Teachers Win $10,000 Each for Excellence

Five Ventura County teachers, whose specialties range from music and video production to counseling and elementary education, have each won $10,000 cash awards for their work.

The recipients of this year’s Amgen Award for Teacher Excellence included a counselor and two teachers in the Conejo Valley Unified School District and teachers in Camarillo and Ventura.

For the third year in a row, the Thousand Oaks-based pharmaceutical company granted the awards through an affiliated nonprofit foundation. An anonymous panel of three community leaders chose the winners.

In all, 633 teachers throughout Ventura County were nominated in 1,400 letters sent by past and present students, colleagues, parents and community members. Winners can spend the $10,000 however they choose.

Gregg Norberg, who teaches a video production class at Buena High in Ventura, said he was shocked to learn over spring break that he was one of the five chosen.

Norberg said he plans to invest the money with his wife, Kerry, and recover the cost of equipment he’s purchased for his video class. In another two years, he said, the money might fund a vacation to Tahiti.

Another winner, Sam Kane, a counselor at Colina Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks, said he plans to donate the bulk of the money to groups committed to fighting bigotry and racism and use the rest to repair earthquake damage to his Woodland Hills home.

The other three winners were Thousand Oaks music teacher Carol Alexander, Camarillo drama teacher Marilyn Bjork, and Jeneen Vetrovec, who teaches kindergarten through second grade at Conejo Elementary in Thousand Oaks.