Published in The Mammoth Times on February 18, 2021
Mammoth Middle School math and science teacher Emilie Wisner is in a class by herself, after receiving the prestigious California League of Middle Schools ‘Educator of the Year’ award for her teaching during the 2019-2020 school year.
Of the 150 nominees in the region that MUSD belongs to, Wisner was one of the 25 people to qualify as a regional finalist. She is also the first Mammoth Middle School teacher to receive this prestigious award.
“Emilie is a highly involved teacher that dedicates herself to refining her craft of high-quality teaching with a strong emphasis on student learning,” said Principal Frankie Alvarado, who said he was honored to forward her application to CLMS. “She makes herself highly available to all staff members, to support them with technology and instructional teaching strategies… she goes above and beyond.”
Wisner, who has been teaching math at Mammoth Middle School for fifteen years and started teaching science this past year, was so surprised to know she had won the award she thought the email notifying her was spam.
“I didn’t even know I had been nominated,” she said, recalling what happened when she received the email late last year. “I just got an email saying ‘congrats, you’re a finalist!’ I just thought it was spam at first.”
Then, as she realized that she had indeed received the award, she said, “I was blown away, and really honored. I think right now, as teachers, we’re working harder than we’ve ever worked before, and to have that recognition was very humbling.”
Wisner was initially selected through a nomination process available to the entire school community, and received nominations from peer educators, other administrators, and community members and parents. She received the most of any educator that year, which, according to Principal Frankie Alvarado, is why he forwarded her to the CLMS as a contestant to receive the award. From this point, Wisner went on to be selected as one of only 25 regional finalists among a pool of 150 other nominees in the large Region 10, which covers Mono, Inyo, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties.
While many teachers exhibit a profound investment in their students and while many use effective teaching styles, the judges clearly saw something in Wisner that made her stand out. Talking to her, it seems like it might come down to this: she simply never quits – not on her students, and, not on the challenges she sets for herself to be the best teacher she can be.
That could be because she has felt a calling to be a teacher for almost as long as she can remember.
“I decided that I wanted to be a teacher when I was in the sixth grade,” she said. “That’s when I had been teaching my brother to play the piano, and my dad said you know, you’d be a great teacher.
“After that, it just clicked, and I just loved it. I love working with the kids, I love having that challenge, how it’s different every day, there’s always new problems that come up.”
This love for teaching and her personal connection to the profession remains consistent today. “I think that the reason that I feel so strongly that way is that I… was the kid in seventh grade who just thought math was going to be the death of me… (so) turning around and becoming a math teacher was pretty crazy. I feel like it gives me a good perspective.”
Wisner also incorporates the use of technology into her classroom to make learning more hands-on and applicable to real world problems. “With all the [technological] changes, it’s amazing, we can prepare them for everything… Just today I had a kid turn in a biome project, and he built it all on a 3D program that we can now share… this is what companies are looking for, this is a career path for you,” she said. This genuine care, rooted in her story and her sheer perseverance, are what set Wisner apart.
Wisner’s colleagues also see something unique in her. Matt Brock, who currently teaches physical education at Mammoth High, job-shared and worked closely with Wisner last year. He told the story of when he first met her and her family. “Her dad told me, ‘Oh, so you agreed to do a job share with Emily… get ready to ride her coattails,’” Brock said. “It turned out to be absolutely true and absolutely fantastic.”
“She doesn’t really stop, she’s always looking for the new thing and what works best… five years from now, you know she’s not going to look the same as she does now.”
He isn’t the only one who was impressed.
“Emilie is also continually supporting students’ individual needs by heavily encouraging students to focus on a growth-mindset, rather than meeting some arbitrary benchmark made for all students,” said another teacher in the application submission.
Another wrote, “(she) works tirelessly to give opportunities to all of her students to participate and succeed in the learning process.”
Another one of Wisner’s distinctive qualities is her perspective on how to teach effectively, which centers around the idea of something called ‘curriculum integration’ which means blending more than one discipline with another. This year, instead of teaching just math, Wisner has been teaching math and science together, alongside another seventh-grade teacher. This allows Wisner to teach more of a STEM core class, and allows her to highlight the overlap of the two subjects to her students even more accurately.
“What I’m trying to do with STEM is teaching math through a lens of science, and science through a lens of math, and really showing that they’re so interrelated,” she said. She referenced her current science unit which is teaching students about how different populations interact with one another. Because graphs are already important to studying this science topic, Wisner incorporated the required math unit on graphs into this science unit.
“All of a sudden, graphs become not, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a unit on graphs,’ (but) instead it’s related to what they’re studying, and they’re learning to read these graphs and how to study them and looking at the correlation,” she said. “It makes it a little more accessible for all students, even students who feel like they struggle more with math.”
She said teaching in this style forces students to struggle and grapple with problems, instead of relying on the teacher to provide them with answers. At the end of the day, she said, this type of problem solving and thinking “is really what we’re trying to teach kids… we’re trying to teach them to be prepared for the real world, not just be able to take a test on a subject, and then forget it all.”
Wisner is also big on the use of technology. Many of her colleagues reflected on her ability to figure out a vast range of problems using technological solutions, and said that she is always seeking a better way to get things done through the use of tech.
One such project is Wisner’s use of a computer program called Merge Edu, a program based around the use of a cube which, when paired with the Merge Edu app, creates a 3D world that students can hold in their hands and use for interactive, hands-on lessons. For example, one of her classes just built biomes and uploaded them to Merge Cube, allowing their peers to use their own cubes to view all of the projects.
“This ties back into my desire for science to be really hands-on and let the kids do it,” said Wisner. She discovered Merge Cube during the switch to remote learning, which prompted her to reflect that while devastating, the pandemic has “also been this crazy opportunity to build with our technology – we never would have had this if it hadn’t come to, ‘Kids are remote; what do we do?’ Now it’s like, ‘What can we do to make this even better?’”
Wisner also participates in a vast range of extracurricular activities to strengthen the school community, further evidence of her passion and perseverance. In the speech she made upon receiving the CLMS award, she listed her school involvements as “a district technology leader, volunteer cross country coach, ASB director, and active member of the instructional leadership team.” She later said, laughing, “I have a hard time saying no to things.”
On the instructional leadership team, she and other teachers exemplify this ‘can do’ attitude, asking endless questions designed to push them toward better teaching.
“What direction do we want to take things? Where do we want to focus?” Wisner said. “I got into this because I feel like I don’t have a right to complain about how things aren’t going the way I think they should, unless I get involved,” she said.
In addition to this, Wisner has taken the lead on the committee managing the implementation of advisory, a homeroom like class that educates students about healthy eating habits, social and emotional learning, safe sex, and other topics that help students become more well-rounded.
Wisner said she is honored to have received the award, and, is thankful to be teaching in such a tightly-knit and supportive community.
“The community here is amazing,” she said. “The support that you have from parents, and from other community members… that doesn’t happen in other places.”
Most importantly, she said, “My kids are really successful this year, they’re working really hard. I just surveyed all of them… a lot of them responded that they’re really happy and that they’re loving school and loving having consistency in school. In all of this, that is a win.”