Highland Terrace Elementary teacher awarded Fulbright Teacher Exchange award for Finland

Kitten Vaa, Elementary Teacher
Highland Terrace Elementary

Kitten Vaa, a Second Grade Teacher at Highland Terrace Elementary School, has received a Fulbright Teacher Exchange award to Finland for the 2024-2025 cycle from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The Fulbright is the US Department of State’s most prestigious award. She will use this award to go to Finland to research sustainability and social emotional educational practices around climate change. 

Kitten is among over 800 U.S. citizens who will teach, study, and/or conduct research abroad for the 2024-2025 academic year through the Fulbright Program. 

She joins distinguished company. Notable Fulbright alumni include 62 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients, 78 MacArthur Fellows, and 41 who have served as a head of state or government.

Kitten Vaa has been an educator for over 20 years, with the past five years spent teaching second grade at Highland Terrace Elementary in Shoreline, Washington following her work at Edmonds School District and Brighton School. Teaching kids to be thinkers, problem solvers, and to love learning is her passion. 

She loves to teach science and literacy, and has recently focused her learning around climate change education. Kitten collaborates on science education at the district, state, and national levels. Recognized for her leadership, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in 2018 and the Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Educator in 2024. 

In July 2024, she was awarded the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Research for her project, "Empowering Hope and Action: Sustainability Education Tools for the Primary Classroom." 

This January, she will spend three months in Helsinki, Finland, to enhance her teaching of sustainability and climate change, aiming to create a comprehensive unit that inspires action and hope in students, which she plans to share at local and state levels.