 It is my great privilege to represent the many fine associates of First National Bank of Omaha in joining the NEA Foundation to honor educators and others who are committed to the advancement of public education in our country. Our honorees tonight join a very elite fraternity of previous recipients such as former President Bill Clinton, Billie Jean King, the NAACP, and Nickelodeon to name just a few. The picture is worth a thousand words. And picture books are unique learning tools because the combination of words and the images support varied learning styles. Walter Dean Myers, the author, and his son Christopher the Artist collaborated on a number of spectacular picture books for young readers. Minimal and melodic words paired with moving illustrations worked in perfect tandem to enlighten, engage, and affirm their target audience. Young readers whose skin tones range from dark to latte brown and every hue in between. As a young student, Walter realized that most books did not feature characters that he could relate to, characters that looked and thought and felt like he did, until he read Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin. By humanizing people who were like me, he wrote, Baldwin's story also humanized me. Rendering the invisible visible became his personal mission. In addition to sustaining readers who identify with what they see, picture books help children face real world problems and cope with tragedies. They could also acculturate students with different ethnic backgrounds, environments, and ways of life that are different from their own. In a New York Times piece in 1986, Walter wrote, if we continue to make black children non-persons by excluding them from books and by degrading the black experience and if we continue to neglect white children by not exposing them to any aspect of other racial and ethnic experiences in a meaningful way, we will have the next racial crisis. Christopher collaborated with his father, the author, on a dozen or so books including Jazz, which won the Coretta Scott King Award for illustration, Harlem, a Caldecott Honor book, Blues Journey, and We Are American, a tribute from the heart to name just a few. Picture books are defined by their illustrations and Christopher's unique graphic style includes a masterful use of collage cutouts and vivid, soulful portraits that capture the essence of the black experience. His work has been called Vibrant, Striking, and Fresh with colors loud enough to be heard. Christopher has also evolved into an author with titles that include Black Cat, another Coretta Scott King Award winner for illustration, Wings, a tribute to individualism, horse, a game of basketball and imagination, and more. These books help students develop a deep understanding, appreciation, and abiding respect for people and cultures other than their own. These are competencies that they need to thrive in our global economy. With more than 100 published works, Walter Dean Meyers started us on this path and with illustrations that have made our hearts soar, Christopher has helped us to fly. In their honor, First Book will receive 5,000 brand new books to children at a school chosen by the Meyers family. And First Book is a social enterprise that serves children in need ages one to 18 and more than 150,000 programs and classrooms. In addition, we are pleased to present a $5,000 check to a charity of the family's choice. Please join me in thanking Walter Dean and Christopher Meyers for their outstanding contribution to helping kids know more. We are delighted to present this year's Outstanding Service to Public Education Award to Walter, who we sadly lost this past summer, and to son Christopher. Accepting the award is Christopher Meyers. Thanks so much. That's the first thing that always comes to mind. And then, you know, you're in this fancy building and you are reminded of the classrooms that we've all been in and how they sometimes seem worlds apart. I remember I was in a classroom in Oakland and a kid asked me, how many words does it take to make a good story? I said, how many words, okay? I realized that there are things that you can't count. Things like how many words does it take to tell a good story? And in this world of, hold on, let me get my notes. This has been a lot. This is a lot. Thank you. There are things that you can't count, things that have been, we try to, you know, measure them. We are taught in our world of metrics and testing that you need to find a way to measure the progress of a student, but you can't really count these things. You can't count the moment, you can't count the moment that you reach a child. You can't. There's no way to measure it in such a way. And as an artist, and I'm so glad to see so many young artists, blessed, touching, amazing moment, with so many young artists on the stage, because we understand here in this room that we are in the business of that which is not countable. We can't count our students, we can't. You talk about preparing your children for a global world. I travel quite a bit, and I really love this global initiative, and one of the things you realize when you travel is that, you know, it's not the counting that's going to get me through the marketplace in Egypt, it's not the counting that's going to get me to work with artists in China and Vietnam and Indonesia. What is it? It's that uncountable thing. It's my sign language, it's my dancing, it's the fact that I can picture my way through most anywhere. That being said, I'm honored that we all, as partners here, understand this importance of that which is not countable, first of all. And then the second thing, if you get involved in this narrative of what is not countable, you realize that the people who we want to tell that the world is telling all these children that they don't count, that the same world that is wanting to count everything, that wants to measure everything in a test here and there, is also telling children that they don't count. And we are people in this room that are telling children that they do count, all of our children. That is our shared mission. I guess the last thing I kept thinking about in this counting is that we don't do it alone. It's such a gift to be recognized by you guys. It's such a gift to share with you. Our work, I spent a lot of time thinking this last year after my father passed. I thought a lot about what's important, and you think about who your partners are. You think about who you can count on. I was able to count on my dad. That was a gift. And now we count on you, and we do this together. You can count on us. We'll keep trying to tell stories that are important. We'll try to tell stories that valorize the people who have been told that they did not count. And then in partnership with you, we will try to make this world a little bit less countable. Thank you so much.