World Educator Award

Nominate an Educator for the World Affairs Council’s 2026
World Educator Award!

Each year, the World Affairs Council honors a local educator who has made exceptional contributions in broadening the global horizons of students and colleagues. The recipient of the World Educator Award is an outstanding K-12 teacher who promotes international understanding in the classroom and contributes to the development of resources so that other educators and community members are better prepared to meet a major challenge of our time. Our children’s lives will be defined by the world within and beyond our borders; a World Affairs Council World Educator is someone who works to ensure that their students’ learning is reflective of that reality.

Whether you are a teacher and have a colleague who has been a leader in promoting international understanding at your school, a student and have a teacher who has expanded your worldview, or are a parent who is grateful for the role a teacher has played in shaping your child’s perspective–we look forward to reviewing your nominations! All nominations must be submitted by 5:00 PM, April 16th, 2026. Please note that educators must work in Washington state to qualify for the award.

CLICK TO ACCESS THE 2026 WORLD EDUCATOR NOMINATION FORM!

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Congratulations, David Grosskopf

English Teacher at Roosevelt High School

the World Affairs Council’s 2025 World Educator!

David Grosskopf, a veteran educator with over 30 years of teaching experience in the Seattle area, has dedicated his career to building thoughtful, curious, and compassionate classroom communities. As a father of three daughters, David brings a deep sense of care and connection to his work with high school students, using humanities-based courses—literature, writing, and civics—as a springboard for reflection, dialogue, and joyful exploration. His teaching is grounded in the belief that shared stories, honest conversation, and creative expression can bridge divides and expand our sense of humanity.

Throughout his career, David has helped students engage with global perspectives through transformative partnerships. As a Fulbright Teacher Exchange grantee, he and his family lived in Hungary, establishing enduring connections through projects on civil rights and cultural heroes. With Hands for a Bridge, he led youth in cross-cultural exchanges with peers in South Africa and Northern Ireland, cultivating understanding through art, music, and deep dialogue. His course Margins and Centers—a collaboration among Puget Sound educators and scholars—was inspired and facilitated by Dr. Anu Taranath, author of Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, a book featured in Global Classroom’s educator book club. The course invites students to explore power, identity, and resilience by sharing their lived experiences and uncovering stories of trauma and healing.

Whether at home or abroad, David fosters spaces of vulnerability, trust, and empathy—empowering students to see themselves as global citizens and changemakers.

What does it mean to you for someone to be a “World Educator?

“Being a world educator in the best of times means expanding and deepening connections for students and communities on many levels:

• Connections to a smaller world, to cultures and communities that create friendships and deepen understanding of other people, exulting in the largeness of humanity in common ground between groups, as well as appreciation for rich differences in ways of understanding life, family, food, power, sorrow, ancestors, language, school, responsibility, and so many other things.
• Connections to one’s own realities and positionality within it, which inevitably follow conversation, reflection and writing in relation to seeing ourselves through the wonder and genuine contrasts of new friends, especially reflection guided and concentrated and given ritual and communal power by world educators.
• Connections for those new friends, affirming their experiences, cultures, and sense of belonging and purpose.
• Connections between leadership, challenged comfort zones, globalism, and humanism.

Right now is not the best of times in our country as we are currently throwing up tariff walls and literal walls, finding pretexts for driving out immigrants and discouraging international visitors, and showing disdain for all matter of soft diplomacy. In these times, world educators must also swim upstream against these currents to make plain why our international friendships, alliances, and exchanges mean so much, for our own humanity but also for the strength of our nation.”

How have you demonstrated those qualities in your own work?

