Teachers Learn Excellence Is Own Reward : Education: Two O.C. women are among winners of California Educator Awards--which include $25,000 prizes. Both say the recognition is golden.

Lois Cohn thought it was a joke when she received a phone call from a top state official last week informing her that she had just won $25,000.

“I kept asking if (he) was really (State Supt. of Public Instruction) Bill Honig. I thought it was my husband pulling one of his tricks,” said Cohn, 58, a media center teacher and librarian at McGaugh Elementary School in Seal Beach.

The Long Beach woman is one of two Orange County teachers who are among a dozen winners of the 1991 California Educator Awards and its accompanying cash award, the state Department of Education announced today.

The California State Steering Committee, a panel of county superintendents and teachers, chose the outstanding educators by tracking the performances and accomplishments of several hundred teachers and principals in the past year.

Cohn was considered because she received the 1990 President’s Award as California’s Media Center Teacher of the Year. She was honored for creating a media center that supplements the school’s curriculum with a variety of learning materials, ranging from video production equipment to books on research skills to volumes of literature.

The other Orange County winner, Margo Sorenson, an English teacher at private Harbor Day School in Corona del Mar, was recognized by the steering committee after she received a fellowship that includes a research grant from Johns Hopkins University, which honored her for teaching excellence. Among Sorenson’s achievements is her work with other teachers in the state in designing a summer day school for gifted students.

Sorenson was at home the morning of Aug. 28 when she received a message to phone Honig in Sacramento.

“So I phone him back--never dreaming in a million years it would be anything like that,” the 45-year-old Irvine resident said.

Harbor Day’s headmaster, John Marder, said Sorenson motivates her sixth- through eighth-grade students and they clearly enjoy her classes.

“She clearly is a superior technician in that she is prepared in her background, but she also keeps kids on the edge on their chairs,” Marder said.

Sorenson, a teacher for 15 years, with the last six at Harbor Day, said the school’s English department designed its classes to emphasize writing with a personal voice.

“We teach the kids, ‘Don’t write what you think we want to read; we want to read what you want to say,’ ” she said.

Both Sorenson and Cohn said the award, which started in 1987, helps educators feel they are appreciated.

“It’s nice to be awarded for something you love to do,” said Cohn, a teacher for 30 years and an employee at McGaugh, in the Los Alamitos Unified district, for nearly 10 years.

It was the second time the award has come to the Seal Beach school. Its principal, John Blaydes, won it two years ago.

“I know what it feels like. It’s wonderful to be recognized,” the 53-year-old principal said.