UNT Graduate wins Teacher of the Year

(NDG Wire) She is not as famous as Wilmer-Hutchins High School graduates Royce West or Spud Webb, but Raquel Ortiz is just as special as the senator and basketball player to her fourth grade class at Daugherty Elementary School in Garland where she recently was named teacher of the year.

“It’s amazing,” Ortiz says of the award. “The teachers that I was up against are great, and I just started working here. For them to even think that I was worthy of such an honor is great.”

Asked how she earned the award, Ortiz says she’s not sure. One reason is that her boss, Principal Deborah Henson, is very supportive.

“She tells me that I’m doing well, so that motivates me. I love her. She’s great. I love what I’m doing, and maybe that comes out. It’s a dream come true altogether.”

Her students say she deserves the award, and one student—Roberto Vasquez—even calls her “the greatest teacher in the universe.”

“She’s dedicated. She takes her time to teach us,” says Gabriel Alvarez, 9. “Every time I come at 7:15 she helps me practice more because I need help on math. She’s funny, and she’s really nice.”

Student Jasmin Arroyo says that Ortiz has helped her identify a different way to learn. The 10-year-old has dyslexia, which Ortiz first identified during reading sessions.

Most of the 20 students raised their hands to show that they wanted to share why Ortiz deserved to be named teacher of the year. A few hours observing the class one recent morning revealed an impressive, respectful, well-behaved group of children, perhaps another reason why she won the award.

“I did get a lot of compliments on my kids because of how well disciplined they are, because last year they were kind of rowdy.”

“I love when I can see that they understand something that I’m trying to teach them, something new, that I can see that light come on,” Ortiz says. “It’s an amazing feeling when they say, ‘Oh, I get it.’ That’s what makes it worth it.”

Growing up, Ortiz lived in a small town in California; in Corsicana, Texas; and in Mexico briefly before her family moved to the Dallas area. She attended the now-closed Wilmer-Hutchins High School graduating 11th in her class.

She enrolled in the University of Texas at Arlington and was going to be an accountant. “The school was so big; it was really scary, so I dropped out,” Ortiz says. “I ended up getting married and started having kids.”

She had four children and started working in a series of jobs that typically lasted four or five years before the businesses would close or move, she says. She told her husband that she wanted to work somewhere where she would always have a job. She noticed that her children’s teachers always seemed to enjoy what they were doing, so she decided to go back to college and become a teacher.

They lived in Lancaster at the time, so the UNT Dallas Campus was convenient, and she has kids, “so I couldn’t go to Denton,” she explains. At first she didn’t enjoy her classes at UNT Dallas because it was a lot of hard work, but most of what she learned she is now using her classroom, she says.

Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education Ruth Guevara assigned her a lot of work, and Ortiz says she hated doing the work. “But it has really helped me a lot. I use it every day.”

She also cites June Azua, Linda Allen and Jeane Tunks as professors who made a big impact on her.

One assignment that made her very nervous was when Guevara had her class pick a historical person to learn about, and then they had to dress up as the person and address the class. She chose Mexican-American civil rights activist and teacher Jovita Idar Juarez from the early 1900s. This month she made that same presentation to her kids at Daugherty and gave them the same assignment.

“I really enjoyed everything that we did there … afterwards,” Ortiz says with a smile after a long pause. “I see the rewards now.”

She graduated from the UNT Dallas Campus in December 2008. She started work at Daugherty Elementary the next month. Principal Henson said Ortiz took over for a teacher who was reassigned and that she “just did a tremendous job.” A year later, “She is doing an absolutely fantastic job.”

“We talk about those natural teachers that just have that innate ability to relate to their kids and get their point across, and Raquel has those talents,” Henson says. “If you watch her in the classroom, her students eat out of the palm of her hand. She has a lot of enthusiasm. She’s very caring, but very firm with her students.”

Henson says that Ortiz has even inspired some of her “more senior” teachers to step up their game a notch to keep up with her.

Coincidentally, another recent UNT Dallas graduate, Vivian Estridge, teaches the fourth grade class across the hall from Ortiz. Like Ortiz, she also started teaching at Daugherty in the middle of the school year. When she interviewed for the job, Estridge asked the principal all the right questions.

“She had great insight and intuition and depth of understanding of the kind of situation that she was stepping into and the challenges that she would face as a young teacher. She was also concerned about the children’s welfare, the things that are outside of school but greatly impact education like food and clothing and housing and those situations, because we are a Title One school with about 88 percent of our children listed as ‘at risk,’” Henson shares.

The term Title One means at least half of the school’s students are from low-income families and receive free or reduced lunch.

Ortiz challenged UNT Dallas education students to stick with it. “I know it’s a lot of work, and I often thought, why am I doing this? All those hands-on experiences in the classroom, those observations they make you do, they come in handy. Just stick with it; it’s worth it.”

Henson says she wishes she could clone Ortiz. College students should model themselves after Ortiz and Estridge.

“They have a lot of enthusiasm. They don’t see it as an eight to three kind of job. They have rapport with their students and very clear expectations for their students, which they communicate very well. You have to expect to put in some long hours and face some tough times, but it’s more than worth it. I’ve been in education—I think this is my 29th or 30th year—and couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

Ortiz and the other Garland Independent School District teacher of the year winners will be recognized on the field prior to the Texas Rangers baseball game May 7.

The University of North Texas at Dallas is a 21st century teaching institution and a component of the University of North Texas System. Founded in 2000 as the UNT Dallas Campus by the University of North Texas, the flagship of the UNT System, UNT Dallas will accept its first freshman class in Fall 2010. The University’s goal is to train citizens to be productive and lead in a global environment and to promote the values of virtue, civility, reasoning and accountability.