Teachers win annual Golden Apple honors

Several Seattle-area educators, schools and programs were awarded the KCTS Golden Apple Awards this week. The awards go to seven individuals and three programs that are "making a positive difference in Washington state education."

Winners get a statuette and money — $250 for individual winners, and $500 for programs — as well as $1,500 to support their classroom, school or program. Recipients will be honored during a January ceremony and featured in a broadcast on KCTS-9 in February.

Judges of the more than 200 nominees included representatives of the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Washington Education Association and the Seattle School Board.

The individual winners were:

• Kathryn Boudreau-Stroud, a science teacher at Issaquah's Beaver Lake Middle School;

• Scott Brown, band director and music teacher at Roosevelt High School;

• Judy Bruggeman, the transition coordinator for special-education students at Enumclaw High School;

• Richard Byrnes, band director and music teacher at Henry Foss High School in the Tacoma School District;

• Mari Knowles, a teacher at Mountlake Terrace Elementary;

• and Tracey Lundquist, a reading and fine arts teacher at Tyee Park Elementary in the Clover Park School District.

The programs that won were: the 826 Seattle writing program, which offers writing workshops and programs; the Bright Future Program in Seattle and other districts, which provides vocational training to at-risk high-school students; and Community Opportunities for Parenting Education, or COPE, which serves teenagers and young adults in Aberdeen who have dropped out of high school.

In addition, a part-time reading teacher for bilingual students at Beacon Hill Elementary School, Masako Davidson, was awarded the Stanley O. McNaughton Golden Apple Award for her work with families and children learning English.