Two educators were honored by their community and peers Friday as the award for Teacher of the Year was bestowed upon an elementary school librarian from Humphrey’s Highland Elementary School and a ninth-grade Algebra I teacher from Caprock High School.

Carol Winn is the Elementary School Teacher of the Year for 2015-16. Mary Malone is the Secondary School Teacher of the Year.

“Being on the Teacher of the Year Committee was hard this year,” said Tim Bryant, last year’s secondary teacher of the year from Crockett Middle School.

“You’re innovators. You’re inspiring. You’re caring. You are the real movers and shakers.”

Winn has taught music therapy, middle and high school English, and has even taught at West Texas A&M University. She is also the Gifted and Talented coordinator, an instructor with Project Based Learning and Response to Intervention, and chairwoman of many projects and committees.

“I feel excited and overwhelmed,” Winn said.

“I knew it was a possibility, but I didn’t expect it.”

Winn was recognized for her work teaching students to teach themselves and others, saying that when students seek out the library for research, “this is the greatest testament to real learning — these students have internalized the research process and are now able to teacher others.”

Winn said she teaches students how to search databases like TexQuest to research topics related to lessons they are learning in class and through her Project Based Learning programs.

“If you Google a question, sometimes you may get 5,000 answers and how do you find out which one is the best answer?” Winn said. “Because they are going to go out in the world and they’re going to have questions — their kid may have asthma or their mom may be sick when they get older — how do you find the answer to that? Do you just go with what Google comes up with first? No, you’ve got to look deeper. I’m trying to teach them to dig deeper and find the important stuff, the reliable stuff.”

Malone teaches ninth-grade Algebra I and the preparation for the End of Course exams. She is a member of the Champions Team and hosts a workshop lab classroom that other teachers can learn from.

“I’m kind of in shock. It’s very humbling,” Malone said. “I work with amazing teachers, and I don’t think I do anything above and beyond what anybody else does. We just love the kids, and we come in every day and we try to teach something new.”

Malone was recognized for her innovative teaching methods at Caprock and the use of a “flipped” classroom, where students take home iPads and watch videos on algebra lessons that she recorded in the classroom. She also presents math problems in real-life scenarios and said that video lessons have helped students, especially those who struggle with dyslexia.

“We would record our videos, teaching them the new concepts and they would go home and watch it. They were able to come into class and if they were struggling, then I could help them in class instead of sending them home with homework,” Malone said. “It has definitely saved us a lot of time, because before they were just copying down what I was writing and weren’t using their brains. When they came to class, it had a little bit more rigor and was a little bit deeper.”

The winners received $500 from the Lamar Lively Fund at the Amarillo Area Foundation and $300 from the Amarillo Education Foundation. They also received one year of free car washes from Amarillo Auto Clean and two round-trip tickets from Southwest Airlines to anywhere the airline flies.