Golden Apple Award: Gordon Lee Middle’s Lester Galyon

Chickamauga, GA (WDEF) – Even in the rigid world of of mathematics, there can be more than one way to solve a problem. Good teachers like Lester Galyon realize that. Despite a lifetime of experience in the classroom, he is always  open to trying new things.”

Chris Edge is the Assistant Principal at Gordon Lee Middle.

He says, “Coach Galyon is an incredible man. He has just a wonderful personality about him. He has a love for kids that is unbelievable.

When asked to describe himself, Lester Galyon says,” This is my 40th year of teaching. My wife is also a teacher. It’s our first year where she’s retired and I’m not, so she’s a trash talker and likes to remind me on on a daily basis that she’s retired and i’m not. You know, one thing you can say about teaching is no day’s the same. You have your good days. You have your bad days. The kids have their good days and their bad days, and you try to learn something along the way, and hopefully you can, you know teach them something.”

Adlee Parrish is an 8th grader at Gordon Lee.

She says, “As we go, I feel like he really understands how we need to learn, and he makes it really easy for us.”

8th grader Ashley Kay chips in, “He’s a he’s a good teacher like Adlee said, and he’s really good at teaching and explaining how we’re supposed to work out the problems.

8th grader Easton Yates adds,” He tells us a lot of ways to solve stuff which we can do any way we need to whatever suits us best.”

8th grader Maddox Millard says, “Out of every math teacher, he’s probably the best teacher that’s ever explained it to how to do the problems.”

Coach Galyon concludes, ” I’m not a teacher that believes in, you know, it’s it’s got to be my way, or it doesn’t work. I try to give them a variety of methods to solve the problems. I let them work with groups. I let them, you know, work together. I’m not a big believer in busy work. so once you figure out that you can do the problems, we’re going to move on to the next thing. When i was little, I wanted to be a park ranger. I want to be outside. So, if someone had told me, you know, 30 40 years ago, that I was going to end up being a teacher and stay in it this long, I would have told them they were crazy. You know, I know sometimes on a daily basis as a teacher, you know, the students, like I said, might be having a bad day. You might be having a bad day. I want them to know that 10 years from now, they felt like they were prepared when they got to their high school classes. They were prepared when they when they went on to college”