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It seemed like an ordinary school assembly to biology teacher Elisa Schorr ’01. The student body at Portland’s Roosevelt High School gathered in the auditorium for a presentation by the district and the state superintendents. Schorr wasn’t even planning to be there — she was supposed to go on a field trip with her science students — but her boss mysteriously gave her more and more administrative assignments until she couldn’t go.

So there she was at the assembly, fulfilling her secondary duties as one of the school’s deans. Her watchful eye went from student to student as she kept them in line — turn off your cell phone, stop acting up, no talking. She was barely listening for the first half of the assembly.

Then an unfamiliar woman started speaking, someone who wasn’t on the agenda. “Who is that?” Schorr thought. She listened as the woman discussed what it takes to be a good teacher, and how she was there to present a prestigious award to an educator at Roosevelt. “Then she called out my name,” Schorr says. “I was shocked, because at this point, I thought it was another teacher at the school.”

And that’s how Schorr joined the elite group of just 80 teachers nationwide to receive a 2007 Milken Family Foundation Educator Award, a coveted honor referred to as the “Oscars of Teaching” by Teacher Magazine. The $25,000 awards make up the nation’s largest teacher recognition program and honor up to 100 outstanding educators every year. This is the second year in a row that a Willamette graduate has received the award — Larry Conley MAT’99 was honored in 2006. At least two other Willamette alumni also have won the award, including Hendrea Ferguson MAT’95 in 2003 and Dave Bertholf ’90, MAT’92 in 2000.