Lee’s New Teacher of the Year Jennifer Ortega is a 7th grade reading teacher at Lehigh Acres Middle School. PHOTO PROVIDED

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A woman who changed career paths and fulfilled a dream she has had since she was younger, has been named New Teacher of the Year.

When Superintendent Dr. Greg Adkins presented the award, Jennifer Ortega, a seventh grade reading teacher at Lehigh Acres Middle, said it was a good surprise.

“The was my first year teaching. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster,” she said.

The New Teacher of the Year award recognizes personnel who are newly certified on their significant contributions to their school. A selection committee picked the finalist from a pool of  first-year teachers nominated by their administrators. After being interviewed, Ortega was chosen as the third annual winner.

“Jennifer has been such a welcome addition to the LAMS family,” Assistant Principal Lisanne Thomas said in a prepared statement. “She has embraced her role as reading teacher, been consistent in her instruction, and integrated into our core group of leaders. She has implemented blended classrooms with skill and grace rivaling a seasoned teacher. She has the potential to become a guidepost and mentor for others.”

Ortega also received high remarks from School Board member Gwyn Gittens during board comments at the board’s May 25 action meeting.

“There is hope in education. Hope in Lee County to where we are headed to have teachers like Jennifer Ortega. It has not been an easy year,” Gittens said. 

Although teaching has always been a dream in the back of Ortega’s mind, it was not until this year she made that a reality.

“When I was younger, I didn’t feel very mature and was kind of scared of going into teaching. You are really affecting the lives of kids,” she said. “I managed adults. That is a little different. They have experiences and know the world. These kids are getting into the world. That to me was a bit daunting. I am glad I waited to pursue my dream.”

Before starting her first year as a teacher, Ortega was a showroom manager at City Furniture, where she worked her way up from a sales person to management within six years.

As an avid reader, the subject was something she was really interested in teaching.

“Literacy is key to success. You are reading in math with word problems You are reading in history and science. This is the foundation for everything. I love reading, and I want you to have the same passion as well,” Ortega said of her students. “You can get places when you can read proficiently and being able to comprehend the text.”

As a perfectionist, she said she is still working at making adjustments to her teaching style.

“It’s been really fun getting to know my students and getting to know myself through my students as well,” Ortega said.

Colleagues, as well as Google, helped in making her first year a success.

“My colleagues helped me a lot. I picked the brains of some of the best at LAMS, (which) has helped a lot too. Google is a really good resource to find information,” she added.

Ortega said the support of her three favorite people definitely helped her through her journey. Rebecca Krell, Trishana Hyde and Mary Fine. Krell were always there for her, no questions asked, while Hyde, a colleague, helped with lesson plans and ways to keep her students engaged, she said.

Fine, a literacy coach, is an APPLES Mentor, someone who visited her classroom and helped her develop lesson plans as well. Fine did classroom observations and provided a great deal of feedback on ways she could tweak her teaching to further engage her students and set expectations for them.

As a first-time teacher, Fine was paired up with Ortega.

“It’s nice to have another set of eyes with a lot of experience,” she said adding that Fine would point out “I like what you did there and this is how you can tweak it.”

She spent a great deal of time on classroom management both in the classroom, Lee Home Connect, and blended classrooms of both face-to-face and virtual during her first year of teaching. Ortega said when she had a blended class of both Lee Home Connect and face-to-face she had to become really creative.

The students who were face-to-face were placed in small groups of three to four students with one Lee Home Connect student assigned to their group.

“One student from that group would be logged into Zoom and chatting with their partner with Home Connect,” Ortega said, adding that the students would collaborate as a small group.

This gave her the opportunity to watch them from her computer screen as well.

Fun games were also had putting Lee Home Connect students vs face-to-face in a battle of the minds competitions.

A favorite moment for the first-year teacher happened during one of her lessons, dissecting a poem. She said the students had to make the connection that the poem was not talking about a captain and his ship, but rather the president and the United States.

“To finally get to the answer on their own, that was one of my favorite ‘aha’moments. Seeing them grow from where they started and be able to do something like this,” Ortega said was definitely a memorable moment.

Next year, Ortega is going after a goal she has set for herself, touching up on classroom management, which she believes she can step up even more. The other goal is being able to differentiate learning.

She plans on putting students into smaller groups of instruction with the same material. She also wants to individualize the material for the students to hone in on, making sure they get the reading skills they need.

“iReady program does a really good job at that. They go through the diagnostic process that will give me the different domains,” Ortega said.

This will allow her to group the students and put them into three different rotations with the fourth rotation taking place on Friday with one-on-one lessons with Ortega. She said she has a few different techniques to help present material in a better way, so students do not become bored.

“If they are engaged they learn. When they get bored, they do check out. When captivated they will learn their information,” Ortega said.