Susan Squiers, winner of 2 Teacher of the Year awards in Columbus, dies at 74
Susan Squiers, who won two local Teacher of the Year awards in one year and served for a decade as gifted education program director for the Muscogee County School District, has died.
Squiers died peacefully March 10 in Asheville, North Carolina, where she moved to be closer to family after being diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2006, according to Asheville Area Alternative Funeral & Cremation Services. She was 74.
After graduating from Auburn High School and Auburn University, Squiers taught science at Kendrick and Shaw high schools in Columbus.
In 1985, she was named MCSD’s Teacher of the Year. Also that year, she won the Ledger-Enquirer’s inaugural Page One Award honoring the top high school teacher in the Chattahoochee Valley.
Squiers directed MCSD’s gifted education program, based in St. Elmo School, from 1997-2007. She was the program’s first systemwide leader after then-superintendent Jim Buntin consolidated the gifted education classes for elementary schools into one building, said former superintendent Guy Sims, who served from 1997-2002.
“She laid the foundation for so much of what’s going on in gifted education in the district now,” Sims told the L-E. “… She was just a good person. She cared deeply about students.”
Squiers struck the fine balance between being well organized and giving autonomy to the students she taught and the teachers she guided, Sims said.
“She knew her subjects, and she also had a passion for helping students who were gifted but just needed that extra support and encouragement to really excel,” he said. “… She was very supportive of teachers. She wasn’t a top-down manager; she was in there working with them.”
A graveside service at Green Hills Cemetery in Asheville was planned primarily for family due to COVID-19 precautions.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 2:42 PM.
