We continue our series of profiles on the winners of the Atlanta Families’ Awards for Excellence in Education with a profile of Gregory Coleman of Parkside Elementary. In 1998, Coleman moved to Atlanta from New York City, after graduating from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Upon moving to Atlanta, Coleman worked with Enterprise for four and a half years. However, he had a desire to do something more fulfilling.
In 2003 he was accepted into the Atlanta Plus program, which recruits successful professionals to teach in APS’ classrooms. While teaching at Dobbs Elementary School for two years, he completed his teaching certification and masters’ degree from Georgia State University. Currently, Coleman is a third-grade teacher at Parkside, where he has been for the past five years. While working at Parkside, he has had the pleasure of serving as the chair of the leadership team, a mentor teacher to several university students, chair of the first all-male oratorical competition at Parkside, the Teacher of the Year for 2008-09, and completed a specialist degree in leadership, from Lincoln Memorial University. In 2007, Mr. Coleman was the featured teacher in the “Ask a Teacher” column of Atlanta Parent magazine. Coleman believes that his greatest impact can be seen in the honesty, determination and passion exhibited by his children.