Katie Brown: Washington State Teacher of the Year

I looked at a few online newspaper articles and even found a link on OSPI talking about Washington State Teacher of the Year, Katie Brown.  She received her teaching degree from Western Washington University and she was hired as a seventh grade English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher at Shuksan Middle School in 2003.  According to an interview conducted by Stacee Sledge, Brown talks about how she taught for eight years before taking on the ELL Specialist position that she now holds at the middle school.  In Brown’s own words she states, that she immediately took the opportunity because it would allow her, “…to work more closely with students and families who speak English as a second language.”  From what her co-workers say of her, she seems to really enjoy her job and working with students and that she doesn’t believe in having students sit and be lectured to all day, which I found quite nice.

On the OSPI website, it talks about how Katie practices Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol.  I haven’t come across this before so I did a little more research.  I wasn’t able to find much on the details of what the instruction looks like, but I did find that it was made up of eight components that are used throughout ELL lessons.  According to Pearson, SIOP helps ELL students in a variety of ways.  Those include the growth of student learning, the improvement of academic content skills and language skills, and helping these students become more prepared for college and future careers.

Questions that I have for Katie:

·         What is your teaching philosophy?

·         What events prompted you to want to become a teacher?

·         Can you give us an idea of what Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol looks like in the classroom?

·         What was the interview process like for Teacher of the Year?

Fun Questions about you:

·         How nervous were you to be interviewed by Bill Gates?

·         Out of all the honors (cool things you have gotten to do) since becoming Teacher of the Year, what has been your favorite?