Her Story
Brigitte Tennis is the founder and headmistress of Stella Schola, Latin for “star school,” a lottery-based public choice school in the Lake Washington School District. After the district approved her idea, she built it from scratch and wrote curricula that integrate math, science, history, English and Latin, with fitness, art and music. Students stay with one teacher for the day, so they “develop strong bonds.” She teaches her eighth graders Algebra I, English, Latin II, science and U.S. history.
Her lessons are hands-on. After studying Rome and water velocity, students go outside and build a 300-foot aqueduct from PVC pipe in two hours. They engineer and pitch a mock-up playground to parents who act as “stock holders,” and the seventh grade holds a Medieval Faire with a joust on skateboards. Each year she brings about four state legislators into her classroom to co-teach so they can “make more informed decisions about our public schools.”
She avoids sarcasm, which she calls “poison, not only to the learning process but also to the soul,” and she never humiliates students. Her seventh graders have beaten the state average on state tests by wide margins, and more than half of her Latin students often place in the 85th percentile on the National Latin Exam. The school has a wait list of about eighty families.
Beyond the Classroom
Tennis earned National Board Certification in 2006 and was a DisneyHand American Teacher Honoree in 2004. She was featured in the book American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom and edits and gives feedback on manuscripts for Corwin. At the district level she serves on the Standards Based Expert Project Team, and she helped create “Innovate! Integrate!”, a state education association course that shows teachers how to integrate lessons with the Common Core standards.
She has worked for three years with a University of Washington neuroscientist on a summer workshop that teaches educators about the brain and scientific research. She takes students to Washington, D.C., and her Latin IV students to Italy each summer, and she has led food drives, service days and fundraising for the Red Cross, Make-A-Wish and Water Access Now. She has lobbied in Olympia for lower class sizes and National Board incentives.
Philosophy Into Practice
Tennis calls teaching “a vocation, a call from the core of my being,” sparked by her third grade teacher. She “teaches to the top” and then helps struggling students after hours, and she believes that when students know she cares, “they begin to believe in themselves.” She compares teaching to tending a fire: “It’s kindled with discipline, but fueled with love.”
She sees class size and teacher retention as education’s most urgent problems, and she answers them by bringing legislators into her classroom and by volunteering her time to mentor new teachers. She is sensitive to students’ lives outside school, offering her room as a calm place to work after hours and finding ways to pay for field trips for those who cannot afford them.
“Every student can learn.”Brigitte Tennis
In Her Own Words
“Teaching is a vocation, a call from the core of my being.”Brigitte Tennis
“The art of teaching is a creatively engineered puzzle, a miracle to be unpacked.”Brigitte Tennis
“Once the fire of learning has been ignited, who knows which heart it will burn in next!”Brigitte Tennis
What Others Said
“Her creative teaching excites students with a unique blend of technology, teamwork, and classical learning.”Nan Cleveland, nominator and parent of a former student
“Her dedication and commitment to excellence are unmatched.”Erin Bowser, Principal, Stella Schola Middle School
“Brigitte personifies the ideal of exceptional and excellent teaching.”Dr. Traci Pierce, Superintendent, Lake Washington School District
“Mrs. Tennis’s classroom is a magical place where all the subjects are connected to each other.”Bob Maher, parent of a former student
“I cannot think of anyone who is more deserving of this award.”Lili Cheng, General Manager, Microsoft Research, and former Stella parent