GULF SHORES, Ala. — Many of the area’s top business leaders turned out Friday as the Alabama Gulf Coast Area Educational Foundation announced the recipients of its annual Teachers of the Year awards at the monthly First Friday Forum sponsored by the Alabama Gulf Coast Chamber of Commerce.

Winners come from the four public schools in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and are nominated by their peers.

“These teachers represent what I call the best of the best,” said Educational Foundation President Steve Jones. “We believe our schools are home to the best teachers anywhere, and our winners were picked by them.”

This year’s winners include Michele Carpenter of Gulf Shores Middle School, Nikki Cotton of Orange Beach Elementary School, Dana Lee of Gulf Shores Elementary School and Jeny Stokes of Gulf Shores High School.

Along with the Foundation’s Teacher of the Year award, Cotton was also recently named Baldwin County Teacher of the Year.

Carpenter teaches family and consumer science at GSMS and been teaching for 14 years.

Before coming to Gulf Shores in 2002, she taught in south Florida at Deerfield Beach High School and in Madison Ind.

Cotton is in her seventh year teaching fifth grade at OBES. She worked in Mobile County before crossing the bay to join us here in Baldwin County.

She has served on many committees throughout her years of teaching, and currently serves as the Student Council co-sponsor and a technology mentor.

She was one of the 12 teachers chosen from Baldwin County to serve as an eMINTS teacher, where she received computers for every two students in the classroom.

Participation in the eMINTS program offers professional development programs created by educators for educators.

Baldwin County is the only place in Alabama that this program, the first of its kind in the Southeast United States, operates.

She was also chosen to participate in the Colonial Williamsburg Institute this summer.

Lee has been a teacher for eight years, and began her career at Daphne Middle School in 2001.

She came to GSES in 2003 where she taught second grade until she moved to sixth grade this academic year and instructs students in reading, language, art, math, and science.

“She is a native of Gulf Shores — a product of our school system,” Jones said in her introduction. “We are fortunate to have kept the benefit of her talent right here.”

Stokes has been a special education teacher for 22 years.  She taught at Spring Hill Elementary School and Goshen High School in Pike County before she came to Foley Middle School in 2000. She transferred to Gulf Shores High School in 2000.

According to Jones, the awards are given to teachers based on votes by their fellow teachers at their respective schools.

“It has to be satisfying to our Teachers of the Year to know they not only make an impact on their students, but on their fellow teachers as well,” Jones said. “I can’t say enough about how important all our teachers are to the future of our cities.”

For more information on the Foundation, visit their Web site at agcaef.com.