Jeremy Dorsey is that popular high school teacher. The one all the students relate to and find his class worthwhile, the teacher who helps out after school, the one everyone remembers at the class reunions decades later.
“Remember Mr. Dorsey,” they’ll say. “Yeah, he was the best.”
The Alamosa School District this week named Dorsey its Teacher of the Year for the 2025-26 academic year. He teaches social studies at Alamosa High, instructs the ROTC unit in the after hours, and has the Moose turning heads with their advance placement tests thanks to his dedicated instruction.
“I think at the end of the day when it comes to the students’ performance, I can’t put it all on me. I think the biggest thing is when it comes to AP or college-level classes, it’s the work they put in, the results that come out,” the modest Dorsey says. “All I can do is really guide them. And I think when it comes to those extracurriculars or anything else I really end up doing, I always try to put them in a position to succeed and give them opportunities even when they may have not been given them before.”
He recently gave a presentation at the National Conference for Social Studies that expounded on his methods to bring local government officials and political action groups into his classroom to engage with students and to help his students get more actively involved.
“What we did at that presentation,” he says, “was kind of give this guideline and this more or less rough draft on how can you bring your local government and your kids to be more active in a political science class versus just sitting there talking about the Constitution and the amendments, but having a little bit more interactiveness and ownership over the town and area that you live in.”
Amy Ortega, the principal at Alamosa High, talks up Dorsey at every opportunity she can. Dorsey is emblematic of the bevy of young teachers at Alamosa High who guide the school and have students performing above state academic standards.
“He really does connect with our kids,” says Ortega. “They come to him whether they have him as a classroom teacher or they’re in Army S.T.A.R. (Students Taking Active Roles) or not.”
Dorsey, 32, is a former Marine who arrived at Alamosa High five years ago. He is a long way from where he grew up in the Chicago area and uses his own experience in high school to find a way to connect to students in Alamosa.
“I’m a very loud, vocal person. I’m very extroverted in that nature and I didn’t feel like I had one teacher ever ask me if I was OK. I started going silent. And the reason I’m here is I don’t want a kid to have that feeling that I had where you feel alone like in this despair. So my job as a teacher is always to put the kids first and try to make sure that they have a trusted adult in their life, and then in turn when you have their respect and their trust, they’re going to work so much harder for you.”
He teaches social studies in an era of deep division in America. The history of the country needs to be explained and he teaches his students to seek a global perspective to help understand the nation today.
“I think the hardest part with being a social studies teacher, especially in today’s political climate, is a lot of people are afraid to talk about history, talk about politics or different ideologies or anything like that, and I don’t approach it that way.
“I believe social studies and history and everything happening in the world, it’s not black and white, it’s incredibly gray. And it’s not my job to tell them how to think. It’s my job to let them think and come up with their own sides and their own opinions and try to allow all viewpoints, all access to things to be accessible.”