Horizon Teacher of the Year builds relationships with students
May 4, 2017
For Horizon Middle School social studies teacher Janelle Frost-Geiser, building relationships and making students feel valued and important comes first.
“I want them to leave class with a smile on their face and feel valued,” said Frost-Geiser, named this year’s Horizon Teacher of the Year. “It is only then that students will be open to learning and be able to achieve their potential.”
Frost-Geiser did not consider herself a good student and struggled in school, but with her mother’s encouragement she went to college and turned everything around.
“I learned how to study and be organized. I realized that I could be a good student, and that, if presented correctly, class could fun and informative at the same time,” she said.
Frost-Geiser graduated from Moorhead State University in 1987 and later earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of St. Thomas in 1995.
She began her teaching career in Milaca, Minn., where she taught four preps and was the head volleyball coach, the winter cheerleading advisor who drove the cheerleaders to their games, a junior high track coach, and the junior class advisor who organized the prom. “Those years were a blur!” she said.
In 1990 Frost-Geiser came to Moorhead Area Public Schools to teach social studies and coach at Moorhead Junior High.
“It was here that I learned to love the middle school and felt a calling to teach this age level,” Frost-Geiser said.
In 2004 she began teaching eighth grade at Horizon Middle School, where she was also the team leader for her house. In 2014 Frost-Geiser moved to seventh grade and is currently a team leader.
“I love the team concept and feel blessed to have worked with so many talented and distinguished teachers,” she said.
According to Dr. Jeremy Larson, Horizon Middle School principal, Frost-Geiser is a great team member.
“She is open to trying new things and reflective in her teaching,” he said.
In her 30 years as a teacher, Frost-Geiser has been part of many new and reinvented teaching strategies. She has taken various bits, thrown out some pieces, and created a plan that fits.
“I believe in being organized, having an objective, including a variety of learning styles in each lesson, having a back-up plan, and never settling for doing the same thing over and over,” she said. “I still feel like the student, I still want to grow, I still feel a passion and love for this job.”
Frost-Geiser has served on several school, district and Education Moorhead committees during her years in the district, including the original Middle School Task Force involved in studying and implementing the middle school model. She presented at national social studies conventions in 1995 and 1998, and she was selected for a one-week seminar sponsored by the Minnesota Humanities Institute in the fall of 1996 to study and immerse herself in the Muslim culture of Minnesota. In 1997 she was selected as Moorhead Junior High Teacher of the Year.
“That was the year of the flood, and rather than have an EM recognition banquet we spent our time sandbagging co-workers’ homes in an effort to save them,” she said.
From 1996 to 2003 Frost-Geiser served as the junior high’s service-learning coordinator. As part of this she organized a HEROES project in which all eighth graders completed various projects in the Fargo-Moorhead area. She also organized four trips to Washington, D.C. to provide students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the history of our country.
In 2016 Frost-Geiser again organized and helped chaperone 108 students and adults on a trip to Washington, D.C. The itinerary was planned to enrich the seventh-grade U.S. history curriculum. Another trip is being planned for spring 2018.
“Janelle has done a great job taking the lead on the Washington, D.C. field trip and bringing this opportunity to our students,” Larson said.
Frost-Geiser has three daughters who are all in college and going into teaching.
“I like to think they have seen my love for this job and for my students and that helped influence them,” she said. “I feel incredibly blessed to have taught in Moorhead for 27 years. I am humbled to be Horizon’s Teacher of the Year. Every day I work with the most highly qualified and caring teachers and staff who have taught me so much.”
Photo caption: Janelle Frost-Geiser, Horizon Middle School social studies teacher and this year’s Horizon Teacher of the Year, checks that students understand the information they are reading about sodbusters moving to the Great Plains.
Categorized under: School