2025 Teacher of the Year announced
2025 Teacher of the Year Linda Wallenberg uses literature of the past to help students make sense of the present
Linda Wallenberg, Minnesota’s 2025 Teacher of the Year, is in her 49th year of teaching at Eden Prairie High School. By some estimates, she’s taught 12,000 students throughout her tenure in the classroom.
But what’s striking about Wallenberg, or “Wally,” as her students call her, is not the sheer longevity of her career—although that is remarkable. What sets her apart is that she brings as much energy and joy into her classroom as a first-year teacher would. To watch her cartwheel into the classroom, you’d never guess she’d been doing so for half a century.
“Wally continues to inspire her students and expand their opportunities through an artful blend of skill, compassion, and energy—embodying the very best of what it means to be an educator,” said Joshua Swanson, superintendent of Eden Prairie Schools.
Wallenberg uses that energy to ensure her students not only develop a love of learning but understand how it will benefit them throughout their lives. Wallenberg, who teaches ninth grade English and twelfth grade AP Literature, says the goal of education should go beyond simply acquiring knowledge. She says educators should prepare students for navigating failure, embracing the unexpected and learning to handle everyday life.
“Questions plague [my students]: ‘How will I define success?’ ‘What is really out there for me?’” Wallenberg said in nomination materials for the award. “In my classroom, we try to navigate the ambiguity by engaging in activities to embrace it. We discuss how others, like Hamlet, Okonkwo, Gatsby, Plath, wrestled with these same universal questions and fears.”
Sophia Yoerks, a former student, shared the story of a quilt square activity to demonstrate Wallenberg’s passion and dedication. Yoerks explained that each AP Literature student creates and decorates a quilt square at the beginning of the semester with their favorite quote. The squares are hung up in the classroom to create a quilt. “Most, if not all, of her lessons have this same type of ‘quilting’ activity,” Yoerks said. “Wally” teaches her students how to intertwine education and passion. In doing so, every one of her classes creates a beautiful and diverse quilt together.” Yoerks said that Wallenberg’s class prepared her for college “more than any other class I took during my high school career.”
Conn McCartan, former principal of Eden Prairie High School, was a student of Wallenberg’s in her very first English class at Eden Prairie. A strong math and science student, he shared that he wasn’t a fan of English classes until he took Wallenberg’s class. “Linda turned me on to the writings of John Milton to the point where my senior paper was a critical commentary on Paradise Lost,” he said in a nomination letter.
McCartan said that passion he experienced as a student still embodies Wallenberg’s work today. “In a time when so many outstanding educators are choosing to leave the profession,” he said, “here stands a forty-nine-year master teacher who continues to pour herself into every lesson, who invests deeply in each of her students and whose passion…never waned.”
As she accepted the award for Teacher of the Year, Wallenberg had some advice for her fellow educators. “We cannot surrender the classroom,” she said. “Public schools are for all. Everyone is welcome at the table and we will fiercely protect those seats.”
