Cynthia Martinez, a social studies teacher at the Fred Rodgers Magnet Academy in Aurora, stands next to the director’s chair she received from the Kane County Regional Office of Education for being named Educator of the Year. (Kevin Beese/Chronicle Media photos)

As a high school student, Cynthia Martinez couldn’t wait to get out of Aurora.

“I was like ‘I’m going to get out of Aurora and never come back,’” Martinez said. “That’s why I went to school in California. When I was in California, I was so homesick, not only for my family, but for Aurora.”

Twenty-five years later, Martinez can’t wait to get back to Aurora. She said when she exits Interstate 88 at Farnsworth Avenue, a sense of peace comes over her.

“My heart is at rest. This is my place,” the educator said.

Being from and part of the East Aurora community is part of what helps her connect with students at the Fred Rodgers Magnet Academy in East Aurora School District 131.

That connection is also part of what earned Martinez the honor of Educator of the Year from the Kane County Regional Office of Education.

“It helps that when they talk about ‘Over the weekend, I went to this grocery store,’ I know what they are talking about,” Martinez said. “Or when they say, ‘You know, Miss Martinez, when I go home, no one is going to help me with my homework.’ I’m like, ‘I know. I was there. It’s OK. No one helped me, and I didn’t have internet. You can figure it out. We’ll work on it together. Don’t use things as your crutch. Use them for your power.’”

She said being from the community and living and working in the community is one thing her students notice about her right away.

Martinez is teaching middle-schoolers in the same building where she went to high school, when the building was Aurora Central High School.

“Growing up, I definitely didn’t see myself as being a teacher,” Martinez said.

However, returning from California without a job, she started as a special education teacher’s assistant at Geneva Middle School. When following a special ed student through his day, she was drawn to a social studies teacher’s work.

“I was always thinking, ‘Why couldn’t my class have been that fun?’” Martinez said. “They did things that I don’t remember as a kid doing – re-enactments and just making history fun.”

That teacher’s work pushed her to go back to school and get her master’s degree in education.

Martinez has taught middle school social studies in District 131 for 20 years – at Waldo and Cowherd

Martinez, an Aurora native, teaches in the same building where she attended high school, when the building was Aurora Central High School. “I know what they are talking about,” she said of students being from the same neighborhood as where she grew up.

middle schools and now at Fred Rodgers Magnet Academy.

She likes the humor and emergence at the middle-school level.

“It’s fun to see them grow into the adults they are becoming,” Martinez said. “They’re kids so we can still have fun, but they are able to critically think and have a different concept of seeing things.

“You can teach the same concept over and over, but it’s always interesting to come in and have the new class have a totally different perspective on something you’ve taught every year.”

She said the recognition she received is because of the team she is part of at the academy.

“My success and getting to this point of getting an award has been because I have collaborated with my team,” the 20-year educator said. “I work closely with the language arts teacher, the math teacher, the science teacher.

“Whenever any of us have an idea to bring something like a theme we are teaching and make it bigger makes us better because we bounce ideas off each other. I’ve always had that in this district. I’ve always been able to work with really good teachers.”

Martinez’s two children are enrolled in the district.

“I feel when you invest in a community, when you come back, that’s full investment,” she said. “If I want to improve this community, the best venue for me to that in is through education.”

Martinez finishes the school year with her students picking a decade from history, learning the culture and political events of the era and then doing a sitcom-like skit about the decade.

She also sets up her classroom to promote discussion.

“It doesn’t have to be me up there having you memorize these dates and all these generals,” the educator said. “Let’s look at the bigger concept.”

Martinez said she shows her students that solutions to current problems can be found be researching history.

“If you want to understand the world we live in, the answers are in the past, but also the solutions to the problems we have are also in the past,” she said. “We’re not the first ones here.”

Brian Valek, principal of Fred Rodgers Magnet Academy, said Martinez is a cornerstone in the building.

“She has a great vision of how she wants our kids to develop and where they need to go as far as the next step for high school,” Valek said. “She is certainly a leader among the faculty. She has a great instructional knowledge, and she really has an understanding of the community and how our school and our resources and our community can all mesh together to give these kids a bright future.”

Martinez said she hopes she inspires students to achieve.

“If she can do that, she lived here where I live and had the same kind of circumstances, I can do that or I can do more,” she hoped is a student’s perspective of her work. “And I hope they do more.”

kbeese@chronicleillinois.com