GRANADA HILLS : High School English Teacher Wins Award

A Granada Hills High School English teacher has been named the California League of High Schools Teacher of the Year.

Elisa Pulido-Ragus will be honored by the league April 8 for her efforts in interactive education and her ability to inspire students to take extra steps in understanding subjects before them.

“She tends to get students to go beyond what’s expected of them,” said Granada Hills High School Principal Kathy Rattay. “It’s not easy for a teacher to be motivated and to take risks in teaching. Elisa is willing to take almost any risk if she thinks it will do something for her kids.”

As coordinator of the school’s interdisciplinary studies program, Pulido-Ragus, who has been a high school and junior college teacher since the mid-1970s, has gained a reputation for moving students of all abilities to discuss virtually any issue.

The key, she says, is to provide a total sensory experience for students so they can become almost physically involved with their subject.

“You cannot just stand up and lecture to a class anymore,” Pulido-Ragus said. “That may have worked for another generation, but it is not effective now.

“Students learn better when they are more active in a subject. Their understanding is more complete when they, themselves, are teachers.”

This semester, Pulido-Ragus is instructing 10th-grade biology students to look at recent developments in genetic engineering from the perspective of two books on the subject--Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.”

“We are continually posing questions on the ethics of genetic manipulation,” Pulido-Ragus said. “While learning about the technical aspects of that field, they are also confronted with some real moral issues surrounding recent developments.”

By engaging in such discussion, students are able to see how both science and literature deal with the question of human dignity, Pulido-Ragus said.

“It’s great to be freed of a textbook-driven curriculum,” she said. “But it’s never easy. They have to do a lot of research on their own.”

But, she said, as a result of their having gone through the rigors of the program, several Granada Hills students previously not considering college chose to attend four-year universities.

“They tell me that if they can survive me, they can survive college,” she said.