Over 2,000 teachers nominated for Golden Apple award
More than 15,000 Golden Apple Teacher nominations were received by the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools for the 24th annual Golden Apple Teacher Recognition Program, which kicked off the lengthy process to the six Golden Apple finalists.
Executive Director Marshall Bower said almost all of the 15,000 nominations
that the foundation received were duplicates for the same teachers. He said the vast majority of the nominations are made by students, which is closely followed by parent nominations.
The nominations can be made by anyone who has knowledge about a specific teacher, which usually includes students, parents, colleagues, administrators or other community members. Bower said the number of nominations the foundation received this year is about average from what it has received in past years.
A total of 2,008 teachers were nominated for the Golden Apple Award out of 4,985 teachers in the school district.
He said a letter was sent to all of the teachers who were nominated, along with an application to encourage them to apply for the award.
“It is a rather lengthy application,” Bower said.
The application consists of questions about their background in addition to their teaching philosophy.
He said the application is not a simple task because the Golden Apple committee wants to pick a representative group of the six best teachers in Lee County.
After the first process of the applications are completed, they are all read and ranked by the Golden Apple committee, which is later narrowed down to 100 distinct teachers. From there, Bower said the top 30 Golden Apple finalists are chosen.
Once the 30 teachers are selected, the committee then visits all 30 classrooms, along with setting up interviews with each teacher.
Since the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools was established in 1986, it has provided 128 teachers in Lee County with the Golden Apple Award.