Keynote Speaker

Shauna Cary, 2006 National Walmart Teacher of the Year

2006 National Teacher of the Year Shauna Carey, a visual arts teacher at Booker T. Washington Elementary School in Champaign, Ill., moves beyond paint and pottery to infuse knowledge and understanding of cultural differences in her students. Her dedication to education and the arts is being recognized as she is honored as Wal-Mart’s 2006 National Teacher of the Year. The award is the culmination of Wal-Mart Teacher of the Year awards that began in May when Carey received local recognition from a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Champaign. From there, she applied for the Illinois state Teacher of the Year award which she received in September. Carey has been a visual arts teacher at Booker T. Washington Elementary School for 13 years and an art teacher for more than 30 years. As a teacher in a school with a diverse population,* Carey notes that many of her students come to school with a much lower proficiency in vocabulary skills and have minimal experiences outside of their specific cultures. She has observed that an achievement gap exists because of ethnic and socio-economic differences. In response, Carey learns as much about her students’ cultures that she can in order to better teach each child. In doing so, she is able to connect broad experiences in her art room to her student’s lives and their other subjects and to reinforce the importance of literacy. She creates an atmosphere of self-discovery and self-expression in a safe and supportive environment. Carey has implemented scheduling changes to mix students from the school’s bilingual, regular education and self-contained gifted classrooms in her art classes so they can share their languages and academic talents in cooperative learning groups. Working closely with fellow teachers, Carey incorporates reading, writing, math and science into her classroom by applying their curriculum to the visual arts. Booker T. Washington Elementary School produces musical programs including one during Black History Month and an “all-school” musical in which each child has a singing role and costume. Limited parent involvement due to bilingual and low-income barriers makes the execution of the program a great challenge. However, Carey works diligently to ensure that props are built, sets are painted and costumes are made, so that each student experience professional productions. When growing conflict between the school’s African American and Latino students interfered with learning, Carey wrote and received a grant to find a dancer-in-residence to work with fourth and fifth grade students on conflict resolution through art, dance and music. After learning traditional African and Hispanic dances, students created their own performances with these rhythms and movements. They created costumes from fabric printed in the art room with African and Latino fabric designs and printing techniques. They read tales from the two cultures to learn about problem solving strategies and created puppets and plays to reinforce the use of “brain over brawn” and the commonalities of problems across different cultures. Booker T. Washington School Principal Sherri Alimi comments, “Mrs. Carey is a complete teacher. She does not see herself as an art teacher; she is a teacher. She builds relationships with parents, teachers, and especially students. She looks for ways to increase the cultural IQ of our students through art, music and crafts. She finds unique exciting ways of showing all of us how to express ourselves. Her efforts to promote the visual arts have impacted our district and the state.” In recent years, Carey has received the Champaign Urbana School Foundation Common Threads Award to promote literacy and problem solving through the arts, the Illinois State Board of Education Team Award for Those Who Excel and the WICD TV Golden Apple Teacher Award. Carey also led fourth and fifth grade students to winning the One Nation Fact-astic Contest from Capstone Press. Carey was selected as a Fulbright Memorial Fund Japan program recipient in 1999, being one of the first in her school district to be selected. Carey has been married for 32 years to Clif Carey, campus architect at the University of Illinois. They have two sons, Jack and Tim. In her personal artistic expressions she is a potter and watercolorist. Booker T. Washington Elementary School, 606 E. Grove, Champaign, Ill. Here is a PDF version of her bio: http://www.pdkintl.org/walmart/Carey_bio.pdf