Gwendolyn Faulkner was helping her second-grade kids read “The Velveteen Rabbit” when her Thursday afternoon got spectacularly derailed by a parade of adults bearing gifts and signs.
They trooped into Faulkner’s McKenzie Elementary School classroom in Wilmette to tell her she was one of 10 winners of the 2018 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching. To the cheers of her delighted students, Faulkner was congratulated by Golden Apple Board Chairman Bob Newman, who told her she was “awesome.”
Faulkner, 31, said she knew she was a finalist this year in the program that since 1985 has honored and helped to develop outstanding Chicago area teachers.
But the daily joy of teaching pushed that from her mind, she said, at least until the invading parade. The entourage included her proud mom Sally, of Northfield, and her brother Jay, who traveled from Indiana to surprise her with a bouquet of flowers.
“It’s just overwhelming. Teachers are used to being the cheerleaders, not having cheerleaders,” she said.
The award presentation was followed by a happy procession of chanting, clapping youngsters, many of who accompanied her through an all-school tour and others who lined the halls to see her pass by.
Faulkner, whose friends and colleagues know her as Gwen, grew up in Northfield and graduated from New Trier. She always wanted to work with children, she said.
She eventually chose teaching over a career in child psychology, and student taught in the very classroom she now calls home. She joined Wilmette Elementary District 39 in 2012, and has been at McKenzie ever since. She is the district’s third recent Golden Apple winner. Wilmette teachers also won in 2005 and 2006, Superintendent Ray Lechner said.
McKenzie Principal Rachel Filippi called Faulkner incredibly dynamic.
“She makes the classroom a home and it’s clear her kids love coming to class every day because of that,” Filippi said.
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Golden Apple officials cited the way Faulkner designed her classroom as one of the reasons for her award.
Faulkner’s students make use of that flexible environment to interact with the world through a class Twitter feed and as class reporters capturing and captioning the day’s events, award officials noted.
They also praised a project Faulkner worked on this year, through a partnership with Together We Rise, to help students tackle concerns they shared about the lack of personal integrity, kindness and diversity during the last presidential election.
This year, students also completed a service project, raising funds to buy suitcases for children in foster care, awards officials said.
“They can do so much on their own, with budding independence,” Faulkner said. “And they also have a sense of magical thinking, where they think of the world’s possibilities, not its reality, and they want to make those possibilities the reality.”
Faulkner now gets a tuition-free spring quarter sabbatical to study at Northwestern University, and a $5,000 cash award.
Faulkner and other Golden Apple winners will be featured May 19 in a one-hour television program on WTTW Television, and on a livestream at www.facebook.com/goldenappleillinois.
Twitter @pioneer_kathy