LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Kathi Holst was nominated by her principal, Julie Johansen. 

Ms. Holst is an incredible special education teacher at Creswell Middle School and an all-around terrific person. Ms. Holst has been teaching for the Creswell School District for 30 years, making a difference for the students and the community.

Ms. Holst gives back to the community by selflessly helping students below grade level and supporting families who are lost in supporting their students with disabilities. She spends 10+ hours a day working on individualized plans and lessons to ensure all students progress. In addition to this, Ms. Holst has also organized several Eugene Marathon water stations to raise money for Positive Behavior Intervention Systems and then for the Garret Strader Medical Fund. She strives to create a sense of community at CMS among staff by recognizing birthdays and holidays and participating in school activities.

Aside from building coordinated Professional Learning Community meeting time, Ms. Holst has regularly participated in year-long professional development classes through U of O (Project DIRECT, Project STELLAR, NW C3WP (Northwest College, Career, and Community Writers Program), National Writing Project) with an ELA/SS team (Anderson, Kuhnhausen). Those fantastic teachers, including Ms. Holst, have read many texts together as an extension of these classes and met weekly to discuss how they are implementing in their content areas together and separately. These discussions have led to implementing VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) and Project SOAR (Successful Online Academic Research) school-wide. Ms. Holst even presented at the NW Writing Conference Fall Workshop and several CSD Professional Development opportunities on argument writing, SOAR, and Assistive Technology. 

She also serves as a mentor to other educators. When the UO Secondary School of Education/Special Education reaches out to her, she always accepts a student teacher. During the beginning of the pandemic and online learning, while most people would not have a beginning teacher under them, Ms. Holst took on two because they needed the support, and it was good for kids.

"This is another form of community service she does, as this is an extraordinary amount of time dedicated to mentoring these teachers that is uncompensated. Kathi believes that they are the future of education and that kids deserve the best in the classroom, so she is willing to take this on in addition to everything else she does," said Johansen. "The Oregon Lottery recently recognized Ms. Holst as one of the Teachers of the Year for our Region for her exemplary work with students!"

She models what it means to be a good citizen and teaches students how to participate in our democracy.

"In 2022, Ms. Holst was named our local VFW Teacher of the Year, District VFW Teacher of the Year, and Oregon State's VFW Teacher of the Year for her efforts! She aligns all her special education lessons to state standards, incorporating as much as possible the content from general education language arts as well as social studies standards (given that several of her students miss out on social studies to receive additional instruction in reading)" said Johansen.

Furthermore, Ms. Holst does an incredible job including parents in their child's triumphs (and areas of need), such as texting a positive note for the day, a test score, or concept attainment, and as an intervention when things may not be going smoothly. During online learning, when many kids and families felt isolated, she communicated daily with parents about their child's needs and how the special education team could support and provide help immediately (such as attending Zoom classes or office hours for extra help). Even though she was not required to, Ms. Holst held daily office hours online that were highly successful in supporting students with disabilities, as demonstrated by data on attendance and grades above C.

"Overall, Kathi Holst is an incredible teacher and person. She goes above and beyond for kids and our Creswell community and deserves the LifeChanger of the Year Award. People like Kathi are hard to find these days, and I feel honored and blessed to have her at Creswell Middle School," Johansen concluded.