Meet Felice Ordaz – Our February Teacher of the Month!
We are delighted to announce our February 2024 Teacher of the Month! Ms. Felice Ordaz is an eighth-grade English Language Arts, Social Studies, and English Language Development teacher at Buena Vista Horace Mann Community School. She is being recognized for her passion, work ethic, and commitment to her students, school, and community.
Ms. Ordaz is amazing at creating fun and interesting lessons that show her eighth graders how grown up and independent they are. For this year’s persuasive essay, she made it even better by giving her students more freedom to choose topics that really interest them. And she’s made sure they have plenty of help finding the information they need.
Felice is always looking for ways to help her students learn beyond the classroom. She recently organized a fun trip to Sacramento for them and also assisted them with the tricky high school application process.
One colleague says, “We are grateful every day that Felice Ordaz is our eighth-grade English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher! By encouraging our students to interact with interesting, culturally responsive texts, Ms. Ordaz helps them understand and truly connect their personal experiences to issues in our society, to care deeply about their world and start making plans to affect meaningful change.”
Felice always goes the extra mile to make sure her lessons are interesting and helpful for ELD students. Recently, she came up with a super fun spy story activity inspired by a James Bond movie. She muted the intro and had the students fill in the missing details, which really helped them work on their vocabulary! Ms. Ordaz is just so joyful and passionate about teaching. She truly understands how important it is to connect current events with history and how they impact our world today.
One eighth grade student says, “Ms. Ordaz is a great teacher because I learn so much in her classes, like information about U.S. presidents. She also helps me a lot with my essays.” While another says, “I like how she always helps me with my work.”