“Ways I have been a world educator are several:

• I have taken my family on a Fulbright teacher exchange to Hungary for a year, and I continued to turn to the relationship in letter and poetry exchanges between my two schools, returning twice to the Hungarian school, called at that time Dráva Völgye Középiskola, for that extra oomph. An exchange about civil rights in the US and the Roma in Hungary, and another about heroes in each country, were especially rich.
• For half a decade, I was the teacher for Hands for a Bridge, an organization I think you know, whose crowning relationships include two schools in Cape Town, a township school in Langa and an Afrikaner school in the suburbs, and an integrated, nonsectarian school in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. I’ve also been a part of the organization outside that capacity, including on the Board of Directors and as a group of teachers that meets weekly. Perhaps one of my former students nominated me for this award? When I was the direct teacher of the program, in addition to creating hosting and visiting experiences that deepened understanding of history and culture and put students into loud art-making, music, and open-mic contact with each other as well as deliberative, uncomfortable dialogue and focused reflection, I considered my biggest role to create community joy and trust, in order to allow students to push their comfort zones, and become more loving, generous, appreciative, and welcoming; this paid off year after year as students were vulnerable in their honesty and available to pain and deep understanding, and expansive in the connections they invited and enjoyed. Intellectually, I grounded students in history and song especially, and through contrast, helped students see how important the histories we are taught allow us to understand the humanity in those living in ways we might first dismiss or disrespect or ignore, and our heroes and memorials collectivize depth of feeling and purpose. When we travel, my writings reflect who I am and what I give as a world educator. You can spin through my blog and look at the titles as a start: here are writings I shared with our families on our trip to Northern Ireland from two months ago; here are shared reflections from hosting last year; here are another set of shared reflections from a class visit to Cape Town. You’ll see a lot more in the blog, including all the experiences with Hungary.
• I have a class called Margins and Centers [of Power] that draws on a large group of Multilingual students born outside the country. I take advantage of that my inviting perspectives and experiences—of school, of issues around LGBTQIA+, of family relationships, etc.—from these students, starting with safe questions (How do schools operate differently in other countries—in Thailand, El Salvador, Uganda, in Nigeria, in Iran?), and establishing a classroom culture and appreciation for sharing multinational perspectives. We also have an immigration narrative assignment where groups of students interview and research around someone’s immigration story, delving into reasons, losses, challenges, triumphs, communities left and communities grown. At the beginning of this month, all of these stories were shared among students and appreciated verbally and in writing.”

How would receiving the 2025 World Educator Award help you further?

“Receiving the 2025 World Educator Award would mean a lot to me professionally. On my last trip to Northern Ireland, I discussed with other teachers my hopes and my desires to turn to international teaching and connecting experiences more directly and more often. I’ve been teaching for 29 years, and I’m hoping my next role gets to focus more on what I love most in the job I have, which is tapping the big hearts of teenagers in relation to global connections and their roles as global citizens and neighbors. I don’t know yet how that might look. But I know what I love and what I’ve done well and how I can continue to contribute.”

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World Educator Award Recipients:

2025 – David Grosskopf, Roosevelt High School
2024 – Stephanie King, Granger High School
2023 – Laura Adriance, Daniel Bagley Elementary School
2022 – No educator selected due to COVID-19*
2021 – No educator selected due to COVID-19*
2020 – No educator selected due to COVID-19*
2019 – Hiromi Pingry, John Stanford International Elementary School
2018- Melissa Moffett, Industrial Design, Engineering, and Art (IDEA) School
2017- Jeff Blair, The Northwest School
2016 – Eileen Hynes, Lake and Park School
2015 – Patrick Grant, University Prep
2014 – Brandon Frederick, Bonney Lake High School
2013 – Noah Zeichner, Chief Sealth International High School
2012 – Hands for a Bridge, Roosevelt High School
2011 – Lisa Clarke, Kent-Meridian High School, Kent
2010 – Erin Lynch, Nathan Hale High School, Seattle
2009 – Ben Wheeler, Explorer West, Seattle
2008 – Bob Mazelow, Lakeside School, Seattle
2007 – Ryan Hauck, Marysville-Pilchuck High School, Marysville
2006 – David White-Espin, Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center, Seattle
2005 – Betty Lau, Franklin High School, Seattle
2004 – Wendy Ewbank, Seattle Girls’ School, Seattle
2003 – Patricia Burleson, Island View Elementary School, Anacortes
2002 – Mary Ellen Cardella, Office of Minority Affairs High School, Seattle
2000 – Sue Pike, Foster High School, Tukwila
1999 – Gretchen Coe & Anne Fitzpatrick, Mercer Middle School, Seattle
1998 – Mary Hammond Bernson, Jackson School of International Studies, Seattle
1997 – Keith Forest, Decatur High School, Federal Way