Ms. Mortel has been teaching for 21 total years with this year being her 20th year at RAHS along with her one year at Centennial. She teaches on-level and AP psychology, interpersonal connections, and sociology (CIS, Intro, race/class/gender and crime). As part of a teacher feature she answered some questions for The Ville.
Q: Have you always been passionate about the subjects you teach?
A: “Yes they are my favorite subjects to teach, always have been. What I love about them is that we’re really just putting academic vocabulary to things that we’ve already lived through and experienced, it’s always been my passion. I always joke around because I have to have a social studies license to teach it but I’m not super good at remembering historical facts, so sometimes I have to teach history or geography and it is a struggle because psych and sociology is what I really focused on in my undergraduate it’s what I know but it’s not always something that fills my whole schedule.”
Q: Have you always wanted to be in the careers you ended up in/what led you to it?
A: “I always wanted to be a teacher, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. Both my parents were teachers and I used to take old grade books and give grades and make seating charts. It was great. I stumbled into my other jobs because as a divorced single mom this (teaching) isn’t enough to cover all the expenses that come along with trying to pay for 2 teenage boys. The other 2 came out of necessity which I discovered have become a passion of mine.”
Q: What jobs do you work?
A: “I teach full time. I also do an online evaluator job through a company called Teaching Channel. So when teachers get their relicense every few years, and when teachers want to move up in the pay scale, you have to take graduate classes so I evaluate their work for those graduate courses. It’s convenient; I can do it through my computer. I evaluate six different courses and the courses I evaluate are all connected to teaching. What I love about it is when I read their coursework or papers I get to be reenergized about the things I do. One of the courses I evaluate is about building relationships in classrooms so I get a lot of really good ideas from teachers about what they’re doing in their classrooms and it kind of serves as a refresher all the time to do things in my classroom that we know are going to be best for kids and teachers and just to create the best kind of classroom. I also have my mortgage license so with that I process mortgage loans and with that I have access to a whole bunch of different banks and a lot of times when people buy a house they go through the bank but sometimes you can find a better deal if you shop around different banks. It’s another way I can help people and I have found that is turning out to be a passion of mine, to help people find a home that can help generate generational wealth. Both mortgage and teaching have the ability to open up ways in order to help people live a better life.”
Q: What’s a fun fact about you people might not know?
A: “I have two.
One: my parents were one of the six families that filed the Title IX lawsuit to get girls hockey to be a sanctioned high school sport.
Two: I coached a high school varsity girls hockey team when I was in college and because [girls hockey] was just starting at that time, I was one of the only female coaches, so they had me do the color announcing for the state girls hockey tournament. There’s video of me out there being an announcer on television.”
Q: What are your hobbies outside of the classroom?
A: “I really enjoy going for walks outside even when it’s crappy weather. I like lifting weights; that’s a new passion of mine. If I had time, and money, I love golfing. I’m terrible at it, but I enjoy it. And I really like spending time at my family’s cabin just being away from the chaos of life.”
Q: How do you find a balance between work life and activities that you are interested in?
A: “The key is: One you have to learn to be ok with it being ok. Some people have perfectionist tendencies and have a hard time letting it be a b+ kind of lesson or a c- kind of day, but it’s ok for [the lesson] to just be good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect all the time because that’s a recipe for disaster. Two: you have to be really disciplined about prioritizing what’s most important to you. It’s easier to have it be when it’s for other people versus myself, so I have to be really disciplined with things that will help me be more balanced and less stressed out.”
