Meet Gwinnett County's Teacher Of The Year

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — A science and math teacher at R.D. Head Elementary School in Lilburn has been named Gwinett County's 2017 Teacher of the Year.

Doug Doblar, who teaches fourth and fifth-graders, received the honor Thursday night at the county school system's Teacher of the Year banquet.

STEM teacher Cheri Nations of North Gwinnett Middle School is this year’s Middle School Teacher of the Year and Amy Crisp, who teaches language arts to students learning English at Norcross High School, earned the system’s high-school honor.

The annual event is an opportunity to honor the teachers of the year named at all of the county's public schools. This year, 138 teachers were recognized during the festivities. The other three Teacher of the Year finalists, selected from those 138, were Ebony Flottof of Camp Creek Elementary and John Chvatal of Brookwood High School.

The six finalists were chosen from among 25 semifinalists.

Doblar's 15-year education career started as a long-term substitute teaching high school, followed by a three-year term teaching middle school. After that, he served four years as a college instructor while he worked full time on a Ph.D., before returning to a Gwinnett classroom as a local school technology coordinator at an elementary school.

And in 2015, he came full circle, returning to the school he attended as an elementary school student to teach math and science.

"At every stage I have had huge accomplishments of which I’m still extremely proud to this day," Doblar said. "Objectively speaking, some of those contributions — like building a college course for 800 pre-service teachers and leading an entire school’s modernization of its technology usage — may have had wider impacts than those I’m making today. However, the impact I’m able to see now is far deeper.

"The icing on the cake is that I’m getting to experience these rewarding outcomes teaching at the same elementary school that I attended as a student and that serves the community in which I currently live."

Doblar has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Georgia, a master’s degree in Mathematics Education from Georgia State University and a doctoral degree in Instructional Technology from Indiana University.

As Gwinnett's Teacher of the Year, he is now in the running for Georgia's statewide honor.

Photo courtesy Gwinnett County Public Schools