Editor’s note: Sarah Jacobs, a West Port English 2 teacher, was named 2025 Marion County Golden Apple Teacher of the Year on February 1st. She is the wife of the author.
I met Sarah almost 15 years ago through a mutual friend. We bonded over different things that we liked, mainly music and off-beat television shows, but the first truth I learned about my then-future wife was that she wanted to be a teacher.
She was studying at Saint Leo University at the time for her bachelor’s degree in education, a wide-eyed girl in love with the movie “Freedom Writers,” a story about a steadfast teacher who, against all odds, inspires her class of “bad kids” to take an interest in their education and to chase a future they’ve been told was out of their reach. This movie is one of the cornerstones of Sarah’s approach to teaching to this day. It has and always will be about the kids.
Sarah grew up with her nose always steeped in books, her favorite being “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. So much so, that as a child she would frequently get in trouble for reading late into the evenings on school nights. Her love for reading, the art of creative writing and critical thinking spurred her on through her grade school years and into her first years of college where she finally chose the profession of becoming an educator.
Highly Effective
I moved back to Ocala in the spring of 2011. Sarah and I had been in a long distance relationship for about four months and I wanted to be closer to her and my family. We got engaged within five months and married by May 2012. Sarah had just graduated with honors from Saint Leo and accepted a position at Crystal River Middle School, her first teaching job. From day one, she was hooked – and that’s saying a lot, because at the time we lived in a tiny apartment in west Ocala which for her was a 45-minute drive at the crack of dawn to make her 7 a.m. call time in Crystal River, and at least an hour drive back to Ocala at 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. But to her, it was worth it because she had not only found but experienced her calling.
As someone who had multiple jobs already by the time I was a husband, I have always said that Sarah is the first person I had ever met who was just innately good at their job from the get-go. And as much as I’d like to say that’s just a biased opinion of a young husband about his wife, it was a fact. This woman had the universal “it” factor.
In her 13 years of her teaching, Sarah has reached “highly effective” every single year on her performance review. Which, if you’re a teacher reading this, you know is a huge deal. Each year she has found new and exciting ways to spur interest not only among her students, but to the entire student body. From bringing talent shows to showcase the creativity of the next generation, to contacting professional climbers who’ve scaled Everest to show up and share their experiences with her class to relate back to a book they were reading. Sarah has continually exceeded not only her administration’s expectations, but even challenged the idea of what school and what teaching had become.
The Hardest Truth
With all her success over the years and the countless achievements, it did not come without its fair (and at sometimes unfair) share of challenges. See, while the first truth I learned about my wife was her love for teaching, the second truth was more conventional – Sarah wanted to be a mother.
It was a simple ask, especially being a young married couple, yet in all its simplicity it has been the hardest challenge to overcome. For years we tried to have a kid, read all the books, ate all the supplements, but nothing would work and nothing could prepare us for the realization that it may not ever be a possibility.
Timing for this news couldn’t have come at a worse time either. At this point, Sarah had made her transition to Marion County Public Schools and was going through a particularly difficult time finding her place among the ever-changing policies that her school was experiencing and the fallout of a global pandemic.
The devastating doctor visits, the late night sobbing, failed adoption attempts, and the quiet and harsh resolution would have been enough to make an extrovert crawl into a hole, never to be seen again. Yet somehow, for Sarah, it was motivation. She never asked for pity or shut herself away from people. Instead, she channelled that pain and turned it, somehow, into even more love for teaching and her students.
High School Never Ends
Off the back of a tumultuous transition to a different county and the idea of certain dreams dashed, Sarah felt like she needed a change of pace. After making some calls to connections she made in her first few years in Marion County, she decided to make the jump from middle school to the wild west world of high school, namely West Port High School. Normally a good husband takes note of the names that come up in conversations about their partner’s day, especially when one name in particular comes up in almost every conversation. Enter Ginger Cruz, the principal and captain of the good ship West Port.
