Organized, insightful, funny, and inspirational:  these are the four words that I can best describe my eighth grade English teacher at Conrad, Kim Dorda.  Mrs. Dorda made English my favorite class that year, and I learned so much from her.  I nominate Mrs. Dorda for Educator of the Year this year.

Normally, English and language arts classes are thought of as boring, solely being book work and projects.  In Mrs. Dorda’s class however, there was not one day in class where I was bored or  uninvolved in something.  We would spend lots of classes conducting discussions, debating, and watching how the information we learned there, would be applied to the real world.  This made class much better for me and all of my classmates, because instead of silently writing on a worksheet to ourselves, we were collaborating, and coming up with ideas together. 

The information that Mrs. Dorda taught wasn’t just useless information.  I still use quite a few words, from her class’s  vocabulary book, on a daily basis.  All of us were taught about real life problems from child labor in third world countries to water shortages globally.  Even her five-paragraph format that she taught us, is what I am using to write this nomination now.

The most important lesson, which I believe is why Mrs. Dorda stood out from the other teachers, is that she taught us how to see from another person’s perspective.  She let us think for ourselves, not controlling every little thing and how it was done in class.  Mrs. Dorda always had a unique lesson planned, and we found elements of the lesson in things that would never be expected.  Like the time we interpreted raps by Eminem and Nelly, trying to find figures of speech.  She was even the NJHS manager for my grade (which I was a part of).

Overall, I would like to nominate my eighth grade English teacher Kim Dorda for Educator of the Year.  She made one of the more boring subjects in school my favorite, taught me loads of things which I still use to this day, and gave me the ability to try to somewhat understand others.  I can’t thank her enough, and I miss the class very much.