By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The 2025-2026 Beaufort County District Teacher of the Year finalists have been announced, and Coosa Elementary School’s Amy Turner was as the only finalist of the five from a northern Beaufort County school.
Turner, who is a fourth-grade teacher at Coosa, said this is not the first year she has been nominated for the honor, so she was very surprised when her name was called during the district-wide meeting at Bluffton High School this year.
As an educator, Turner spends every day trying to make learning fun and accessible for all of her students.
When asked about her favorite subject to teach, she responded that it was math, which oddly enough was not one that she enjoyed when she was a student in school.
“I didn’t understand it,” Turner said about the subject. “I really do understand when they’re struggling, and I love to give them like, ‘OK, I don’t care what strategy you use, but here’s a bunch of ways. Let’s go through all these different ways we can solve these problems, and you can find the way that’s going to work for you, and you use it.’”
She said that seeing that “light bulb goes off in their brain when they realize that the world isn’t black and white” and there is more than one way to arrive at an answer, is one of the best feelings associated with being an educator.
While Turner’s dedication to helping her students learn in the way that best suits them is one of the things that makes her an exceptional educator in the classroom, she said that the community of teachers and staff at Coosa Elementary are what allow her to feel empowered to do what she does and enjoy coming to work every day.
“I feel like I’m repeating myself a little bit here, but it’s a family,” Turner said about Coosa Elementary School. “Coosa is such a family. I felt very welcomed as soon as I joined. We get together and we do things outside of school as well. I don’t just see these people here in the building Monday through Friday, you know, from 7:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.”
One of Turner’s favorite things that she does with the other teachers and staff at the school is a caroling event that the school started a few years ago.
“I love Christmas to begin with and so the fact that there’s a whole group of us that want to get together one night during the week and go sing Christmas carols, like you don’t get that everywhere,” Turner said. “That feeling of togetherness and such, that is the part that makes Coosa stand apart from other places because we do have that family feeling here.”
As for next step, now that Turner is one of the five final candidates, she must sit through an interview with a panel in August and the winner of this year’s Teacher of the Year award will be announced at an event in the Fall.
The other candidates that are also competing for the honor are Allison Gallagher, a science teacher from H.E. McCracken Middle School; Elizabeth Herring, a dance teacher at Bluffton High School; Audrey Kaney, a fifth-grade teacher at Red Cedar Elementary School; and Alison Lopes, a special education teacher at Hilton Head Island Early Childhood Center.
“Each of our Teacher of the Year finalists represents the very best of what it means to be an educator—passionate, dedicated, and relentlessly committed to the success of every student,” said Superintendent Frank Rodriguez. “These five exceptional teachers inspire not only their classrooms but our entire district community. We are proud to celebrate their excellence and the profound impact they make every day.”
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
