Teacher Appreciation Week: Haley Johannesen

If you asked me what my favorite class was any year of my school life I would have said science or history . This year however I would say English and that is because of my teacher, Haley Johannesen, who makes English engaging and fun. It makes you excited to go to her class.

Johannesen is an English 10 and US Lit teacher in room 1101. When you walk into her room you can feel the excitement around you. She stands at the door with a smile on her face and welcomes students into her classroom, saying, “Good morning” or “How are you today?”

She works hard to make you feel welcome, as she supplies a small library of books for you to read if you don’t have one for the 10 minutes of sustained silent reading at the start of class.  She is there to help every student who needs it. She makes English one of the best classes of the day by making the learning entertaining. To start the unit on Shakespeare, she had us get used to the language used by the characters in the play by having us use the insults and compliments in his works. We would put them together with our classmates and then we would write them in a break-up letter full of colorful insults such as, ‘Thou art a Screaming Weasel-tongued Pigeon-egg.’ Needless to say, it made the whole class excited to read Shakespeare.

She clearly has a passion for English as she talks often about how much she loves writing and reading poems and she tells us every Monday how much she missed all her students over the weekend and how excited she is for the week. She cares for all of her students, having jokes with each of them.

Johannesen is one of the best teachers at City High who manages to make her students care about English and she somehow keeps an entire class of teenagers off their phones. She is my favorite teacher and I and many others look forward to her class all day!