A Rochester educator is being acknowledged by the National Education Association for a dedication to fairness, variety and her work partaking the Century High School group.
Natalia Benjamin, Minnesota’s 2021 teacher of the year, was one of 5 educators who final week acquired the Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence in Washington, D.C.
Benjamin, who teaches English as a second language, was nominated by Education Minnesota, the statewide academics union. The national union then assesses nominees based mostly on their management inside and out of doors the classroom and their dedication to fairness and variety.
The union additionally judges nominees on their engagement with the faculty group and their supportive efforts on behalf of fellow educators.
“Natalia stands out in all of these classes,” NEA spokesman Andy Grabel mentioned.
Benjamin informed NEA she pursued a profession in education as a result of it carefully ties to her identification. She additionally calls it “vital work for our future generations.”
“It’s extra than simply work for me,” Benjamin mentioned in an NEA video.
In the similar clip, college students praised Benjamin for her method to educating. Century High scholar Abdullahi Aabi mentioned she caters to college students individually, recognizing her pupils’ wants.
“She’ll have so much of alternative ways so that you can do one thing,” Abi mentioned.
Century High scholar Ema Sofia Barragain Dominguez mentioned Benjamin treats each scholar who walks into her classroom with care.
“She loves everybody and thinks they’re superb, helps them and desires to assist them suppose exterior the field,” Dominguez mentioned.
Benjamin was born and raised in Guatemala. A local Spanish-speaker, she attended a French faculty in the nation’s capital metropolis, the place she started studying and writing in that language as properly.
She started studying English in center faculty and continued that pursuit by means of highschool. Benjamin attended Brigham Young University and is ending out her seventh year educating English at Century High.
Before her arrival in Minnesota, Benjamin taught international language lessons to elementary college students in Idaho. She was a substitute teacher and paraprofessional in the Rochester district earlier than she started educating full-time.
Benjamin was the first individual of Latin American descent to win Minnesota Teacher of the Year.