Melanie Charles’ favorite thing about her job is the children, “I loved being around children even when I was young, I was the go-to babysitter who would always plug in and volunteer with children,” Charles recently told The Nugget. And her devotion to kids shines through.
The Blackburn Elementary faculty member recently celebrated the second Teacher of the Year win of her 16-year career, and her first since joining the Lumpkin County School System’s talented roster a decade ago.
BES Principal Dr. Betsy Green recognized Charles as her school’s winner during the September meeting of the Board of Education.
“I am just very blessed and pleased to have Melanie on my team and to introduce her to you as the Blackburn Teacher of the Year,” Green said.
Remarkably, Charles’ first Teacher of the Year victory came within the first four years of her career, when she taught in Forsyth County Schools.
But Charles said this latest win is extra special to her, since her own children attended Blackburn Elementary.
“Because all three of my kids went to school here, we saw those teachers who were Teacher of the Year when they had my kids. It was like ‘You love my kids so well, you’ve done so much for my kids.’ So when they turned around and named me as Teacher of the Year that was very, very touching,” Charles said.
EARLY EDUCATION
Charles graduated from Georgia Southern University with an undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education. She also holds a master’s degree from the University of Georgia and, like many local teachers, later obtained her specialist’s degree in Curriculum & Instruction from Piedmont University.
“They offer cohorts, so there were other people in our building that were doing it. The year I started, I did one class partially in person and then COVID happened and it all transitioned online. And for me, coming back to school after 20 years, it was perfect because I was not so overwhelmed. I didn’t need to figure out where I needed to be, where my kids were, I just did sat there and did it all online. It was fantastic,” she said.
PARENT TEACHER
Melanie has three children: Hannah is a sophomore at UNG studying pediatric nursing, Rebekah is a senior at LCHS and Grayson is a sophomore at LCHS.
Although most of her teaching career has been in Lumpkin County, Charles first taught in Effingham County after graduation.
“I taught at Springfield Central Elementary School there. And then I taught in Forsyth County at Chestatee [Elementary] for four years, up until my first daughter was born. And then I took ten years to be at home with my three kids. There was a big break,” Charles said.
It was actually a desire to stay close to her own children that nudged her back into teaching.
“All of my kids went to school at Blackburn. So when my son started in kindergarten, I started substituting and saying ‘I am a teacher. I would love to teach where my kids are.’”
Charles said she was an employee at Blackburn in time for her youngest child’s first grade year.
“I had a first grader, a third grader and a fifth grader that year, and I was able to plug into their school,” she recalled, saying it was nice to get a little extra face time with her kids that a parent ordinarily wouldn’t.
“It was very sweet to see them on the playground and at lunch,” she said.
GIFTED GROWTH
Charles has taught both second and third grade. She is currently a third grade Advanced Content homeroom teacher.
“I’m only certified elementary but I have an endorsement, not a degree, in Gifted Education. So when I was in Forsyth County I was the gifted pull-out teacher for kindergarten through second grade … in Lumpkin County I’m the Advanced Content teacher. So students that are identified as ‘gifted’ we use the model ‘Advanced Content,’ so they would be in this class,” she explained.
“We don’t divide up the tasks, so we do reading, language arts, math, science and social studies, all within our homeroom. But the students that are in Advanced Content in my homeroom, they qualify through a rubric that our school system has designed,” she added.
Charles said working with advanced content students means that a lot of times they might already have a pretty good understanding of the content and be able to do a lot of the skills before you start, so it’s an opportunity to expand what they know to work with them in different ways.
“I believe it’s important to give them more ownership in their learning and more accountability for the things that they are doing. For example, they have a ‘power pen,’ which is just a simple pen that they keep at their table, but after I’ve taught something and given them an opportunity to practice, they use their power pen to kind of check for their own understanding to see if they can find their own mistakes and what to do next,” she explained.
Although there is nothing inherently special about the pens, it’s about empowering students to learn from the mistakes that they have made.
“The growth mindset is important to these kids, because a lot of times when you are a very high-ability student, learning things usually comes kind of easy. And so when something happens that is more challenging that they have to look at it in a different way, or they might have to work harder at to get the right answer, sometimes it makes kids want to shut down. And we don’t want to see that. So teaching them a positive growth mindset helps them to know that mistakes are part of learning, and you have to do that to find success,” Charles said.
She described third grade as a “transition year” in elementary school, when the focus shifts to using what you’re reading to learn new information.
To that end, her teaching philosophy is not just about the kids practicing their reading skills, but building unique answers using textual evidence.
“It’s very important,” she said.
REWARDING CAREER
Charles said her favorite part of teaching elementary school is getting to see the growth and change that takes place within her students.
She explained that progress was never more evident than the prior school year.
“I had taught second grade the year before with that particular group of kids and then I was able to loop and come to third grade with them. Especially after having them for two years, I really knew those kids well and really saw big changes in them. This year when they come by in fourth grade, I feel ownership over them like ‘That’s my class!’ I loved those kids. It’s so special to get to spend that extended time with [them],” Charles said.
During the September awards presentation, Green read a list of positive comments about Charles from her fellow teachers. She described Charles as an “ideal candidate” for Teacher of the Year.
“She is extremely easy to work with and she is kind. The teachers love her; Her students love her. She is also a teacher-leader in our building. She inspires other teachers to work collaboratively for the good of all the students,” Green said.
This is the second in a series of articles shining a spotlight on all five of the Lumpkin County School System’s 2027 Teachers of the Year.