By Stacee Sledge
It’s one thing to be named Washington State Teacher of the Year – it’s quite another to meet President Barack Obama at the White House and to throw out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game.
These are just two of the honors recently bestowed on Shuksan Middle School educator Katie Brown after she was named the 2014 Washington State Teacher of the Year last September.
A Vancouver, Washington, native, Brown attended the University of Redlands near San Bernardino, California, on a volleyball and academic scholarship for one year before transferring to Clarke College in her hometown to finish her AA degree, and then transferring to Western Washington University.
Brown graduated from Western in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology, and then took an AmeriCorps position in Juneau.
It was while working with AmeriCorps that Brown landed on her path to become an educator.
“Part of my degree at Western was in cultural anthropology and I had a passion for working with indigenous cultures,” says Brown. “The AmeriCorps position I took was working with the Tlingit and Haida Native American Tribe.”
Working with a Native American health clinic, Brown created and ran an adolescent health program, helping native youth with physical activity and cultural awareness.
A big part of Brown’s job working with the native youth was accessing them through the public schools. She found herself in the classroom with the kids – and loved it.
“I decided to come back to Western and get my teaching degree,” Brown says. Brown student taught at Fairhaven Middle School while attending Western, and was hired in 2003 by Shuksan Middle School to teach seventh grade Language Arts and Social Studies.
“I taught seventh grade for eight years,” Brown says, “and when the ELL Specialist position opened up three years ago, I jumped at the opportunity to work more closely with students and families who speak English as a second language.”
“We have an incredible culture here at Shuksan,” Brown continues, “and I honestly believe that culture and the relationships of the adults in a building are one of the key factors for student success and the success of the school. We have an amazing staff.”
They also have a supportive principal in Jay Jordan, who came to Shuksan in 2011. It was Jordan’s prompting that resulted in Brown’s Washington State Teacher of the Year award.
“I had no idea that the Teacher of the Year program even existed,” Brown says with a laugh. “My principal came into my room one day and said, ‘I’m nominating you for something and there’s a time-intensive process you’re going to have to go through – and you have to do it, because you are going to win.’”
Jordan wasn’t joking about the detailed application process, but Brown was game. She submitted the necessary paperwork and wrote eight essays about different aspects of education.
Brown was ultimately selected Regional Teacher of the Year.
Brown then traveled to Olympia for an extensive interview process for Washington State Teacher of the Year, talking with people from the National PTA, past Teachers of the Year, representatives from the Washington Education Association, previous superintendents, students, and more.
This part of the process came easily to Brown.
“Going into an interview to talk about what you do and your passion is easy for me,” she says. “It’s just fun to talk about what I love to do and to talk about Shuksan Middle School and all the amazing things we’re doing here.”
At a ceremony at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, Brown was named the 2014 Washington State Teacher of the Year.
She’s quick to call it a team award, sharing it with all of her Shuksan colleagues.
“My job here at Shuksan is the ELL specialist,” says Brown, “but I’m also an instructional coach for the building, so I work with all of our teachers and facilitate professional development.”
Brown says one of the reasons she was selected was because Shuksan has been able to show the impact of their work on their students.
“It felt like finally the teachers at Shuksan Middle School were getting the recognition they deserve,” says Brown. “And I get to stand up and talk about it. But it really felt like I was bringing back the trophy for the team.”
In April, Brown was asked to throw out the first pitch for a different team entirely: the Seattle Mariners.
“The first thing my principal Jay Jordan said was, ‘All right, we’re getting a charter bus and heading down there!’” Brown says, with a laugh.
“I practiced a little bit ahead of time,” says Brown, who had never thrown a baseball before.
She and a friend, Whatcom Middle School P.E. teacher Jose Meese, went to Bellingham High School to practice.
“We measured it out and I threw for about 20 minutes. I was getting it over every time,” she says, “so I was like, no problem, I’ve got this.”
But on the day of the game, Brown didn’t get to warm up. And standing in magnificent and spacious Safeco Field made everything – including the distance from the mound to the plate – feel much more expansive.
Brown’s family, colleagues, and fellow Regional Teachers of the Year stood and cheered as she walked to the mound.
“You look toward the plate, and – wow, that looks a lot farther away than when we practiced it,” she says, laughing. “It definitely wasn’t a perfect pitch – it was a little short – but it was accurate.”
Afterward, Brown was given the ball, signed by starting pitcher Roenis Elias.
“I’m back in the stands, looking at this ball,” she says. “And I realized I want to remember everybody who’s there with me, so we passed the ball around and everybody signed it – even my little 3-year-old niece and my nephew.”
A few weeks after her Mariners moment pitch, Brown boarded a plane bound for Washington, D.C., where she and the other 49 State Teachers of the Year spent a week meeting with different officials, politicians and policymakers.
“We had a reception at the Vice President’s residence where we met and talked with Dr. Jill Biden,” Brown says. “She’s also a teacher and is still currently teaching full time at a community college in D.C. That was really nice.”
The teachers also got to meet with the Department of Domestic Policy at the White House and the Department of Education.
“They wanted to hear from each of us about pressing issues and our opinions on things,” says Brown.
Then it was the big event, meeting the President. Brown had a moment to speak one-on-one with Barack Obama, and then attend a ceremony for the teachers, at which he spoke.
“That was the most memorable moment,” she says, “actually being there with the President, someone I truly admire.”
(You can read Brown’s wonderful firsthand account of her experience meeting Barack Obama here.)
When Brown looks back at this experience so far, she says she’s reminded of the power of being a teacher.
“It’s easily forgotten when you do your tremendously hard day-to-day work,” she says. “It’s given me more confidence as a teacher to meet people and policymakers and politicians who do want to hear from teachers. We do have something to say.”
There’s no shortage of negative press about education these days, and Brown stresses that much of it is misinformation.
“There are so many amazing, positive things happening in schools every day that we don’t get to hear about,” she – who is proof of that – says.
Another important part of Brown’s life involves education of a different sort: teaching kung fu at Knight’s Martial Arts in downtown Bellingham.
Brown and her brother-in-law became partners in the school – where Brown has been a student for a decade – and started a kids kung fu program. Brown also won the silver medal in the World Championships in Shuai Chiao (or Chinese wrestling) for her weight class in March in Shanghai, China.
“Everyone’s always like, ‘My gosh, how do you teach all the time, and then go and do this?’” says Brown, smiling. “It’s all one in the same. I like to work hard.”
You can keep following Katie Brown’s remarkable story at her blog, and learn more about her kung fu school, Knight’s Martial Arts, at www.knightsmartialarts.net or on Facebook.
