Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools

Thank you, Teachers and Schools
If I’ve learned anything in my tenure as a board member and advisor to several
literary magazines, it is the critical role of the teacher. Should anyone wonder, many
of the students represented in these pages share the same teacher. The students may
have been gifted writers or artists at the outset, but after many years of reading and
enjoying student submissions, it is clear that there is a force behind the best students.
At the core, teachers are urging, supporting, perhaps cajoling, and likely pushing
students beyond their comfort zones. Those teachers are involved in their students’
work at a dynamic level, offering them new ways of viewing the world and new skills
with which to render what they see. In a time when teachers, particularly teachers of
the arts, live too closely to the vacuum that can become standardized testing, please
applaud schools, administrations and teachers who understand and validate the
absolute need for the arts in our young people’s lives. This magazine exists, certainly,
because of students and their work. It would exist in a far different way without
the teachers who foster, guide and give voice and substance to that work, and the
administrators and schools that make it possible. Thank you. LEL
Students of the following teachers were selected for inclusion in the 2009 Aerie
International.
Angelia Perkins of Lawrence High School, Lawrence, Kansas
Anna Grehova of American Councils, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
Anna Skinner of Yothin Burana School, Bangkok, Thailand
Brenda Graham and Jane Giles of Trinity School, Carlisle, Cumbria, Great Britain
Carolyn Berry of Lawrence Free State High School, Lawrence, Kansas
Ealene Anderson of Otjiwarongo Secondary School, Otjiwarongo, Namibia
Fujiwara Masayuki of Daini Senior High School, Kumamoto, Japan
Geoffrey Serra of Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, Connecticut
George Singleton and Mamie Morgan of South Carolina Governor’s School for the
Arts and Humanities, Greenville, South Carolina
Heather Woodward of San Francisco School of the Arts, San Francisco, California
Jackie Jones, Liz Flaisig and Will Napier of Douglas Anderson School of the Arts,
Jacksonville, Florida
Janine King of Los Alamitos High School, Los Alamitos, California
Jean O’Connor of Helena High School, Helena, Montana
Joel McElvaney of Roswell High School, Roswell, Georgia
Judy Nollner, Mary Lynn Huie and Susan Henderson of Parkview High School,
Lilburn, Georgia
Kathy Woods of Norman North High School, Norman, Oklahoma
Kelly Hammond of Cincinnati Country Day School, Cincinnati, Ohio
Kim Lucostic of Big Sky High School, Missoula, Montana
Lary Kleeman of Arapahoe High School, Centennial, Colorado
Linda Simpson of Judge Memorial Catholic High School, Salt Lake City, Utah
Nataliya Yegorava of Secondary School 40, Kazan, Russia
Stuart Merchant of Hydaburg High School, Hydaburg, Alaska
Svea Barrett of Northern Highlands Regional High School, Allendale, New Jersey
Ulla Kudjoi, Juhana Herttua High School, Turku, Finland