UNI HISTORY TEACHER Chris Butler has been named one of 30 finalists in the first-ever Golden Apple Central Illinois awards program.

Ten winners will be announced in April. If Butler is one of them, he will receive $3,000 as well as a one-semester paid sabbatical at the University of Illinois, a laptop computer, and membership in the Golden Apple Central Illinois Academy of Educators.

Butler and the other finalists will be recognized March 1 in a ceremony at the McLean County Museum of History in Bloomington.

The 10 winners will be honored June 7 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Classroom innovator

Butler found out that he was a finalist when he received a call on Thursday.

"I was pleased," he said. "I've been around long enough to keep these things in perspective."

Butler has taught at Uni since January 1979. In 2000 he won the highest national honor for K-12 history teachers, the American Historical Association's Beveridge Family Teaching Award. He received the award in January 2001.

"It didn't make the papers," Butler said with his trademark modesty. "I got an article in the Gargoyle out of it. And I put it on my résumé."

Among generations of Uni students, Butler is probably best known for his innovative "flowchart" approach to the study of history.

"Good students studying traditional history texts learn much about the past, but even the best rarely take the lessons of the past with them when they leave class," Butler wrote in the introduction to his own text, "The Flow of History."

To remedy what he saw as deficiencies in the teaching of history, Butler developed a series of about 200 flowcharts and more than 100 PowerPoint multimedia lecture outlines to help students "see history as a dynamic process of causes and effects, not just a meaningless list of names and dates," as he explained in his introduction. (For examples of Butler's flowcharts, click here.)

The next step

The Chicago-based Golden Apple Foundation was created in 1985 by Mike Koldyke, a former third-grade teacher who became chairman of a Chicago investment firm. Since 1986, the foundation has sponsored the Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching, a program that recognizes 10 Chicago-area teachers annually (210 winners to date).

The foundation decided to expand its program beyond the Chicagoland region and created Golden Apple Central Illinois, which covers 18 counties.

Beginning in September, GACI began accepting nominations for its version of the Golden Apple Awards. Classroom teachers from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, public or nonpublic, were eligible. Final nominations were due Dec. 1.

The program received more than 600 nominations. A selection committee consisting of area educators chose the finalists. (Committee members were not permitted to judge nominees from their own counties.)

The next step in the process will consist of classroom observation of the finalists and interviews with each teacher's principal and several colleagues, students, and parents.

According to Butler, he has not yet heard when the selection committee will visit Uni.

Not to look too far ahead, but if he is one of the 10 winners, what does he plan to do with his sabbatical?

"I'm not really one to take a semester off," Butler said. "But it would be kind of nice to take some history courses."