My wife has never had trouble making friends in every school she’s taught at, but I am pretty sure I knew everything there is to know about Mrs. Cruz before ever shaking her hand in person. From the way Sarah spoke about her, I thought I was in the presence of an immortal being from which all good things flow. And to be honest, that wasn’t too far from the truth. Sarah has always been a go-getter, a plant wanting and ready to grow. However, too often she had to create the environment in which she needed to grow. That changed the moment Mrs. Cruz entered my wife’s life.
I have never seen someone so dedicated to the growth, health and happiness of not just my wife’s but all of her staff’s professional lives. I had the opportunity to sit down with Mrs. Cruz to talk about Sarah’s time so far at West Port, and at the mention of her name, Mrs. Cruz’s face lit up.
“Well I met her at an in-service that was here one afternoon for English teachers, and I remember thinking, ‘This girl is cool. Don’t you want to come to high school?’” she said.
Of course, Sarah said yes, and after her initial interview Mrs. Cruz simply said, “Oh, this girl’s amazing.”
Speaking on the English 2 department that Sarah would become team leader of, Mrs. Cruz said.: “We always push a lot of collaboration here, and so we had some teachers who were just not getting along. Some of them left, and we arranged things differently to have the team we do now and they are just amazing. The way they collaborate together, work together, and how their whole focus is on the students … and Sarah’s really the one who took the lead. She’s humble, but not afraid to speak her mind, and that is hard to find.”
Mrs. Cruz mentioned how there was one teacher in particular who really took to Sarah.
That person being Mr. Garcia. His is another name brought up a lot in Sarah and my nightly conversations about the day, was known to me as “the only one who can make a real cup of coffee.” So, I reached out to Mr. Garcia to get his take on Sarah’s time at West Port.
Coming up on his 28th year of teaching, 19 of those at West Port, the highly credited teacher agreed with Mrs. Cruz’s sentiment saying, “I don’t want to sound cliché, but at a point in which, after so many years doing this, most teachers are tired, Sarah has managed to give my teaching career a second wind of excitement, interest and desire to keep doing this for a few more years.”
Assuring me that these weren’t just platitudes, Mr. Garcia said, “Working with her is a joy and a privilege, there are no better words to describe the experience.”
Not One To Say No
I tend to harp on my wife for her seeming inability to say no. I get overprotective due to past school experiences that took more from her than they were willing to give, so color me hesitant when she came to me at the end of the last school year saying she accepted a new role at West Port as the Student Council advisor.
However, there was something in her eye about this one.She told me that Mrs. Cruz and a few assistant principals had specifically wanted her for this position. I told her I was proud of her and I finally got to hear Mrs. Cruz’s side of things.
“The way she has turned those students into leaders is incredible,” the principal said. “She lets them pursue what they want while maintaining the boundaries.”
Confident that she made the right choice in bringing Sarah on board at West Port, Mrs. Cruz said, “The sky’s the limit for her.”
Even that limit was tested when Sarah won her Golden Apple, as one of five finalists countywide for this year’s Golden Apple Teacher of the Year Award. The Golden Apple Gala 2025 will be held Feb. 3 at the Reilly Arts Center.
The Golden Apple Award is a program sponsored by the Public Education Foundation of Marion County where teachers are selected through an exhaustive evaluation by a panel of community members for their excellence in teaching. I think the Golden Apple quite possibly would’ve been impossible to reach if Sarah would have ever said no.
Words Are Not Small Things
I think the third truth I learned about Sarah was how resilient her spirit is. No matter what was thrown her way to distract her from her career, nothing could dissuade her from being there for her students. I think that’s partly because she doesn’t see teaching as a career. She doesn’t make decisions based on climbing some organizational ladder. I am pretty sure that most times when she tells people what she does for a living they wince in fear.
Teaching is not for the faint of heart. But, Sarah is one of the many teachers out there standing in the darkness with a light, doing all she can to make sure every single kid, no matter their backgrounds, has the right to feel seen and heard and that education should always be accessible. I truly wish I would have had a teacher like Sarah.
On February 1st, Sarah was announced as Marion County’s Teacher of the Year. Sarah is the English 2 Lead of West Port High School. With this new title, she will be speaking at diffent events throughout the school district and have her eyes set on state Teacher of the Year.
