"Pedagogical knowledge, along with my own enthusiastic focus on personal growth, have made it possible for me to successfully work with students who may otherwise have continued their cycle of failure," says Bobbi Ford, a fifth-grade teacher at East Clayton Elementary School in Ellenwood. As a member of the Georgia Leadership Academy, Mrs. Ford is an avid student and teacher of intelligence and learning-style theories. At East Clayton Elementary School, she is responsible for Ford's Factory, a business education project that introduces fifth- graders to various aspects of economic activity, such as production, advertising and sales. The annual Mother's Day Sale, held by the fifth-graders involved in the program, teaches them how to run a profitable business and gives their schoolmates an opportunity to purchase gifts for their mothers. In 1996, Mrs. Ford was named Georgia Teacher of the Year by the Georgia Department of Education.
1978 Kent State University, B.A.
