MILKEN FOUNDATION AWARDS: Shout-out for top teachers

Teacher Susan Grigg planned her own party at Marietta’s Sawyer Road Elementary School, though she didn’t know she was doing so. And in the end, she got the biggest surprise of all.

The Milken Family Foundation named Grigg and Andrea King of DeKalb County’s Rock Chapel Elementary School national teachers of the year Tuesday, awarding both $25,000.

“I was sitting thinking any of these women and men could win this honor,” said Grigg, who organized an assembly in her school, which opened in 2005. “I work with the most wonderful group of teachers and the best students.”

For King, it all started in Ms. Duby’s fourth-grade classroom in Boston. Duby, much to her pupil’s delight, chose Andrea to be a teacher for a day —- leading lessons and otherwise championing students’ work.

“That was it,” King said. “In my heart, I always wanted to be a teacher.”

The money has no strings attached, so King, a gifted-student teacher, and Grigg, her school’s international baccalaureate coordinator, can spend it any way they want.

“Athletes get gold medals. Entertainers get Oscars and Grammys. [But] educators have the most important job in the whole country,” said Jane Foley, a teacher and past Milken winner who now works for the foundation and flies coast to coast handing out awards.

Foley and state schools Superintendent Kathy Cox made stops at both schools.

King thought she was attending an academic pep rally for her school, which is along the southeastern portion of DeKalb County. King didn’t know who Foley was, but she certainly knew Cox.

In fact, King was so excited to find out that Cox used to teach American government that she tried to sneak out during the ceremony and make copies of a sample ballot —- she thought should could pull Cox into her classroom to talk with her students about it. No dice. Forty minutes into the ceremony, Foley called King’s name. King, who has taught for 15 years, was stunned.

“Teaching is a noble profession,” King said. “Not everyone is going to be a doctor or a lawyer, but you can inspire someone [as a teacher] to be a doctor or a lawyer.”

The Milken awards, given out since 1987, are considered the Oscars of the teaching world. Two teachers in each state as well as the District of Columbia are selected each year, although New York and Delaware do not participate.

What makes the award such a surprise is that there’s no formal application process. Instead, names and success stories get passed along by word of mouth to a committee of educators in each state. That committee then investigates the good work.

DeKalb’s last Milken winner was Kristen Drake, who won two years ago at Dunwoody’s Vanderlyn Elementary; Superintendent Crawford Lewis is a past winner. In 2002, Marietta third-grade teacher Toni Lujan-Greene from West Side Elementary won.