Join2023 Winners
Shell Teaching Awards
Catherine Walker
Science and Engineering Teacher
Dimond High School
Anchorage, Alaska
The foundation of Catherine Walker’s educational philosophy is to provide opportunities for students to fail forward in a safe, productive environment. Her goal is to provide opportunities for students to struggle with tasks and ideas and learn to problem solve and collaborate to find solutions. She communicates openly with students and their caregivers and reflects on their feedback so she can grow and improve as a teacher.
Walker believes that students need to learn how to understand and support their mental health along with becoming competitive in the workplace. Mental health is often neglected in the educational environment, especially in STEM fields driven by competition, and Walker provides a safe environment for students to experience failure and ensuing growth. She teaches students how to give each other constructive, effective feedback and how to reflect on feedback to improve their work.
Her students are exposed to career connections in many different ways and given power over their learning to pursue interests and see meaning in the professional and technological skills they are developing at school. Wade Roach, Dimond High Career and Technical Education Department Chair FIRST Robotics Coach, shares that “Of all the teachers I have known over the 24 years of high school experience, Catherine Walker stands out as the most energetic and enthusiastic educator I have seen. She is always positive and willing to try new things and cares deeply about the well-being of our school and its students, and our community.”
Crystal McDowell
Science Teacher
Greenbrier High School
Evans, Georgia
The desire to transform science education by allowing high school students to engage in science learning through collaborative exploration became the foundation for Crystal McDowell’s science teaching philosophy.
After graduation, McDowell implemented inquiry-based changes and provided real-world experiences for her students, creating a student-centered classroom environment with the teacher as facilitator of learning. Her students began to ask questions again. The three-dimensional, integrated approach of the Framework allows science to be accessible to all students just like when they asked questions as a child. She uses the Framework to provide students with engaging experiences, relevant to their own lives and to the world in which they live.
McDowell creates a learning environment that promotes collaboration, fosters critical thinking, and provides students the opportunity to experience how scientists think and what scientists do to better understand the natural world and our role in it. Lisa Guilbeau, Greenbrier High School Former Assistant Principal, says that “Mrs. McDowell is bright, passionate, compassionate, funny, and a talented teacher. Her work ethic is outstanding and she is considered a powerhouse in the field of science at Greenbrier High School and in the Columbia County School District. She coaches new teachers and the entire science department. She is a brilliant and has led many professional learning communities for teachers. She consistently invests in giving of her time and energy to young people.”
Jennie Warmouth
Elementary Teacher
Spruce Elementary
Seattle, Washington
Jennie Warmouth approaches science instruction from a problem-based learning philosophy. All instruction is student-centered, differentiated, connected to real-world issues, and tied to an authentic call for action. She approaches science instruction from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating aspects of literacy, communication, design, mathematics, and social-emotional learning within and across her science instruction. This is vividly demonstrated through her students’ abilities to generate and communicate solutions, recommendations, and results to real-world audiences of stakeholders.
Warmouth is a unique full-time elementary school teacher in that she is also an active learning scientist with a PhD. She conducts fieldwork, collaborates with environmental scientists, teaches university courses, and writes peer-reviewed papers. She presents her findings locally, nationally and internationally. She brings this aspect of herself into the classroom, connecting her second-grade students with real-world data collection, environmental issues, and leaders in the fields of science, photojournalism, and wildlife rehabilitation.
Jessica Thompson, University of Washington, College of Education, says that “Of the hundreds of elementary teachers I have worked with, Dr. Warmouth’s approach stands out as humanistic and authentic; she has created a culture where there is no end to learning.”