Brian Walsh and his family were still buzzing Sunday from their brief visit with President Barack Obama at the White House.
“My kids won’t wash their hands,” Walsh said from New York City, where he and his family were vacationing.
Three days before, Walsh, director of corrections education for Peninsula College, was named one of 10 “Champions of Change” and took part in an hourlong White House panel and ceremony.
The president briefly met with each recipient following the Thursday event, then invited the three Walsh children — Cole, 11, Jack, 10, and Henry, 7 — on stage with other children in the audience at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds.
Obama introduced himself to the kids, shook their hands and asked each of their names, Walsh said Sunday.
The president’s presence at the ceremony and personal greetings were a surprise, as was the educator’s nomination for the award, he said.
The “Champions of Change” award was created through the ConnectEd Initiative to celebrate educators who are taking creative approaches in using technology to enhance learning for students throughout the nation.
Walsh founded five vocational programs at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Clallam Bay and the Olympic Corrections Center, about 25 miles south of Forks: sustainable horticulture, artisan baking, small business and entrepreneurship, green building, and computer programming and game development.
The White House award recognized his effort to expand the use of technology in the prison classroom and his work to develop secure ways for faculty within prisons to deliver offenders the same technologically enhanced education courses available to the public.
Two different colleagues, one from the state Department of Corrections and one from the education side of his work, separately nominated Walsh for the award and without the college instructor’s knowledge.
One did tell him about the nomination later, but Walsh said he had forgotten about it before he received an email from the White House.
“It came out of the blue,” he said.
The family had about two weeks to prepare for the trip to the nation’s capital, and arrived Wednesday.
There was one aspect of the White House visit that was already familiar to Walsh.
“The security was about the same as the prisons, except you had to show your identification twice,” he said.
Award recipients and their guests received a tour of the White House, then were shown to the room where the panel discussion would take place.
“They told us right away to not get our hopes up for the president to actually be there,” he said.
The 10 award recipients formed two panels, in which five educators were asked questions about the role of the Internet in their academic programs.
“It was exciting. I wasn’t particularly nervous,” Walsh recalled.
“It was a small room and only about 100-some people were there.”
During the panel, one of the other award recipients listened to Walsh’s comments about working with prisoners, and said: “And I thought freshmen were challenging.”
“She was wrong about the freshmen. I think our students are much easier,” Walsh said Sunday.
“They really want to be [in the classroom]. Teaching in an inner-city high school classroom is much worse.”
Walsh and his wife, Autumn Piontek-Walsh, also own and operate Five Acre School, an independent private school near Sequim for students in preschool through eighth-grade.
Piontek-Walsh is a former inner-city teacher, an experiences he used for comparison with prison classrooms.
Then the group got word that Obama was coming.
“It’s a totally different energy when the president walks into the room,” Walsh said.
Obama shook hands with each of the recipients and spoke to each individually.
“He said, ‘Congratulations,’ and asked my name. Then he said, ‘Thank you for the work that you do,’” Walsh recalled.
When the ceremony was over, the family toured Washington, D.C., visited the Lincoln Memorial and took the train to New York City.
The family is due to return home to Port Angeles this week.
Recordings of the ceremony can be watched at www.whitehouse.gov/video.
To learn more about the ConnectEd Initiative, visit www.whitehouse.gov/champions.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
