong sense of who they are.

Over 80% of her scholars performed at the Distinguished, Proficient, or Developing levels on this year’s MAP assessment. That comes from a classroom built on real relationships and project-based work — spoken word, poetry, performance, and small-group collaboration that gives students room to find their voice. Quiet kids leave her room as confident communicators, which is the kind of growth that’s hard to put on a test but easy to see.

Julia Davis, Kindergarten Teacher at Ethos Classical

Julia communicates with families weekly and shares the small wins — the “magic moments” — alongside the academic updates. Her room is a place where rigorous early instruction and genuine joy live in the same space.

She’ll write poetry with kindergartners. She’ll pull a lighthearted, age-appropriate prank that gets the whole class laughing. She also opens her classroom to student teachers throughout the year. Her tone is soothing, her expectations are high, and her scholars rise to meet them because they trust her completely.

Shabaaka Smalls