 At Horace Mann, we applaud educators' dedication to teaching excellence, ensuring all students receive a quality education. We believe in helping educators find solutions to help them achieve financial success, to live better and retire happier. That's why we proudly sponsor the NEA Foundation Horace Mann Awards for Teaching Excellence to honor educators selected by their peers for their professional excellence and dedication to their students. Please join me in congratulating and honoring the five individuals who are this year's Horace Mann Award recipients. My passion is math. It's like a challenge, and I like challenges. Math is all about problem solving, it's all about perseverance and sticking with the struggle. I just love it. I want my kids to love it so much. When I visited Crystal's classroom, it's not set up like a typical classroom. There's not rows of desks. She looks for ways to keep them engaged in the classroom, so if you notice she has flexible seating in her room. There's a variety of seating options, and kids get to choose the seating option for that day or that week. She works in special groups that children are allowed to work with friends. Let's look at that one. In these small groups, they feel it's safe to ask questions and not be ridiculed. When you're sitting at her table, when you're asking a question, she looks at you and pays full attention. Crystal made small group math instruction that she uses has really affected this whole building and our district. So just last year, these are our Amesweb scores after implementing a year of small group math instruction. She's willing to share ideas, she wants to get ideas from others. She's always thinking about what's going on in her classroom and how she can make it better. And then she seeks out trying to find those different ways, like writing grants to raise money for the kids. And then she's gone into math trainings and trained math teachers across the state. I've had so many teachers say, I wish someone would have taught me math like this. And when that happens with them, I know they're taking that back to their classroom and it's going to make math better for all their kids for years to come. She has a child with ADHD. I think when Crystal looks at the classroom, they may all have attention problems and she wants them to succeed. What makes me truly happy with these kids and with my own kid is when they are like, I did it. I didn't think I could do it and I did it. That really touches me and makes me really happy. She's totally dedicated to her kid. She has the unique ability to really deliver it to kids. She's really like a kid whisperer. When the kid comes in in the morning, she makes the kids feel welcome. She makes them feel loved. She greets them by name, welcomes them to class. There are 25 kids in here but each person has a story and a story impacts what I can do with them in a day. So it's important to be able to read your kids and how they're feeling every morning. Today's kindness challenge to get us started with our week is to make and deliver cookies to someone in the communities. The best way to teach kids in general is just to lead by example. If I'm going to ask these kids to be kind to one another, then that's exactly what I should do. We need to be over at the maintenance building in about an hour when all of the crew takes their break. It was so sweet to listen to the kids talk to them about why they were there. Give me these cookies for appreciation. I mean those are the guys that are behind the scenes and they deserve some appreciation also. Crystal's an outstanding educator and she's an outstanding advocate for our profession. She takes a lot of pride and a lot of time and effort every day to make sure that her students are needs are met. If I stop, I feel like I've stopped learning and I've stopped challenging myself. And that's not what I want for myself or my career for the kids in my classroom. To fight that off, I just keep going.