Volusia County Schools celebrates its Teachers of the Year
A packed ballroom of the Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront Resort cheered madly for all 70 Volusia County Schools’ Teachers of the Year as they entered.
Two years ago, Lonnie Tidmarsh shaved his beard, which was older than some of his students at Timbercrest Elementary School in Deltona, after vowing he wouldn’t go clean-shaven until the school earned its first A in his tenure.
Tidmarsh has demonstrated that his toolbox goes wider than the fun, motivational gimmick. This year, the Florida Council of Instructional Technology Leaders named Tidmarsh one of three finalists for Innovative Principal of the Year.
Tidmarsh, Volusia’s 2023 elementary principal of the year, has served in that role at Timbercrest since 2019. He was a principal intern at Pride Elementary School, also in Deltona, in the previous year after having served as Timbercrest’s assistant principal for four years before that. As a DeLand native, he attended Volusia County Schools, where he started as a teacher in 2004.
“We’re very proud of Lonnie and his leadership team for the amazing work he is doing,” Superintendent Carmen Balgobin said at the Jan. 13 school board meeting. “He’s really leading when it comes to innovation, technology, in our district.”
Where most schools in Volusia appointed a single digital learning teacher leader − modeling tech integration for their colleagues and serving as liaisons between teachers and the district technology team − Tidmarsh appointed two.
One is a classroom teacher, and the other is an intervention teacher.
“These complementary perspectives ensure that technology supports both core instruction and targeted interventions,” Tidmarsh said in his application for the award.
They help Tidmarsh decide what programs offered by the district best fit Timbercrest’s needs and help roll those programs out.
One example: Timbercrest was an early Volusia adopter of Reading Coach, AI-powered software that helps students build their own stories and improve their reading and writing skills.
“They can implement elements of interest to them,” Tidmarsh said. “So for example, Lonnie likes baseball. He likes math and he likes watching college football. So you can put that into the AI system, and it creates a story. … And the student will practice reading that story to the computer, and the computer will pick up words that they are not reading correctly. It will also measure their fluency, and it will give the student immediate feedback about the words they did not read correctly.”
Over time, stories get longer and more challenging.
“We’ve had students who’ve started their Reading Coach story in third grade, and they’re on the same story in fifth grade,” Tidmarsh said. “It’s just expanded from more of a story to more of a chapter book.”
By incorporating elements that interest students, the stories become empowering, Tidmarsh said.
“We’ve seen a lot of success,” he said, “especially with our reluctant readers.”