The Crystal Apple Award

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A few years ago the youth group in our church decided to have the kids in High School vote on which teacher in their school was the best. We have four schools in our stake and they choose two teachers from each school. Those teachers are then invited to the stake center and are awarded the "crystal apple" award. They get a real crystal apple. The teachers are recognized for their work and this year Alex's choice for the best teacher won and Alex was chosen to introduce the teacher. The "Crystal Apple" awards has grown into a pretty big event and we have all kinds of politicians and members of the school board attending. I decided the best way to recognize this teacher is to include in this blog Alex's introduction. The rest of this post is Alex's introduction to Mrs Lutgen.

Mrs Lutgen has lived in San Diego since she was three years old. She has been teaching for 21 years. Her first five years of teaching were at an inner city school in San Diego, she then taught for seventeen years in Rancho Bernardo and this is her first year at Westview. She came to Westview because she has two children who will be attending there and she wants to share their high school experience with them.

Mrs Lutgen has known since the tenth grade that she wanted to be a teacher and so she took three years of math in High School. She only needed one year of math to graduate and her friends all thought she was nuts. She was in college when proposition thirteen was passed and since this proposition forced big budget cuts a lot of teachers were getting laid off. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? She was attending SDSU and one of her professors told her that she should NOT become a teacher. She listened to him and graduated with a degree in math.

When she graduated she got a job in an office and she hated it. Finally her boss told her that she should be teaching and that was the encouragement she needed to go back to school and she got her teaching credentials.

Mrs Lutgen comes from a family of teachers:

She teaches at Westview
Her husband teaches at Rancho Bernardo
Her husbands brother teaches at Del Dios
His wife teaches at San Pascal
Her husbands mother teaches at Twin Peaks

I can’t go through the whole list because no less than thirteen people in her extended family are teachers but you get the idea.

I am very grateful that Mrs Lutgen went back to become a teacher because she has been very influential in my life. When we were asked to nominate a teacher I thought of her immediately because of her sense of humor. She really connects with her students and she makes it fun to be in her class. I know that she cares about not just me but all of her students. I have never had a teacher that would hold study sessions for her students the night before her math tests. She really works hard to make sure all of her students understand the subject. I never thought it would be possible to enjoy a math class but I look forward to Mrs Lutgens math class. With that I am honored to present this award to Mrs Lutgen.