Walnut Creek Intermediate School – 2000 Winner
Julie Krug, a 2000 winner, gave up a promising broadcast news career at a major television network to teach French at Walnut Creek Intermediate School. She created a new course called “Teens Around the World” and an after-school program that attracted some 65 students called “Teens Around the World in Action” to expand students’ thinking beyond their own communities. She brought speakers to the classroom to tell the students about daily life in places as diverse as Myanmar, India and Mozambique. Inspired by the curriculum and her leadership, the students have raised tens of thousands of dollars for various overseas causes, including Kosovo relief, assistance to Turkish earthquake victims and the building of new schools in Haiti. She took her students to Nicaragua to help build a school and to Honduras to assist in flood-recovery projects.