Student: Dominique Orsini

Nominating: Elizabeth Jorgensen, Language Arts, Arrowhead High School

Be wild. Be crazy. Be yourself. Curriculum’s can’t teach that--only the crazy teacher, Ms. Elizabeth Jorgensen, can. She is the craziest, wildest, and most out-going, be yourself teacher that exists.

My sister had Ms. J a few years ago as a teacher and told me how odd she was. And I had to see this to believe it. The day I walked into her Advanced Composition class, I believed it. Oh yes, you can’t go wrong with a teacher like this.

Holy mother, she was nuts! And I loved it. There is no other teacher out there that acts this much like themselves in front of their students every class of every day. She acts as if she has no cares in the world, or what other people think of her--and I think that is a great way to live.

Outgoing. Random. Insane. This kind of behavior keeps me focused in her class because you never know what will come out of that mouth of hers. I now have her for two other classes this year, mainly because she’s so much fun, I just had to take her classes.

In class one day, we were talking about something extreme we all wanted to do with our lives and then, out of the blue, she tells us about how her sister gets random drug tests because she is going to the Olympics. I don’t know what brought that up, but I thought, whatever floats your boat woman! And then we started talking about random drug testing at school. Each student had the opportunity to share his or her opinion. And in the process, we learned not only about professional sports, but about a policy at our school many students disagreed with.

She doesn’t write in her planner every morning to act like a nut for her students--she just does it. Her behavior has made a dramatic impact on how I learn in classroom and behave in the real world.

If Ms. Jorgensen acted like all the other boring teachers at school, I would still be the quiet self-conscious little girl I once was.