2012 - Regional Teacher of the Year - Julie Trout

Julie teaches art in Seattle - for the last three years at BF Day Elementary and this year at Gatewood. Julie’s passion for art in school was ignited in 4th grade when a teacher used collages, drama and quilting to bring joy into learning for the students in her rural West Virginia classroom.



Julie carries out this same practice in her own classroom where she uses art as a vehicle for struggling students to discover their own potential or find new ways of communicating. She believes this experience sets kids up for success by establishing a school as a safe place where they can be themselves. The problem-solving and evaluation skills that students learn in context of their artwork can then be applied to other subjects and their own lives.



Julie is also passionate about using art as a vehicle for teaching other subjects. Because art is the representation of social and historical events, concepts in the humanities are more easily understood through the lens of art. Students understand where their own art comes from which gives them greater insight into the art of Holocaust survivors, Sudanese refugees or migrant farm workers.



As a colleague and teaching partner, Julie is committed to a personalized approach to professional development; one that targets what the whole teacher needs to stay healthy and vital, but also offers many choices. This focus on individual needs permeates all that Julie does, and reinforces her belief that a preoccupation with standardized testing has promoted a one size fits all approach to education that marginalizes the value of an arts rich classroom. And though she welcomes the concept of art as an academic discipline, she reminds us that not everything that matters can be measured.