Cherie Goldman, Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, Literacy Effectiveness Officer

Teaching is actually a second career for Cherie Goldman. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science in Japanese and a minor in teaching, and then from Stanford University in 1995 with a Master of Arts in East Asian Studies, Goldman intended to become a Japanese language teacher. However, Japanese teaching jobs proved scarce, so she landed in advertising, first strategizing in account management for Toyota at Saatchi & Saatchi and then for Clorox at DDB. Yet, all along Goldman knew where her heart had always been. In 2004, life called her to be near family in Savannah, Georgia, and there, she earned her Master of Arts in Early Childhood Education at Armstrong Atlantic State University, now Georgia Southern.

Goldman is now in her 15th year with the Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools. The majority of her career was spent at Hesse K-8 School where she taught 3rd grade and ESOL. While at Hesse, Goldman served on the Leadership Team, the Professional Development Team, and chaired the School-wide Writing Team. Additionally, she was the ESOL Team Lead and the Site-based Induction Specialist. As she taught, Goldman continued her studies earning ESOL and Gifted Endorsements, and in 2019, she received her Education Specialist degree in Teacher Leadership with a Coaching Endorsement from Mercer University. In 2022, Goldman was named Georgia Teacher of the Year. In that role, she led the Georgia Department of Education’s Teacher Burnout Taskforce, partnering with the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia to release the report "Teacher Burnout in Georgia: Voices from the Classroom". Currently, Goldman serves as the Literacy Effectiveness Officer for the Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools working to create coherence and alignment across the district’s literacy initiative both internally and with external partners.