Teacher Award
AGF Teacher of the Year
To encourage and recognize the many amateur players who are actively engaged in teaching Go to beginners, the American Go Foundation established the Teacher of the Year Award in 1996. The winner receives an all expenses paid trip to the premiere Go event in the nation, the US Go Congress, where the award will be presented at the final banquet.
Started a Go club for children
Organized tournaments for kids, or helped them enter existing tournaments
Developed teaching materials for beginners, either written or online (particularly for children).
Taught children (and others) online
Taught underserved populations (prisoners, seniors, mental patients, etc…)
Designed and created new outreach projects.
Nominations of volunteer teachers who work with children are strongly encouraged, and favored, but any eligible teacher whose activities qualify under other criteria stated above, will also be considered.
*Teachers in K-12 schools whose programs run only during the school year are also eligible.
If you would like to recommend someone for this award, including yourself, please write to mail@agfgo.org. Letters of recommendation are always helpful, but are not required. Due to the great number of wonderful teachers out there, this award is very competitive. Past nominees have often entered multiple years in a row, and teachers are encouraged to reapply if they are not selected the first time.
Past Teacher of the Year Recipients
1996: Sasha Orr
1997: Susan Weir
1998: Peter Rzepecki
1999: James Chien
2000: Herb Doughty
2001: Carter Kemp
2002: James Bonomo
2003: Todd Heidenreich
2004: Not awarded
2005: Not awarded
2006: Paul Barchilon
2007: John Eckelcamp
2008: Vincent Eisman
2009: Joshua Frye
2010: "Su Co" Marjorie Hey
2011: Fritz Balwit
2012: Joe Walters
2013: Richard Moseson
2014: Peter Freedman
2015: Xinming Simon Guo
2016: Paul Lockhart
2017: Wenguang Wang
2018: Ted Terpstra
2019: Nick Sibicky
2020: Frank Luo
2021: Pete Schumer
2022: Milan Mladenovic
2023: Yixian Michael Zhou
2024 Brian Johnson