Every year, KCTS 9 chooses teachers and programs that exemplify the best in education. The winners of the coveted Golden Apple Award are then showcased on the television station each February.

This year, Skagit County is host to two of the winners, Island View Elementary Principal Bernie Selting in the Anacortes School District, and the Skagit River Poetry Project, which brings poets into classrooms in Whatcom and Skagit counties. In all, six educators and three programs earned the honor.

Principal Bernie Selting

Selting knows how to pinch pennies, he knows how to work with kids and he knows how to make a point.

Shortly after he started as Island View Elementary principal, he was invited to bring a beverage to the district’s next facilities committee meeting, whose members would decide which projects would receive funding on an upcoming bond issue.

“He brought some Island View water,” said third-grade teacher Didi Funk — water that looked like apple juice — pulp and all.

Those who were skeptics of the school’s need for a remodel were suddenly convinced of the necessity, she said.

Selting also understands the district’s economic constraints, and so he’s found ways to make things happen on a shoestring budget.

“He likes do-it-yourself (projects),” said music teacher David Jones.

Real xylophone mallets cost $20, Jones said. But two wooden dowels and two bouncy balls cost a couple of bucks, he said.

“We’re building our own xylophone mallets,” Jones said.

Selting has welded mounting brackets for televisions instead of buying them, or sewn bags by hand to hold math supplies.

He even works as a crossing guard to save enough money for an after-school Spanish program, teachers said.

“If there’s some need that really needs to be met, his eyes will flash, and it will happen,” Funk said.

But an educator can’t win the Golden Apple Award without connecting with students.

Selting’s staff and students say that the 16-year Island View principal often goes above and beyond the call of duty.

During lunchtime last week, several students had the stories to prove that Selting had earned the award, from fighting bullying in the hallways to his hands-on approach to education.

“We were researching the rain forest, and he brought in some cacao beans,” said sixth-grader Madison Chandler.

“They were a little bitter, but they were still good,” student Derek Hilliard recalled.

Students say Selting’s a champion for a safe, welcoming environment.

Selting, however, deflects the praise away from himself and toward the school’s “wonderful staff.”

“They’ve created a setting where kids can come in with a wide variety of skills and abilities and feel welcome,” Selting, 64, said. “They feel like they belong. They feel like they have a place here.”

Just before lunchtime Thursday, kindergarten students jostled to hold Selting’s hand as he walked with them down the hallway toward Jill Strainer’s classroom.

“I want to help them understand their potential and what things are possible in the world,” Selting said. “We need to focus more time on what you can do, not what you can’t do.”

Skagit River Poetry Project

When the Skagit River Poetry Project started in 1998 in La Conner, officials weren’t sure how long it would last. But students and teachers quickly embraced it, said Sam Green, Washington’s poet laureate.

Poets visit the classrooms from kindergarten through high school. The project has brought poets into the classroom, including former U.S. poet laureates Ted Kooser and Billy Collins, poets Jane Hirshfield, Thomas Lux, Naomi Shihab Nye and Green.

“In many ways, you could call us a literacy coach,” Green said. “(Poetry is) a literacy of the tongue, a literacy of the heart.”

Poetry, he said, helps students see the world in a different way.

“They become thinking adults who no longer think of poetry as odd,” Green said.

Poets work with teachers and show them how to teach poetry in the classroom. The lessons have been invaluable to La Conner High School English and creative writing teacher Wayne Johnston.

“I am not a poet. I play at it,” he said. “But now I’m able to teach a poetry unit in a creative writing class that I could not have done before.”

Molly McNulty, poetry project director, said she thinks the program has taught 500 teachers how to teach poetry in its 11 years and reaches about 10,000 students per year.

Green said the program would not exist without buy-in from teachers.

“Without their cooperation and steadfast support, what we do wouldn’t count for very much,” he said. “They help us teach better, too, because we aren’t professional teachers.”

The program has been around long enough that Green said he’s seeing the children of his original students in the poetry lessons.

“Students in the Skagit Valley think it’s a normal thing for poets to visit their classrooms,” Green said. “They’ve grown up that way. … That for us is a huge benefit.”

Kate Martin can be reached at 360-416-2145 or at .