BY TRACY LEE TATE
Times Staff Writer
Sometimes a person starts on one career path and changes directions — not an uncommon thing with teachers. Many of these teachers find that working with young people is simply a different way of doing what they originally set out to do in life. This is true of Lake Butler Middle School’s Teacher of the Year, Rob Lightsey.
Lightsey graduated from Santa Fe High School in 1984. In 1994, he moved to Graceville to attend the Baptist College of Florida, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Theology in 1998. He stayed in the area until early 1999 when he moved to Louisville to attend the Southern Baptist Seminary. He only completed one semester but worked for a time as the chaplain for the University of Louisville Cardinals baseball team. He was ordained in 1996 before moving back to north Florida to serve as youth pastor at Fellowship Baptist Church for two years.
In 2000, Lightsey moved to Alabama, where he served as chaplain to the Cottonwood High School football team and became involved with Alabama Raceway Ministries, working with spectators and tracking personnel at auto racing events. He moved back to Florida in 2012, working and coaching football and baseball at Santa Fe High School for two years. He then took a position at First Christian Academy in its high school, serving as PE director, athletic director and head baseball coach.
Lightsey came to Lake Butler Middle School in 2015. His mother, Helen Lightsey, was the librarian at the middle school when it burned down and continued at the school when it was rebuilt until her retirement in 1996. Rob started his career at LBMS as an ESE co-teacher in history. When the state of Florida eliminated co-teachers in non-tested subjects in 2020, he transitioned to co-teaching civics and teaching world history. He also coached football and baseball his first two years at LBMS.
Just this year, now that the state has eliminated co-teachers entirely, he has moved into his current role – teaching two classes each in world history (sixth grade), civics (seventh grade) and U.S. history (eighth grade). This is his first time as a Teacher of the Year.
“It’s real humbling for me because when you are selected for something like this you don’t feel like you deserve it, but, wow, it happened,” Lightsey said. “Your peers think enough of you to put you in that role. I was talking to last year’s winner, Emily Newsome, about all the struggles a teacher goes through and how something like this is an affirmation that you are on track with what you are doing.”
Lightsey is married to his high school sweetheart, Michelle. They started dating in the spring of her senior year. Now the couple has been married for 36 years and have two girls and one granddaughter.
Lightsey is a talented guitar player, both electric and acoustic, and plays the mountain dulcimer, dobro and mandolin. He plays Southern rock, country and writes Christian music that is a fusion of country and Southern gospel. He gives live performances at churches and civic organizations, most recently at Lake Butler Rotary.
In his spare time, he enjoys his family as well as golf, freshwater and saltwater fishing, antiquing, and reading history and theology. An avid sports fan, Lightsey follows the Alabama Crimson Tide football team and is a lifelong Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Reds fan.
Lightsey said he truly enjoys teaching and working with young people and feels he has found a vocation that is also an avocation. He has no plans to change careers.
“I like my job, the people I work with and especially the kids,” Lightsey said. “I work to make my classes both fun and educational and the kids seem to respond to it. I think this is where I am supposed to be.”
