Ever since she was a little girl, Ms. Tori Schlenz had strong attachments to her teachers. Describing herself as a teacher’s pet that would cling to them, her passion has always been in education.

During the 2021-22 school year, Schlenz was a long-term substitute teacher for Mrs. Christina Cooney, a language arts teacher, while she was on maternity leave.  As she worked closely alongside Cooney’s students, Schlenz gained experience on what it takes to be an educator, while assessing her personal growth and saving time for self-reflection. 

Schlenz has been in the Sacramento region dating back all the way to her high school years. After graduating from here in 2017, she attended California State University, Sacramento for her undergraduate and her bachelor’s in English, which fulfilled her teaching credentials. She then got her master’s degree at William Jessup University. 

“I had family ties to the school – my brother went here, I went here [and] my mom works here. Whitney is a very special place and being able to come back and teach, it was so great, and is why I originally wanted to,” Schlenz said. 

Her mother, Athletic Secretary Mrs. Carrie Schlenz, also has each summer off, helping make their mother-daughter relationship close. When a position became available in the English department, her mom could not let her miss the opportunity. 

“The English department came to talk to me and [mentioned] how there was an open position. ‘Do you think your daughter would come over?’ and I was like, ‘She’d love that; this is home for her,’” Mrs. Carrie Schlenz said. “They came to me first before they even talked to her about it.”

When she was in high school, Schlenz gravitated towards the liveliness of her teachers and leaned on their support as she followed their footsteps to pursue her own career in education. Today, she works with some of her past teachers. 

“I have a lot of support here, and with being a newer teacher, that is super important,” Schlenz said, “It’s the reason why people stay in the profession – it’s when they have people around them that want to see them succeed, and [we] care about each other.”

Mr. Alex Anderson, her former math teacher, admires her ambition to return back to the school’s roots and community.

“We come across a lot of kids in our profession, and when you see someone who had a positive high school experience that wants to come back and get back to the community into the next generations, it’s very fun to see,” Anderson said, “I have a full sense of pride when it comes to that because she’s a very good person; she was a very good kid in school, and now she’s going to be an amazing teacher.”

Primarily teaching advanced language arts and working with freshmen each day, Schlenz regularly emphasizes the importance of students using their next four years in high school to their advantage. 

“Especially because I’ve been with freshmen, I’ve been trying to get them to understand the meaning of high school and why it matters. After [teaching] a year at [Twelve Bridges] and seeing what it’s like not being at Whitney, activities aren’t the same, sports aren’t the same and the culture within the students aren’t the same,” Ms. Tori Schlenz said, “I feel like we have a good group of kids that genuinely want to support each other and lead with love. That’s what I want them to remember, Whitney is a special place – go and take advantage of it.” 

Outside of school, Schlenz is big on the importance of surrounding herself with the people you love.

“Working out has been a big thing, but I hate using that as a hobby because it is work, still, but it is fun. Yoga is fun. I’m trying to get back into reading, which is really ironic because I’m an English teacher, but like reading for fun,” Schlenz said, “I [like] being around people that I love, I’m really go-with-the-flow when it comes to things that I do.

I just want to be with people that make me happy.”

To Schlenz, teaching offered more than just a job that involved working with students each day. 

“When you’re young, you just want to make as much money as possible, and when you grow up, people talk and say they don’t make a lot of money. Then [I got] older and [realized] that I want to be a mom, and teaching gives you that ability to be with your kids because you have the same schedule [as them],” Schlenz said. “My dad told me ‘Don’t chase money, chase what you want to do and you’ll never work a day in your life,’ and I feel like that’s very true.” 

by GRACE BOYD, ALYSSA FOLMER, SYDNEY HADFIELD, JULIA LEVERON HIDALGO & RHAYMARK NAZARENO