Julie Lovie prefers to fly under the radar, but that’s been difficult lately.
There was no escaping the spotlight last Tuesday when Lovie was honored as Napa County Teacher of the Year before a crowd of family, friends, colleagues, students and local dignitaries, who gathered to celebrate her 20-plus years in the Napa Valley Unified School District.
“It’s cool to be recognized for doing something you love,” Lovie said before the ceremony. “Teaching is the best job there is. I get to make a difference every day. I’m very appreciative and honored, but this is not an award you get on your own.”
Lovie teaches math and science at Napa’s Valley Oak High School where she’s spent her 22-year teaching career. Valley Oak is a continuation high school where students who haven’t found success in a traditional high school setting go to earn the credits they need to graduate.
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“Our school is different, but in a good way; Valley Oak is a special place to be,” Lovie said. “Students come here for all different reasons. Some students come to us because the comprehensive high school system is too much for them. Here we provide small learning communities and give students a second opportunity to find success.
“Other students come here because life has dealt them some bad cards. Some of our students have faced more hardships in their lives than many adults see in a lifetime. But here at Valley Oak, we are the mighty acorns. The students laugh, but each of them comes to us as a tiny acorn, and we help give them the tools they need to grow into mighty oaks.”
Lovie is a lifelong Napan who is a product of the school district she now works for. She said her experiences in Napa classrooms inspired her to become a teacher, and she remembers a defining moment in the fifth grade when her teacher helped the class make magnets from a battery, copper wire and a nail.
“That was the coolest thing I’d ever seen,” Love said. “That’s what solidified my passion for science. I knew that was what I wanted to do.”
Lovie graduated from Sonoma State with a degree in biology. Today, she uses her love of science in the garden nestled in the quad of the Valley Oak campus. Together with her environmental horticulture students, Lovie grows an assortment of produce, including strawberries, carrots and tomatoes. The apple trees will have a modest harvest this year, and the Valley Oak “vineyard” is producing grapes despite the drought.
With her students at her side, Lovie tends the gardens, pulling weeds and planting seeds. When fruit and vegetables are ready for picking, Lovie takes the produce home to cook meals and make snacks, which she brings in to share with the students to show what their hard work has produced.
Lovie enjoys being in the garden, but she also draws parallels between gardening in the plots outside her classroom and planting seeds in the minds of her students in the classroom.
“I think sometimes teachers underestimate the power of influence we have on our students,” Lovie said. “Teachers are like gardeners. We’re planting seeds. We don’t always get to see that seed grow and flourish, but it is always amazing when kids come back and tell us that we made a positive influence in their lives.”
Lovie, who has a husband and three children of her own, was nominated for Napa County Teacher of the Year by a former student, according to Valley Oak High School Principal Maria Cisneros.
“Julie is one of a kind,” Cisneros said. “She’s outgoing and excited about learning every day. She has this aurora that people can’t resist. They want to be in her presence. The students gravitate toward that.
“Julie approaches education in a way that puts life and color back into the classroom, and she finds ways to give students experiences beyond the walls of the classroom as well. She is an amazing part of our team. We’re lucky to have her, and now everyone else is catching on to our little secret.”
Despite the accolades, Lovie doesn’t see her work in the classroom as anything extraordinary. She is simply giving her all to help her students succeed.
“I get as much from the students as they get from me,” Lovie said. “Teaching here at Valley Oak has made me a better person. I’m more well-rounded. The students make me a better person. A lot of teachers say teaching is a calling, that it’s more than a paycheck. But for me, I know in my heart that this is where I’m supposed to be. I’m happy here. This is where I’m in my element.”
In addition to her math and science classes, Lovie is also heading up Valley Oak’s first student leadership program this year, and she continues to work with students on the Fright Nights Live program, a California-based program to help students make smart and safe choices about how they spend their free time.
Lovie will be traveling with a group of Fright Nights Live students to Anaheim next week where they will present their distracted driving public service announcement project at the Youth Traffic Safety Summit.
Barbara Nemko, Napa County Office of Education superintendent, said Lovie’s success with students in the Friday Night Live program is just one of the many examples that highlights Lovie as an exemplary teacher in the county.
“Julie gives her all,” Nemko said. “She finds ways to motivate her students to be better academically as well as overall members of society. She will do whatever it takes to engage her students. She has them in the garden and planting oak trees in the community. She’s very hands-on and strives to make a personal connection with each of her students. We are proud to have her in Napa County.”
As Napa County Teacher of the Year, Lovie is now eligible for consideration for the California Teacher of the Year honor. The California Department of Education will announce its 2016 honorees at the end of October.