For Suzette Spinelli, Tuesday started out the same as it had for the last 47 years, the first day back to school for teachers.
The veteran Lassiter High School art teacher wore a light, sleeveless dress on a hot day as she attended a teachers’ assembly at the school’s concert hall, where Cobb County School District Chris Ragsdale was a special visitor.
He had come there not just to thank teachers—”what you do every day makes a difference”—but to acknowledge a certain teacher in particular.
It was Suzette Spinelli, whom he announced had been named the Cobb school district’s high school teacher of the year for 2023.
She was in a total state of surprise as she was greeted by family members bearing flowers and hugs.
“You thought when you got up you were just going to work today,” Ragsdale told her as her colleagues, administrators from Lassiter and Cobb school district and two board members rose to congratulate her.
Now in her 48st year as an educator, Spinelli has been with the Cobb school district for 41 years, and has spent much of her career at East Cobb schools. She’s been at Lassiter since 2001, and previously taught at Daniell and Simpson middle schools.
She said teaching isn’t something she does for recognition.
“This was the last thing I expected,” Spinelli told the media after her honor.
She said for a few years now, she’s been asked how long she might want to continue to teach, but retiring isn’t something that’s crossed her mind.
“Every day, every year is a new beginning,” she said, noting that her first students are now in their early 60s.
“The students haven’t changed in all these years,” Spinelli said. “I see them grow and develop and and I still stay in touch with some of them.”
Spinelli said her passion for teaching stems from her desire to instill creativity in their students, even though most of them won’t have professional arts careers.
She said she’s learned as much from them as she teaches them, and “they have made my art better. . . . Being an art teacher is the best job ever.”
What drives her, she said, is her “hands-on” approach to teaching. “I’m still old school,” Spinelli said, admitting the difficulties of teaching art virtually at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I survived,” she said. “I wasn’t the best at it, but I survived. I just love what I do.”
Her work goes far beyond the classroom, as she has been an advisor and instructor for students entering art competitions, as well as a judge for art shows. She’s also had her own work exhibited at the Marietta-Cobb Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Gallery at Kennesaw State University and The Gallery at Johnson Ferry.
Spinelli’s daughter, Cara Smith, was named Chalker Elementary School’s teacher of the year in 2022.
Spinelli was named Lassiter’s teacher of the year in April and is a finalist for the Cobb school district’s overall teacher of the year, which will be announced later in the fall semester.
Ragsdale said that after the individual school teachers of the year are named by their peers, a special committee at the Cobb school district begins the process for choosing the grade-level recipients.
Before his stop at Lassiter, he visited teachers at Awtrey Middle School and Bells Ferry Elementary School, who are the other finalists for overall teacher of the year.
They are Annelisa Bellack at Awtrey, who teaches social studies. Dr. Elizabeth Goff is an English as a Second Language teacher at Bells Ferry.
“It’s an awesome event to go to all three schools,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite things to do.”
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