New Teachers at Orono High School

Ellen Fritz has worked at Orono Intermediate School, Orono Middle School, and Orono Preschool as well as Minneapolis Public Schools as a speech teacher. She has been teaching for 20 years and has three kids who attend Orono. Having her kids at Orono was a push for her to apply for the job as well as it being the closest district to where she lives. Adjusting to the high school schedule has not been...

Erin Head is an Orono alumni who went to Cornell University to get her Bachelor’s, University of Wisconsin - Madison and Hamline University for her Master’s degree. She is Orono’s newest ELL teacher, which stands for English-language learners. An ELL teacher’s job is to help people, in this case high school students, learn subjects in the English language if they speak another language or...

Sara Ibs went to college at the University of Minnesota - Northwestern and then moved to Florida and attended University of South Florida to get her Master’s. She taught in Florida for nine years before she moved back to Minnesota and taught at the middle school last year. “Students are really involved, students tend to challenge themselves by the classes that they take, the clubs they are involved...

Jennifer Runck went to St. Olaf College and got her Bachelor’s in music. She then went to the University of Minnesota where she got her Doctorate and Master’s. She has been teaching music for two years, and previously taught at Odyssey Academy in Brooklyn Center and Echo charter school. These previous schools she taught at were smaller than Orono and one was in the inner city of Minneapolis. Runck...

Alyssa Schroeder attended the University of Minnesota - Mankato and got her Bachelor’s in special education with an emphasis on autism and developmental disabilities. Schroeder said her plan is to go back and get her Master’s degree. She worked at Burnsville for one year prior to coming to work at Orono this year. “Orono is a great school and it is hard to compare it to other schools because...

Virginia Sherrill took the place of Karla Heussner in the math department this year. Sherrill attended college at North Central University and studied secondary math education minoring in theater. She previously taught at Christian Life Academy in Farmington, Minnesota for one year. At Orono, Sherrill is teaching Algebra II and Algebra B which are mainly freshman and sophomore courses. She said...

Jaclyn Silbernagel is a new counselor at Orono and has only taught one year previously to coming to Orono, at Sauk Centre. Silbernagel went to University of Minnesota Duluth and received her degree in Psychology and then went to St. Cloud State University to get her Master’s in school counseling. Silbernagel interned at Orono High School in the 2014-2015 school year so she had already learned the...

Robyn Swanson is a new special education teacher at Orono, but has plenty of experience. She has worked in this field for 15 years for multiple school districts in Minnesota. Swanson has two daughters who attend Wayzata Middle School. She was able to travel to China this summer to adopt her 12-year-old daughter. Swanson’s first impression of Orono was that the students and staff are very kind...