POULSBO — Inside Poulsbo Junior High School teacher Gayl TenEyck’s abundantly decorated room hangs a large banner, proclaiming in bold letters: “We’re glad you’re here.”

At the center of her educational philosophy, TenEyck uses that phrase to help her ninth grade English students know that regardless of the hardships they face as adolescents or what their skill level is academically, they are welcomed in her class with open arms.

“It says to them that no matter what’s going on in their lives, I’m glad they’re here, glad to teach them,” she explained.

Her inclusive and warm attitude in the classroom has earned her the 2005 Rangvald Kvelstad Teacher of the Year Award. She is one of only two teachers in the district to receive the honor this year.

“I don’t see them as a class of 30 kids,” she added. “I see them as individuals.”

Her classes are currently studying Harper Lee’s American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.” With each book or text they read, TenEyck always pulls from within a deeper lesson. Quoting Lee’s most famous “Mockingbird” main character, Atticus Finch, she iterated to her students, “You never know a person unless you walk in their shoes.”

“I hope that when they leave my classroom, they do with a better understanding of English,” she said, “but also with some life lessons.”

A native of the Pacific Northwest, TenEyck is a graduate of Newport High School in Bellevue and of Central Washington University, where she attained a bachelors’ degree in education in 1978. Her first teaching assignment was at Westport Elementary School in Ocosta School District.

She came to the North Kitsap School District in 1981 as a sixth grade teacher in the “Highly Capable” program at Pearson Elementary School, later to move to the then-North Kitsap Middle School.

TenEyck left and served as the curriculum director of Chimacum School District in 1992, after she received her masters’ in curriculum and instruction from Seattle Pacific University. She would return to NKSD in 1999 as a language arts teacher and then as a TOSA (Teacher on Special Assignment) from 2000-2002.

But she couldn’t stay away from the classroom.

“I see my career as a quilt,” TenEyck said. “There’s always been different kinds of experiences I’ve had but I always have to come back to the classroom.”

She lives in Poulsbo with her husband Chuck and has raised two children, Chad and Cody, who are both in the wood cutting business.

TenEyck has taught at PJH the last three years in ninth grade English and will make the transition to a high school Small Learning Community when NKSD changes to a 9-12 high school configuration in 2007. She’s currently a part of the “Excellence in Education” SLC, one of the many proposals in the district.

She said she became a teacher because her father motivated her in that direction.

“He encouraged me to,” she said. “And I just love it.”

Note: The five other teachers nominated for the Teacher of the Year award were Catherine Campbell (PJH), Karla DeVries (PJH), Susan Fritts (Poulsbo Elementary), Donna Sanman (Gordon Elementary) and Bob Webb (Breidablik Elementary). An article about Nancy Mullins, a Gordon Elementary School teacher who also won the Rangvald Kvelstad Teacher of the Year Award, will be in the May 25 edition of the Herald.