I just got back from OSPI’s Teacher of Year Awards and, let me tell you, Washington has some great teachers. A total of nine amazing teachers were selected for Regional Teacher of the Year honors, but Susan Johnson—a language arts teacher from Cle Elum-Roslyn High School—was announced this morning as the state’s winner.

Susan is a 17-year teaching veteran, as well as an adjunct professor at Central Washington University. As a writer myself, I always get misty when people talk about students learning to love the written word, but Susan’s work with high school students was particularly inspiring. For example, before reading works that explore the “American Dream,” Susan asks her students to create and discuss their own definitions of what that dream means to them. Then they look at that dream through different lenses, comparing the plight of migrant workers in Grapes of Wrath to the current world food crisis, or the hysteria caused by the Salem witch trials in The Crucible to the fear induced after 9/11.

Under her leadership, students have created a tutoring service, organized community service projects and shared lessons they learned about compassion and respect for diversity with the Dalai Lama at Seeds of Compassion, earlier this year.

In his letter of support for Susan, Boyd Keyser, Cle Elum-Roslyn principal, wrote, “We are a better staff and a better school because of Susan.”

Keyser’s admiration for Susan is personal as well as professional. His daughter struggled as a writer early in high school, but under Susan’s guidance became a proficient writer and fell in love with literature. Today, she is a college student studying to become a secondary English teacher.

“Like Mrs. Johnson, (my daughter) wants to inspire students to be more than they see in the mirror,” Keyser wrote. “She wants to challenge their thinking on the big issues that authors throughout the ages have explored. She wants to bring the joy of being good at something into the life of young people. In reality, she wants to be like her hero, Mrs. Johnson.”

Thank goodness I’ve got a Kleenex box at my desk! Every teacher honored made similarly incredible contributions to their classrooms and communities. Visit OSPI’s website to learn more about all of them.