Miss Jorgensen
Language Arts Teacher at Arrowhead High School
Nomination Submissions:
"Liz Jorgensen is a Creative Writing teacher at Arrowhead High School. She is exceptional in working with all students, but especially our students with special needs. She is compassionate, patient and inspiring . . . three qualities that create the perfect recipe for providing an environment for special education students to succeed. As an educator, Liz is extremely engaging as students are drawn to her every word. Writing is challenging for many students and Liz teaches in a way that captures the attention and inspires many to work on improving their overall writing skills. Instead of avoiding writing, students are engaged, creating countless pieces of work they are proud of. Students love Liz's Creative Writing class and this is evident by the large class sizes she continues to have every period, each semester. It's a class being talked about throughout the school and students are highly recommending this class to all of their friends. This speaks volumes!
Liz is one of the most humble and sincere teachers that I have ever worked with. She does her job without seeking attention or recognition for the many awards that not only she earns, but that her students win through the writing contests they enter in her class. She positively impacts the lives of her students each day and leaves her students at the end of each class period, wanting to come back for more. With every writing contest that Liz has her students enter, she has numerous winners . . . as a matter of fact, each semester 85% of her students are either selected for publication or as an award winner. Without a doubt, Liz continuously fosters a positive image for Arrowhead and for all of these reasons, I believe she deserves to be recognized." - H. Hamilton
"Junior year, the English department gave us our course sheets for senior year. In order to write a top-notch college essay, I circled Advanced Composition, knowing a teacher could help me perfect it. Other than needing an English credit, I couldn't think of another reason to take that class. I was unaware the teacher and the class would become my favorite.
Walking into the 149B classroom on the first day of the year, I saw Ms. Jorgensen was my teacher. She seemed crazy at first. She grabbed a calculator and punched in numbers to display the amount of pages she would have to read, comment on and grade each that year (well over 20,000 pages). I felt bad for her. But not that bad, because I knew she would improve my writing skills; and I was right.
Ms. Jorgensen wasn't showing us how many papers she had to read and grade to make us feel bad for her; instead, she was showing us that we need to write something interesting, engaging and outstanding so our papers stand out. You see, Ms. Jorgensen is always doing that. She's always taking something and relating it to our writing. She's always making us think, pushing us and reminding us of our own voice. She's always inspiring!
Our name piece was the first piece assigned. It was difficult to think of one story to sum up my name, but Ms. Jorgensen inspired me with her bubbly personality. She gave me example essays, she talked with me, she helped me brainstorm and she discussed possible topics. She made writing interesting. And it's easy to relate to her, since she I think she is actually a comedian stuck in an English teacher's body." - L. Jo