Regarded as a master teacher and consummate professional, Katie Johnson has distinguished herself throughout her outstanding career for her commitment to urban students and creating intellectually vibrant classrooms where diverse learners can flourish. Ms. Johnson is a third grade teacher at Oxford School in Berkeley, California.

Ms. Johnson’s career began in East Lansing as a second grade teacher at Donley Elementary School in 1967. From 1970 to 1982, she was an elementary school teacher in the Oakland Unified School District in California, and in 1986 joined the Berkeley Unified School District. In her more than 30 years of teaching, she has taught kindergarten through the ninth grade, and throughout has made high standards, student achievement, and the effective inclusion of students with disabilities a priority. Passionate about mathematics, the Alameda-Contra Costa Counties Mathematics Educators honored her with the Mathematics Teacher of the Year Award in 1996. The Berkeley chapter of the Association of California School Administrators selected her as Berkeley Teacher of the Year. From 1996 to 1998, she taught at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was coordinator of public programs in the Mathematics Education Program. She has also been committed to mentoring the next generation of teachers, teaching mathematics and science methods courses at St. Mary’s College in California and supervising interns for the Cal Urban Partnership Intern Program (CalPIP) at the University of California.

Ms. Johnson received both her bachelor’s degree (1967) and master’s degree (1970) from MSU.