Korrie Beemer is named state Science Teacher of the Year.

The knee injury that sidelined Korrie Beemer from the varsity basketball team when she was a senior at Bainbridge High School also helped her find her vocation.

Helping coach the junior varsity team that season was the first time she’d taught, and she enjoyed it. Now in her seventh year teaching science at BHS, Beemer has found her place in the classroom.

“If I had to choose between teaching another subject or becoming a researcher, I’d choose to teach another subject,” the 1992 BHS graduate said. “The teaching part is way more important to me than the science. I just like teaching science because it’s the most fun.”

The sense of fun coupled with purpose may be why Beemer has been named 2005 Secondary Level Science Teacher of the Year by the Washington Science Teachers Association.

The award, which comes with an honorarium of $500, is given to science teachers who are effective, make their subject “exciting” and promote it outside the classroom. The honor also makes Beemer eligible for an award at the national level.

Beemer was nominated by her BHS science colleague Louise Baxter and BHS Principal Brent Peterson.

Baxter praises Beemer for “a superlative job of teaching. Korrie’s enthusiasm for teaching is obvious not only in her delivery of instruction, but in her creative ways of presenting material so that it is exciting and easy to understand.”

She also lauds Beemer for facilitating “much collaborative work among the biology teachers in the building that was heretofore missing.”

Beemer describes her teaching style as “my personality pushed into a career” – reflecting her two sides, “neat freak” and “child at heart.”

“Knowing what kind of atmosphere you feel comfortable with links to your philosophy of teaching,” she said. “By nature, I’m a ‘neat freak’ but I don’t want to push it on anyone else.”

Still, Beemer expects her students to keep a three-ring binder with their papers in order based on a checklist, not just to be tidy, but to be able to easily find papers or quickly spot a missing sheet.

Student comments supporting Beemer’s nomination said, “This class is hyper-organized, but amazingly not boring…She is incredibly organized and always is prepared for class, which makes students feel more secure.”

At the same time, her playful side brings games and anecdotes from her own life to the classroom.

Students commented: “Ms. Beemer has an amazing ability to mix humor into her daily lessons so that the material never seems dull…Taking notes is interesting because she connects it to everyday lives…(students) will track their food through the digestive system during lunch.”

To review for anatomy, students play “Who Wants to be a Plastic Surgeon?” complete with “Millionaire” program-like “lifelines” to move from kindergarten- to residency-level questions.

“I’m not afraid of a competitive environment, but I make it so nobody is put on the spot,” said Beemer, who still coaches boys and girls seventh and eighth grade basketball. “People like competition.”

The rewarding part of teaching?

“Every day something fun or funny happens,” Beemer said. “I’m always surprised by some student as a student or I’m pleasantly surprised by them as a person. I like to get to know kids, that’s the fun part.”

Beemer is a careful observer, and sometimes the surprise is a student who raises his or her hand in class for the first time. She is sensitive that girls may need more encouragement to gain self-confidence, and some boys will do better if they can take a break from sitting still for a long time.

“She has an attitude of a sports coach in that she wants us all to succeed, and this positive attitude is contagious,” students say.

Beemer recalls a student who cried after getting an “A” on a test. Beemer’s reaction was not a self-congratulatory pat on the back for teaching the student well, but rather, “Wow, I got to know this student better as a person.”

The teacher cried, too.

“I like to get to know them for that short period of time (they’re) in my world,” she said.

Beemer regularly sees her students in plays, concerts and swim meets, and considers all of them her children in some way.

Now an award-winning teacher and product of the Bainbridge school system, she has received several comments of “I’m so proud of you” from her colleagues, some of whom were teaching when she was a student at BHS.

Beemer says she feels like a poster child for the Bainbridge Island School District, having gone through the system and now making her own contributions to it.

“A big part of why I went into teaching was because I had great teachers here. I love the equal opportunity of public education,” she said. “(As a student) I liked that every day started at the same time with a schedule, but I also love to see different personalities of good teachers and how they made it work.”