The McDuffie County School District named its Teacher of the Year during an August 27 ceremony in the Thomson High School auditorium. Telitita Burley, an eighth grade English/language arts teacher at Thomson-McDuffie Middle School received the golden apple trophy as the district’s top teacher.
Burley has served as an educator for six years, all of those in McDuffie County. She credits her success in the classroom to building strong rapport with students, ensuring that they feel encouraged to learn and express themselves through literature. As such, she is dedicated to including real-world experiences so students are actively engaged in the content while developing into confident writers, readers, and critical thinkers.
“The amazing thing about teaching language arts is that students are often able to see themselves inside a character,” she said, “and that really helps them to be able to connect with the subject itself.”
Burley will now move on to represent the McDuffie County School District in the Georgia Teacher of the Year program.