Longtime Bigfork educator named top English teacher

By NANCY KIMBALL

The Daily Inter Lake

Bigfork High School teacher Mary Sullivan has been named the state's English Teacher of the Year.

Montana Association of Teachers of English Language Arts recognized Sullivan's accomplishments through 29 years in education during the state teachers' convention in Billings last month. She will be honored, along with all 50 states' Teachers of the Year, in Nashville during the National Council of Teachers of English convention.

Norma MacKenzie, an English teacher at Whitefish High School and president of the state association, presented the award on Oct. 19.

Sullivan has gained statewide recognition in part through her involvement with the Montana Heritage Project. She worked for 10 years with the project through a grant from the Liz Claiborne-Art Ortenberg Foundation, for which funding now has been discontinued.

Under her guidance, Sullivan's students researched the country's armed conflicts, personally interviewed local military veterans, and produced video and written reports that ultimately were archived with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

From that work each year, her junior English students produced a community observance for Veterans Day that honored individuals in the area.

"She weaves together power literature, substantial writing, and public presentations to the community in a teaching approach that is as good as it gets," Heritage Project Director Michael Umphrey wrote in his recommendation letter for Sullivan's honor.

Year after year, he continued, her students turn in writing that a panel of judges ranks at the top. It's difficult writing based on extensive knowledge gained through researching historical literature and interview, he said, then translated to "evocative essays of place, relying on research into the history and natural history of places that are important to them."

In 2003, her students represented the state as ambassadors to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

"She uses her teaching as a form of community leadership that has had a powerful impact on the place where she lives and works," Umphrey wrote.

"Every year her students are poised, articulate and ready to draw on the extensive work they have done. It's gratifying to hear young people speaking well about topics of importance to the communities where they live."

Sullivan provides professional training to other teachers, he added, and regularly has made presentations at the state teachers' conventions, regional English teachers' conferences and Montana Heritage Project institutes.

He called her "truly a master teacher" who is "committed to the highest ideals of education."

Sullivan joined the Bigfork High School staff in 1990 as an English teacher, and was head coach for the school's speech and debate team from 1994 to 2004.

Earlier, she taught a graduate-level course for the University of Montana, was an English teacher at Hellgate Middle School in Missoula, and taught and coordinated curriculum and gifted-student programs in Washington.