Mrs. Jessica Hoffman was named Liberty High School’s Mentor of the Year for the 2022-2023 school year.

The Mentor of the Year Award is given to an outstanding role model who encourages student involvement in professional opportunities and provides exemplary academic and professional preparation advice.

While she was selected to receive the award from LHS she is simultaneously nominated as Liberty’s representative for the school division award as a whole.

 “It feels amazing to be nominated and I love being a mentor. It’s very rewarding to know that others think what I’m doing is good,” said Hoffman. 

While she was in college she started coaching a high school team, and that is when she decided she wanted to be a teacher. Hoffman has been at Liberty High School for nine years and has been teaching for a total of thirteen years.

She has mentored both students and teachers and has always been there when needed. Before coming to Liberty she worked at Phoenix Alternative Education Program in Culpeper for four years. 

As a mentor, Hoffman was responsible for helping new English teachers with the ins-and-outs of teaching. She has to make sure they know the policies of LHS, but Hoffman always goes above and beyond with her mentoring. She helps new teachers learn how to lesson plan and she makes them feel more comfortable. 

 Hoffman has mentored many current teachers including Christine Larsen, Jessica Wheeler, Tiffany Davenport, Megan Ashby, and Jack Schoen.

Even though Larsen was not a rookie when she started here, she found Hoffman’s help valuable in her first year at Liberty.

“She was very great about checking in on me constantly, she made sure that I had everything that I needed and she just did a great job making sure I had a support system even though I wasn’t a new teacher,” said Larsen. 

Wheeler on the other hand, was a new teacher when she started, and is grateful to see her mentor get this recognition.

“She helped me understand the standards and how standard-based grading works, she talked me through my first observation and what I needed to submit for the formal observation and helped me create reading and writing units for my class,” said Wheeler.  “She’s fantastic, understanding, a creative thinker, and definitely someone you can lean on when you have issues or worries.”

Hoffman’s passion for education is evident to her peers, and she has helped her mentees make the most of their own newfound passion

 “I think the biggest thing I learned from Mrs. Hoffman is that I have passion for teaching and that patience with yourself is important, along with the understanding that I’m not perfect but passion will help me get better. She also helped me with being confident in myself. Being a new teacher you take everything you learned and put it into your environment,” said Davenport.