CCSD Congratulates Golden Apple Award, Scholarship Winners

Thirteen Cherokee County School District teachers have been honored as 2024 Golden Apple Award winners, and a Class of 2024 graduate earned a scholarship to support her pursuit of a teaching career!

For the past 25 years, the Gamma Eta Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, a professional organization of active and retired women educators, has presented the annual awards.  

One teacher from each selected school is honored for distinctive service in education and for demonstrating ethics in all professional relationships, enthusiasm and initiative, and knowledge and skills in his/her education field.  The school district is divided into three groups of schools for the awards; each year, the chapter invites faculty from one group of schools select their school’s honoree.

Congratulations to:

Arnold Mill ES: Tracy Motil 
Ball Ground ES STEM Academy: Kathryn Smerker 
Bascomb ES: Bettina Miller 
Clayton ES: Sandy McPherson 
E.T. Booth MS: Mark Corson 
Etowah HS: Mystic Henderson 
Free Home ES: Kelly Wilkie 
Indian Knoll ES: Alyson Counts 
Johnston ES: Brittany Scanlon 
Knox ES STEM Academy: Melanie Beavers 
Mountain Road ES: Desiree Smith 
R.M. Moore ES STEM Academy: Patricia Corneillie 
Sequoyah HS: Michelle Nixon 

The organization demonstrates its commitment to fostering and empowering aspiring female educators by presenting an annual $1,500 college scholarship for a future educator.  This year’s winner is Creekview High School Class of 2024 graduate Hayden Tipton. 

Hayden will continue her studies at the University of North Georgia, where she has been dual-enrolled for the past two years, to earn a degree in history education with a minor in Spanish.  Her goal is to teach history, Spanish or English as Second Language classes in middle or high school.  

She participated in Creekview’s Career Pathway: Teaching as a Profession program, where she experienced her future profession first-hand as an elementary school teaching intern. Hayden also volunteered through National Honor Society and the school’s Future Georgia Educators chapter, for which she served as vice president.

“I look for those teachable moments in daily life, not only with students but with everyone,” Hayden said. 

Scholarship winner Creekview High School Class of 2024 graduate Hayden Tipton is congratulated by Gamma Eta Chapter Delta Kappa Gamma President Merry Hofmeister, a CCSD instructional technology specialist.

#CCSDfam #2024CCSDgrads