SANDY — Canyons School District named Gretchen Murray, an educator at Peruvian Park Elementary, as its 2016 Teacher of the Year during a celebration Tuesday.
As the Teacher of the Year, Murray received prizes, gifts and a $1,000 check from the Canyons District Foundation. She also will represent the district in the Utah Teacher of the Year contest.
Murray grew up in a family of educators but fell into a marketing career at a commercial explosives company — a job that fed her wallet, but not her soul.
Seeing her dissatisfaction, Murray’s aunt invited her to drop by her classroom one afternoon. Murray quit her job, enrolled in a master’s of education program, and never looked back.
Murray was chosen from a field of 48 educators nominated from every Canyons school. Also recognized Tuesday were the school nominees, semifinalists and two finalists for district Teacher of the Year: Quintana Glover from Draper Elementary and Linda Tognoni from Park Lane Elementary.
Earlier this year, Murray was diagnosed with breast cancer for which she is receiving chemotherapy. But taking a break from teaching wasn’t on the agenda for the devoted educator who says her two young children and her students are what keep her going. Each day, even on the tough ones, she starts her class with a stirring injunction.
“One of the eight keys of excellence in my classroom is: ‘This is it,’” Murray said in a statement. “And what that means is that this moment is the only moment we can control in our life. We can’t change the past and we can’t control the future. We can be in the present. This is it. This is the only one we get. So let’s have some fun with it, even when it is hard.”