GRTM Blog

 

 

They don't necessarily seem like two things that go together, but that didn't stop Archer High School algebra teacher Lee Allen from challenging his students to find a way to bring the two together. The result were videos of students dancing while they sang inventive songs that they wrote about algebraic equations.

And, it sprang from Allen just wanting to try something different and inventive to make them want to learn math.

"That was just finding a way to give the kids a creative outlet," Allen said. "Georgia State University actually picked it up

and using it as a creative writing thing for their doctoral students." It's creativity like the merging of algebra and TikTok that Gwinnett County Public Schools officials cited as they named Allen as the district's Teacher of the Year and High School Teacher of the Year during a ceremony at the J. Alvin Wilbanks Instructional Support Center on Tuesday night. All 139 school-level teachers of the year were recognized during the ceremony although only the top 25 candidates for the district-wide honors were recognized in person at the ceremony, culminating with the naming of Allen for the district-wide honor. "I'm really just humbled and shocked," Allen said after the ceremony ended. "I never thought I'd be here. I wasn't sure I'd be the school-level teacher of the year just because there's so many great people I work with at my school, much less representing over 12,000 teachers. It's mind-blowing to me." When Superintendent Calvin Watts announced Allen was GCPS' Teacher of the Year, the educator dropped his head in his hand for a moment as he tried to take it all in before he stood up, hugged his wife, Mia — who also teaches algebra at Archer — and walked up to accept the award. "I started meditating," Allen said. "I read this book called '5 a.m. Club,' and I wake up at 5 a.m. and as part of my wake-up routine, I've been meditating, so I was trying to embrace the moment, recognize what was around me and do the things I learned in meditation to just kind of process the moment and also enjoy it." Allen has been a teacher for eight years, with the last three spent in GCPS. He began his career in education at Northwest Whitfield High School in 2014 after a career in the business sector and then arrived at Archer, where he teachers algebra to freshmen, in 2019.

Allen is also the assistant coach for Archer's varsity wrestling team. As a coach, he has student-athletes participate in community service projects that range from building homes for Habitat for Humanity, cleaning a local animal shelter and sitting and talking to residents at a local nursing home.

Allen said he tries to teach his students and wrestlers that the most important thing they can do is to try and do the best they can in anything they attempt.