A local teacher won an annual award for art instruction last week from a statewide association.

Bear Creek School’s Visual Arts Department Chair Trinity Osborn was selected to receive the 2017 Washington ART Education Association (WAEA) Secondary Art Educator of the Year award.

A press release from Bear Creek said Osborn was nominated by her peers for the award and eventually outscored other candidates to receive the award, which will be presented to her at a gala in the fall. She will also be congratulated at the National Art Education Association convention next spring in Seattle.

Many letters of support were submitted on her behalf from the school community, the release said.

Osborn has been a board member on the WAEA, a conference presenter and arts advocate as well as an art teacher at Bear Creek for the past six years, the release said.

Many of her students have received praise and awards from the Scholastic’s Art and Writing Competition, the WAEA’s youth Art Month and other competitions.

“I come alongside the student who doesn’t feel artistic,” she said in the release. “It’s a wonderful thing to see, when a student exudes a willingness to learn and stretch himself in areas he deems himself incapable.”

Osborn’s work is exhibited around Puget Sound and the state with two of her pieces being selected for the Teachers as Artists exhibit at Maryhill Museum of Art, among others.

Bear Creek School is an independent Christian school in Redmond that was founded in 1988.