Colorado Teacher of the Year: Susan Elliott - a sign of achievement Educator who works with deaf kids gets top honors.

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As her supporters applaud in sign language, Highlands Ranch High School teacher Susan Elliott reacts to being named Colorado's 2009 Teacher of the Year during a ceremony Tuesday night at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Susan Elliott is an extraordinary teacher.

What makes her so special are her insight and her compassion.

She's also deaf.

"Before (students are) ready to really focus upon academics, they need to feel good about themselves," said the Douglas County educator through an interpreter.

"Oftentimes, at the high school level, you need to work on some of those personal issues before you're really able to help them soar academically."

Elliott, an English and social studies teacher in Highlands Ranch, was recognized as Colorado's 2009 Teacher of the Year during a ceremony Tuesday night at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities.

"Anything is really possible," she said at the ceremony, adding that was the reason "that I am standing up here right now."

Ten of her students and supporters at a table stood up and applauded her by raising both hands in the air and shaking their fingers.

In her acceptance speech, Elliott said she was inspired by her parents, notably her father, who was also a teacher.

She recalled how scared the family was for her father's safety when he insisted on being at school in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood in 1965, when there were race riots.

"He was there for the kids," she said.

Elliott, 54, grew up in California. She has been deaf since early childhood.

"When I was 5 years old, I flunked the hearing test when I tried to get into kindergarten," Elliott said. "And I continued to keep losing my hearing. It got worse and worse every year until I was profoundly deaf in my late teens."

The cause was genetic.

Elliott has been teaching since 1977. She taught in Denver Public Schools and has been with Douglas County since 1994.

While she has taught at all grade levels, she currently teaches English and social studies at Highlands Ranch High School.

"We have a wonderful team of interpreters," she said of the people who enable communication between students who speak and those who sign.

"I guess I could say that creativity and the opportunity to be a lifelong learner is what keeps me coming back to the classroom."

Elliott graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in audiology and speech.

She received masters degrees from Gallaudet University and California State University Northridge. Elliott and her husband, Jim, live in Roxborough. They are the parents of twins.

The winner of the Teacher of the Year honor is chosen by a seven-member committee.

Elliot will receive $10,000 and will get to meet with the president next year at the White House.

The other finalists were Lynn Jackson, a fourth-grade teacher at Eldorado K-8 in Superior, and Nicholas Kawalec, a reading teacher at Denver's Scott Carpenter Middle School.

Susan Elliott's reasons to become a teacher today

"There is no more rewarding profession. There's never a dull moment. It keeps your creativity going."

"Students want to learn and integrate technology in their lives. We have to learn to use the technology. You get to keep on learning with them."

"You can be part of a learning community. When you see that light go on in a student's head, there is nothing more rewarding.