Wasilla High School teacher goes back to school

WASILLA -- Tony Jensen gives new meaning to the term "master's degree."

Once he finishes working through the training he'll receive at two week-long summer courses, two years of graduate work at Alaska Pacific University, and another six weeks of education at an institute in Washington, D.C., he will have truly earned the title "Master of History."

Jensen is being granted these opportunities because he recently won the prestigious James Madison Fellowship, as well as a pair of fellowships from the Ashbrook Institute for Public Affairs in Ohio and the Gilder-Lehrman Fellowship for Social Studies from Stanford. These awards will send him to both Ohio and California this summer to attend lectures and seminars on the Constitution and early American history. He won two additional fellowships from other foundations this year, but had to turn them down because they conflicted with the schedules of the Ashbrook and Gilder-Lehrman awards.

"I'm very excited," he said. "I'm already most of the way through the reading list." An early start might be good in this case, since the Ashbrook award alone carries at least 3,000 pages of reading from primary sources such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison.

Jensen currently teaches in the special education program at Wasilla High School. In the past, he has also taught social studies there, and switches subjects year by year as needed.

"The district is really suffering from a shortage of special education teachers," he said.

The James Madison Fellowship will pay for up to $24,000 of Jensen's course work toward a master's degree in history at APU. The program's flexibility allows him to set his own meeting times and hours, so he can continue his teaching work at Wasilla High School while taking classes at the university.

"One of the benefits of going to APU is that I can design my own study program," he said. "I can meet with professors once a week to turn in papers and discuss the reading if I want."

After he's received his sheepskin, Jensen will be off to Washington, D.C., for a six-week seminar with other fellowship winners. This seminar will entail a reading list of about 13 history books before arrival, followed by a steady regimen of 10 additional books and a 20-page paper a week.

Jensen isn't daunted by the heavy reading and writing. After all, to win all these fellowships, he had to turn out some pretty impressive essays.

"When I was in college, I could whip out an eight-page paper in three hours if I knew what I was doing," he said.

Following the degree, Jensen must teach social studies for at least two years at a secondary school. This requirement fits in well with his current position at Wasilla High, he said.

A Wasilla resident since the tender age of one, Jensen is himself a member of Wasilla High's Class of '92, and works with a few of the very teachers who taught him what he now knows. This arrangement has not only created a strange sense of deja vu at times, but also resulted in a bit of an attitude adjustment.

"It's a totally different frame of mind, referring to your old teachers by their first names," he said, musing on how difficult it was to make the transition from "Mr. Lutes" to "Mike."

Jensen currently has a bachelor's degree in history from Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., and an endorsement in special education.

Plans for the future are still subject to change, however.

"There was a time when I wanted to be a lawyer," he said. "I've always had an interest in the law."

A rather ironic twist to Jensen's accomplishment is the fact that his father-in-law, a social studies teacher in Denver, has won both the Gilder-Lehrman Colorado Teacher of the Year award and a similar teacher of the year award from the state of Colorado. However, even after five separate attempts, he has never won the Madison fellowship that Jensen recently secured.

Contact Daniel Spoth at daniel.spoth@frontiersman.com.