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Schools

Muy Buena: Sobreyra Named Teacher of the Year

Hillsborough High School Spanish teacher named county's top educator.

To win one Teacher of the Year award is a huge enough honor for any educator. How about if, like Spanish teacher Cynthia Sobreyra, you win three?

Sobreyra was named the teacher of the year at the high school, in the district and throughout all of Somerset County.

“It’s been the biggest honor of my life,” Sobreyra said.

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It started with the Hillsborough High School Teacher of the Year Award. Sobreyra was nominated by her colleagues and received an outpouring of support from her students en route to her first award of the year.

“Within the school, first you’re nominated. I was lucky enough to be nominated by several colleagues in the World Language Department,” Sobreyra said. “Also, a whole bunch of students signed a letter outlining why they thought I should win the award, and that was really nice.”

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It didn’t stop there, though. Winning the school’s Teacher of the Year honor meant Sobreyra would have the chance to represent the high school as the district chose its Teacher of the Year. The process was more involved for the candidates this time around and included a large amount of paperwork, but for Sobreyra, it was worth it in the end.

“You get all these things that you have to fill out, writing about your philosophy of education, your biography and all different things that you talk about, and it’s a panel of administrators who decide the district Teacher of the Year,” Sobreyra said. “Once you win that, you’re given more stuff to write about and fill out and it goes to the county level.”

That’s exactly what Sobreyra did and, out of all of the selected teachers from across the county—Sobreyra estimated about 20—she was chosen as the Somerset County Teacher of the Year to complete the trifecta.

It’s an honor that Sobreyra feels could have gone to just about any teacher in the county.

“I feel that all teachers contribute in different ways, and I see people all around me that work very hard. I think everybody deserves some kind of award or to be acknowledged for what they do,” she said. “For me, it’s mostly the validation and acknowledgment that I’ve been on the right track all these years to make a difference in the life of a child.”

That has been the basis of teaching since a young age for Sobreyra, who is in charge of the high school’s AP Spanish program and teaches Spanish IV. She always knew she wanted to be a teacher to have the ability to have a positive impact on the lives of students. It wasn’t until college, however, that she knew she wanted to be a Spanish teacher, a role that she has performed in the district since 1998 and at Hillsborough High School since 2000.

“I’d say from the time I was in school, I realized that teachers could have a profound influence on children. Sometimes it’s a positive one, and sometimes it could also be a negative one. I always was interested in being a teacher, but I wanted to make the positive impact on students’ lives,” Sobreyra noted.  “When I got to college, I realized (Spanish) was where my true passion was. I went to college, became a Spanish teacher.”

That impact is being seen all over Sobreyra’s classroom. Each day, Sobreyra comes in to a new paper cut-out image of herself pasted over a photo or poster of an important figure in her classroom.

“I am now one of the ‘Fifty Most Beautiful People’ in People Magazine,” Sobreyra joked. “That’s the way the kids show their support and their affection toward me.”

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