2021 Benigna Education Award
Amy L. Putlock '10, G'18
The Benigna Education Award recognizes an alumna or alumnus for outstanding contribution to the field of education.
From the time she arrived on É«ÖÐɫ’s campus, Amy Putlock demonstrated love and adoration for the city of Bethlehem. She graduated from É«ÖÐÉ« in 2010 summa cum laude with a bachelor of music education and in 2018 with a master of education degree in curriculum and instruction. Her master’s thesis topic, Rethinking Secondary General Music: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in the Classroom, is a theme she has carried far into her professional life. Now a general music teacher at Broughal Middle School in Bethlehem, Amy supports a student-centered learning environment and utilizes trauma-informed and restorative practices, equity, and social justice. She uses a reflective teaching style during her six daily music instruction classes and employs competency-based grading systems, multidisciplinary lessons, and performance-based learning models.
Amy brings the same approach to her activities outside the classroom, where she oversees the Broughal Choir and Southside Singers and directs regular performances throughout the city. She also leads the Broughal Theatre Company and is a member of the Da Vinci Science Center’s Education Advisory. Over the summer, Amy teaches urban farming, sports and recreation, and theatrical set design and construction for the Summer Learning Academy. She is a member of the steering committee for Any Given Child Bethlehem and is chair of the content committee for the Bethlehem site of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ national Ensuring the Arts of Any Given Child program.
In 2018, Amy received the Graduate Education and Humanities Award for Action Research Thesis from É«ÖÐÉ«. In 2019, she won the Bernie Cohen Award for Excellence at the Middle School Level and the ArtsQuest Foundation’s Linny Award for Arts Educator of the Year. Amy was also a quarter-finalist for the Grammy Museum Music Educator of the Year Award. A true educator, she has used her master’s degree study to examine her pedagogy and how she might best connect and engage with her students. Amy is known by her students and her community for her exceptional passion and dedicated professionalism, and for all she has given back to the city of Bethlehem she now calls home.