AEI History of Awards

AEI Art Educator of the Year

Christine Noel has been named by Art Educators of Iowa as Outstanding Art Educator of the Year for 2008.  She was honored at the State AEI Conference in Dubuque during the weekend of October 3^rd-5^th.  Noel is the only person to have won this award twice.  At the conference, she was also recognized as an outstanding visual arts educator by the University of Iowa’s Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.   Chris Noel teaches art at Newton High School in Newton, Iowa. 

Noel has been an art teacher for three decades.  She has taught all levels of art, from kindergarten to graduate college classes.  Her students consistently do well in competitions.  Several former students are now successfully making their living in arts related careers.  Colleagues, parents, and administrators speak to Noel’s ability to connect with students of all ages and skill levels.

Christine Noel was one of the authors of the 1995 Iowa Framework for Visual Arts which was a state curriculum guide sponsored by the Iowa Department of Education.   She has done inservices for school districts and organizations about using the National Art Standards and Benchmarks.  For over twenty years Christine Noel was a member and on the governing board of New Art Basics, a long term curriculum research project between Iowa State University and Iowa art teachers, until the project ended in 2004.  Noel has presented at a number of state and national conferences on several art education and studio art topics.  She is often asked to judge art shows and serve on panels. 

About art education, Noel says, ”Art educators are vital in the role of creating problem solvers and original thinkers, two of the talents our future desperately needs.  My hope is that the arts remain vital in education so that we will have the generations of creative thinkers we need and so that each individual can experience the joy of their own creative endeavors.” 

A past president of Art Educators of Iowa, Noel is currently the state visual arts mentoring chair.  She connects new visual arts teachers in the state with veteran teachers who mentor their first year. 

In addition to her work in art education, Christine Noel is also a practicing artist.  She exhibits and sells paintings, pottery and jewelry.  She has served on the boards of area arts agencies in Marshall and Jasper counties.

Art and education are two vocations that continually change and continually challenge practitioners to grow.  There is always a new idea to express, a new strategy to try, interaction with a new group of students, a new medium to explore.  One of the reasons I have spent my career in art education is that I can continue to grow creatively and intellectually.  There is no end; no point when I can say, “Okay, that’s all there is to know and create and teach.  I’m done.”

Being recognized by my peers in art education makes my heart full.  I thank all of you who have traveled with me on my professional journey.  You have supported me with ideas, strategies, suggestions and critiques just when I needed them.  Art Educators of Iowa is a wonderful network of colleagues.

The Art Department at Newton High School is a place of growth and creativity.  I work with colleagues both in my district and in the state whose knowledge and creative spirit I respect.  I thank them for making the department and the state organization a place of open ideas, discussion and innovation.  I am grateful to family, friends, and teachers who have been supportive.

Art educators are vital in the role of creating problem solvers and original thinkers, two of the talents our future desperately needs.  John F. Kennedy said, “Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”  My hope is that the arts remain vital in education so that we will have the generations of creative thinkers we need and so that each individual can experience the joy of their own creative endeavors.