ORLANDO, Fla. — A parent nominated A+ Teacher Amy Jensen for the impact she’s having on her students at Lake Buena Vista High School in Orlando. Jensen says she wants her students to know above all else she cares about them.

Jensen has a unique teaching style and at the core of that is making sure her students know they’re not a number to her.

She says their test scores and the grades they earn don’t define them in her eyes. Jensen says she cares about her students as people first.

“One of the things I am always saying to my students is tell me more. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? I care about you first and I can’t teach you anything if you’re not okay,” she says. “I think that learning can be fun and engaging and it doesn’t have to be all lectures and note-taking all the time. This is my favorite way to teach."

Jensen wants her students to be prepared to learn, though, and says, “They’re supposed to do their homework at home and then they come in and we do the learning actively in class. Ideally, it makes our time in class more engaging and I think that it’s a class that they look forward to coming to every day.”

The high school teacher really has a passion for teaching science and she beams with pride at the effort her students put forth. “This, for me, is just a pinnacle of what I’ve been teaching,” she said as she pointed to one of her student’s work.

She says teaching is personal for her. “It’s really exciting to see because it also takes me back to when I was in school.”

Teaching, though, wasn’t her first choice as a career. “This is not what I signed up,” she said while laughing.

She went to school for something completely different, explaining, “I went to college. I wanted to be a veterinarian, and I was working in an animal shelter and I just couldn’t handle the euthanasia rates.”

Her now husband was taking part in an internship at the time.

“I went to watch him teach and his kids were playing with robots and running and programming them through mazes on the floor and I just fell in love. I was like. ‘Oh, my gosh — teaching doesn’t have to be boring,’” Jensen said.

Jensen fell in love with teaching and her husband to this day is always close because he teaches at the same school she does.

“I’m just really proud of them and I want them to know that they’re amazing. They do really hard things and they don’t give up,” she said about her students.