About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 2023)
Wednesday, February 8,2023 dawsonnews.com I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I 5A Amy Bums named Teacher of the Year at DCJHS Photo courtesy of Amy Burns Amy Burns, center left, has been named as the 2022-23 teacher of the year for Dawson County Junior High School. By Erica Jones ejones@dawsonnews.com Several years ago, Amy Bums was working 70 or more hours a week as an industrial engineer, balanc ing her time off with her husband who was working similar hours as the man ager at a Ford dealership. When the couple started talking about having a family, Bums realized that something in their busy work schedules would have to change in order to have kids. So she decided to make a drastic career change and go back to school to become a teacher in order to have more time on weekends and summers to spend with her children. Now, Burns is in her 18th year teaching and has recently been named the 2022-23 Teacher of the Year for Dawson County Junior High School. Bums is a math teacher and department head at the junior high school, and she has spent 17 and a half of her 18 years teaching in the Dawson County school district. She said that math has always been some thing she’s loved, so mak ing the transition into teaching by becoming a math teacher was a logical path to follow. “Math was always my favorite; my kids always ask me why did I pick math and I tell them math to me is like a puzzle or a problem to be solved — and I love to solve prob lems so that’s the reason why I picked it,” Burns said. “I had my industrial engineering degree so I went ahead and got my masters in math education at UGA so that I could teach — and I have taught everything from sixth grade to twelfth grade.” Bums was announced as the junior high school’s 2022-23 teacher of the year by DCJHS Principal Brody Hughes during a faculty meeting at the end of the 2021-22 school year, and she said that the announcement couldn’t have come as more of a surprise to her. “I was sitting with other teachers and I said to the teacher next to me ‘who do you think it’s going to be this year; I voted for this person’ and she said ‘well I voted for you’,” Burns said. “So that got me to thinking ‘what did I do’ and ‘were you the only person who noticed what ever it was that made you vote for me’, and right at that moment Mr. Hughes said the teacher of the year and it was me.” Burns’ husband was there for the announce ment to celebrate with her, as were her in-laws — something that she said was extra special because her mother-in-law used to be a teacher and was the person who encouraged her to enter the field in the first place. Each teacher of the year is selected by the other teachers at their respective school, and Bums said that knowing that her fellow teachers at DCJHS think so highly of her is a huge honor and encouragement. “To know that my peers, these great teachers, said that they saw something in me that made me stand out... it meant a great deal to me because there’s 10 other people I could have named that I would have thought would have gotten this before me,” Burns said. “I was totally sur prised and very humbled.” In her classroom, Bums said that she teaches her students by a philosophy of perseverance, encourag ing them to never give up even when a problem seems too big or too diffi cult. “One of the things that is important to me is per severance, so for me that’s one of my main things that I try to stress with my kids because I’ll have a lot of times where I’ll have a kid get a problem wrong and say ‘I’m done,”’ Burns said, “so I try to give them examples of we wouldn’t have electricity, the light- bulb, a phone if those peo ple had failed one time and given up.” And one of her favorite parts about teaching, she said, is the reward of that perseverance: when she gets to “see that lightbulb come on” and witness a student finally understand a problem or a concept. Another thing she loves about teaching, Burns added, is getting to know the different personalities of each of her students. “I like that even though we’re a small community here in Dawson, still with in our community every body is different and I really enjoy working with all the different personality styles of the kids,” Burns said. “I love helping peo ple and being around dif ferent people. My job is never the same; it’s always different.” Dawson County moves forward with study for busy road By Julia Hansen jhansen@dawsonnews.com Before casting a defini tive vote, District 2 Commissioner Chris Gaines pointed to one of