Violet Lumley Rau Alumna of the Year, called “best teacher leader” to come out of Heritage, connects with students, other educators, and aspiring teachers.

 

More than 20 years ago, Jen Johann arrived at Harrah Elementary School for her first day of teaching in her very own classroom. She’s been there ever since.

Johann loves her students. She loves her colleagues. She loves her job — a job she says doesn’t feel like work at all.

Johann is a natural as an educator and yet, if events in her life had gone differently, she could easily never have gotten her degree or become a teacher.

Instead, she’s been named the 2024 Heritage University Violet Lumley Rau Alumna of the Year.

Johann not only loves spending every day with her classroom full of third graders, she exhibits seemingly tireless energy outside of it. She huddles with her students in after-school activities. She embraces thei families during evening cultural and academic events. And she shares her expertise with her fellow educators and student teachers anytime and anywhere she can fit it in.

A Tier 3 Project GLAD Trainer, 21st Century Site Supervisor and Mount Adams School District Instruction Facilitator, she works with students in settings outside the classroom and guides and trains other teachers in best teaching practices.

As a Student Teacher supervisor and member of the Beginning Educator Support Team (BEST), she welcomes student teachers into her classroom, demonstrating the characteristics and methods that make her outstanding in her field.

She’s even co-created a a Google website to help her fellow educators teach to the educational standards of Since Time Immemorial, a Washington State tribal sovereignty curriculum. Teachers visit the website to find legends, stories, and other aids to add to their classroom instruction.

Johann’s devotion to her students, her infectious positive mental attitude, and her highly effective teaching skills are all part of what made her colleague Denny Brown, District Teacher Mentor, nominate her for the Heritage award, an honor she received at Heritage’s May 11 commencement ceremony.

“Jen is an incredibly dedicated and community- oriented individual,” Brown wrote in his nomination. “The creation of a Since Time Immemorial website for her district highlights her leadership and innovative approach to incorporating Indigenous perspectives into education.

“She is the very best teacher leader I’ve seen here in the Yakima Valley since 2005. She represents the best that Heritage University has to offer.”

It’s an inspiring success story — yet as a teen, Johann was an uninspired student who, by her own admission, “barely made it through high school” and did not consider college. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City to nanny for a family, stayed four years, then returned to the Yakima Valley, where she stumbled upon the idea of becoming a travel agent.

“As a teen, as I thought about life after high school, I didn’t think about a place like Heritage,” Johann said. “A guidance counselor had looked at my grades and basically told me I wasn’t university material. And I believed him.”

To get her travel agent’s license, she enrolled in a two-year program at Yakima Valley Community College. She hadn’t really found her “spark,” she said, just something to do.

While she was taking classes, she worked a part-time job at a daycare center. Part of her job included tutoring children.

“My travel agent instructor looked at me and said, ‘You’re doing all this work with children. Why don’t you pursue that?’” Johann said. “She saw that spark in me.”

Johann transferred to Heritage University to major in education, guided by that spark.

FINDING ONE’S STRENGTHS

Jen Johann loved her Heritage University experience. “I loved the sense of community I felt there,” she said. “I loved that the professors were hands-on and interactive. I had amazing instructors like Pam Root, who had this sense of purpose and this joy of teaching, and they instilled in me the love of learning and teaching.

“They helped me identify where my strengths were. I learned that that was exactly what I wanted to be able to do with kids.”

One of her guiding principles is that learning happens most effectively and most joyfully when a student can relate to the subject matter. Often, what makes that possible is a teacher who finds a way to relate the subject matter to their students.

“Part of igniting their fire for learning is having them see themselves in the curriculum,” Johann says. “It goes beyond bookwork, beyond reading something and answering the questions at the back of the book. It’s about being able to bring their background into the curriculum so they can start making it their own.

“They become engaged, and you see them take ownership of their learning, even in third grade.”

CULTURAL INSIGHT MATTERS

Johann spends a lot of time enthusiastically sharing her teaching methods with her fellow educators.

“Being able to share my ‘why’ behind the way we do things is one of the reasons I’m so excited to do the extracurricular work I do,” Johann said. “I want other

educators to have that same joy.”

Johann shares her experience in education in her role as a Tier 3 Project GLAD trainer of trainers. An acronym for “Guided Language Acquisition and Design,” the GLAD program trains educators in quality instruction methodology — things like poetry, singing and visuals.

“It’s really influenced how I teach,” she said. “Its focus is on kids working together, and it’s fun to see them collaborate and build off each other.”

She’s a 21st Century site supervisor at Northwest Community Action Center (NCAC) Farm Workers Clinic in Toppenish, an after-school STEM-based program that provides enrichment activities for primary grade students — typically Indigenous and Latinx children — in sites around the Yakima Valley.

Johann also mentors aspiring educators through the BEST Mentor program, which has placed a student teacher in her classroom every year for the last four years. It provides student teachers with an opportunity to work side by side with a teacher, share data, and help build relationships with students.

“Student teachers get to see your work ethic and your joy of connecting with students, and I think it helps them stay with the program,” Johann said.

Along with many of her colleagues at Harrah, Johann plans cultural events for students, their families and community members. In the Mount Adams School District and at Harrah, more than half the students are Indigenous; the other nearly half are Latinx. Students learn about Yakama and Latinx traditions and participate in dance, song, and storytelling. Harrah evening events also include literacy nights and math nights.

“Mount Adams School District students come from Harrah, White Swan and Wapato, so making their heritage a significant part of the school curriculum and extracurricular activities is really important,” she said.

“It’s an important part of why it means so much to me to be here.”

The Mount Adams School District needs teachers like Johann who make it their business to really support their students and families, said Denny Brown.

“As an enrolled Yakama member who grew up in Toppenish, Jen brings a unique cultural insight andunderstanding to her work,” he said. “That’s invaluable for promoting inclusivity and diversity within the school and broader community.”

Johann greatly values the fact that the Mount Adams School District provides students with opportunities like learning their native language or Ichishkin.

“It’s nice seeing two kids sit by side-by-side learning words and phrases around seasons, around animals — things they’re interested in.”

IMMERSED IN COMMUNITY

When she was her students’ age, Johann spent a lot of time with her grandmother, Elizabeth Whitefoot.

“Growing up, I spent every summer with my Grandma Libby,” Johann said. “She did a lot of service activities in her community of White Swan. I watched her interact, and I wanted to give back the way she did. “

Johann loves the fact that she has that history in the community.

“I know so many of the families — the kids, the parents, the aunts and uncles — because I’ve been here so long,” Johann said. “And I run into former students who are now young adults on a regular basis.

It’s exciting to see where they are now and how they’re taking off on their journey.”

Johann sees the potential in all her students. “There may be a student who’s really quiet or struggles in the classroom, but then you see them out at a powwow dancing, and you see the pure joy because they are in their own element. They’re shining in a different light. It helps you see the whole child.

“I know our kids can do anything they set their minds to. I know our teachers believe that and believe that our kids can get to be college- and career-ready.

“My job is that whatever sparks a child’s interest, whatever’s fun for them to learn about, I need to find that and apply that in the classroom. That’s how it starts.”

“FIND WHAT YOU LOVE”

Johann has a message for young people who don’t know immediately upon graduating from high school what they’re going to do.

“It’s not always obvious immediately. I needed to grow up a little before I could really focus on my education. That’s how it is sometimes, so it’s OK not to know right away.

“Heritage made getting the education I needed attainable for me because of how local it was, how loving it was, and how everyone there wants their students to be successful.

“My message for young people is to trust what you love. You may not have all the answers right away, but trust your heart. Take time to find what you love and do it.”