Anchorage high school teacher a finalist for national teacher of the year award

An Anchorage high school teacher was named one of four finalists this week for a National Teacher of the Year award that will be announced this spring.

Cat Walker has taught science and career and technical education at Dimond High School in South Anchorage for the past seven years, said Dimond High principal Tina Johnson-Harris.

Johnson-Harris said she nominated Walker for the award because of her exceptional commitment to teaching, science, and her students. Walker finds creative ways to get her students interested in science, and tries to draw out students who are traditionally underrepresented in science, Johnson-Harris said.

“She wants them to be stewards of natural resources, so she created our oceans club here. She’s taken kids down to Whittier to clean up the beach. She just wants to ensure that if they’re looking at science, how does it apply to the real world,” Johnson-Harris said. “A lot of kids will say, ‘she wants us to be good human beings.’ And she does that through her science.”

Walker was previously named Alaska’s teacher of the year by the state.

She is the Alaska science awardee for the 2015 Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching, and received the Alaska Marine Science Outreach Award, the National Science Teaching Association’s Shell Science Teaching Award, and the Alaska Oil and Gas Association Teacher Grant, according to a news release from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

The contest is put on each year by a national education nonprofit, the Council of Chief State School Officers. The four finalists were chosen out of a pool of 55 teachers named as state teachers of the year by their state or territory. The winner will be announced in April.

In 2023, Harlee Harvey, a first-grade teacher at Tikiġaq School in Point Hope, was also named a finalist for the award.

An Alaska teacher has won national teacher of the year just once before in the program’s 70-year history: In 1995, Elaine Griffin, a Chiniak teacher, was awarded the title.