multiple elephants in the room when discussing one of Dawson County’s most congested intersections. “We’ve got a problem with [Ga.] 53 and Lumpkin Campground Road that’s got to be addressed,” Gaines said during the Board of Commissioners’ Feb. 2 voting session. That intersection was just one part of the conver sation before board mem bers unanimously approved an expanded traffic study of Lumpkin Campground Road with a $29,675 price tag. The vote follows a post ponement last month of the decision. Now, consulting firm KCI will look at Lumpkin Campground Road north from the Forsyth County line to the Dawson Forest Road roundabout and from the corridor’s intersection with Ga. 53 to Ga. 400 in Dawson County. That cost is up from consulting firm KCI’s ini tial estimate of $17,300, which would have only covered the study of the roadway’s southernmost segment. Initially, the study was requested around when the BOC approved a second rezoning application for a planned subdivision at Lee Castleberry Road and Stacie Lane, Planning and Development Director Sharon Farrell previously told the board. The developer will con tribute $150,000 for road improvements, according to the rezoning approval’s stipulations. Dialogue around Lumpkin Campground Road began before that particular rezoning, though, when the now- defunct Etowah Bluffs project was being consid ered, Farrell explained on Jan. 19. “Every time we issue a permit or there’s a rezon- ing-and we always have one to two of those every month-we just make it worse, and we add to the problem that we’re hav ing,” Farrell said about traffic congestion along Lumpkin Campground Road. In response to Gaines’ concerns, District 3 Commissioner Alexa Bruce mentioned her dis cussions with GDOT about the light signals at the Lumpkin Campground-Ga. 53 inter section. “The problem they’re running into is they know it needs to be fixed. They’re going to do anoth er traffic study to look at traffic signals along Lumpkin Campground Road,” Bruce said. Bruce explained that GDOT can’t disburse fed eral funds to fix the south eastern comer of the inter section because it’s con sidered a historic area. Then, there’s a hangup with the comer diagonally across from that one, too, where the property owner has voiced interest in put ting in a gas station where Edge Roofing used to be. “[GDOT] is limited there because they’re not wanting to donate any thing,” Bmce said. “Right now, the two corners are prohibiting GDOT from doing anything, but they are looking into it.” District 4 Commissioner Emory Dooley said it would be helpful to have ready details from the study of Lumpkin Campground Road’s Dawson Forest Road-Ga. 53 segment during these kinds of discussions. “If we have some infor mation when talking to GDOT, it kind of helps them say, ‘This is what we think needs to be done’,” Dooley said. Hawke pointed out that the county does have an on-call traffic engineering study of the intersection from KCI. Dooley also looked Julia Hansen Dawson County News District 2 Commissioner Chris Gaines, center, comments on the intersection of Ga. 53 and Lumpkin Campground Road during a larger con versation about the latter roadway Feb. 2. beyond Lumpkin at Walmart and Publix, it s this study have to stay on examples of where devel- Campground Road, men- always jammed up, and Lumpkin Campground opers have put extra skin tioning his interest in tak- I’m not sure if we can fig- Road, because of how the in the game when it comes ing a look at Dawson ure out what to do there stipulation for the Lee to approvals of rezonings, Forest Road East from the without including it in Castleberry Road subdivi- above and beyond the current roundabout along this...it feeds into that traf- sion was written. impact fees that we have the roadway until where fie area there,” Dooley “With the previous topic in place. They are willing the new roundabout will added. and this topic,” Gaines to pay for a lot of the stuff go. However, Thurmond said of funding for road that we couldn’t do out of “I know that traffic light clarified that the funds for improvements, “both are our pocket.” OUR SEAMLESS APPROACH THE FUTURE OF HEART CARE. WE'RE LEADING GEORGIA THERE. At Georgia Heart Institute, our world-renowned cardiologists, heart surgeons and vascular surgeons bring breakthroughs to patients every day and coordinate expert care more closely than ever. It's a seamless approach that means healthier hearts for our family - for generations to come. SCHEDULE YOUR APPOINTMENT WITH US AT GEORGIAHEARTINSTITUTE.ORG/SEAMLESS OR 770-746-0073 GEORGIA HEART INSTITUTE
