 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. So I build a community by really encouraging my students to learn from each other. So we take a daily walk where we get to talk about anything that we want to talk about. And that is really important for them to learn from each other in order to really appreciate each other as people and to build that community. I have loved math since being in high school. It didn't come easy for me though. I had to work really hard at it. I just absolutely love the challenge of it and that's one of the things that I really want to share with my students. What do you think about what you see? Some students would enter her classroom not feeling like they're very good at math and when they would leave her class they would understand math in different ways. She believes in their potential even when they don't sometimes believe in their own potential. She's able to encourage them to not only survive seventh grade math but to thrive and to learn to love it. In sixth grade actually I did not like mathematics but since coming into her class it really grew on me and now I love solving problems. I want them to feel like they can face the challenge of math. Feel like they can face how tough it is so that they feel confident enough to face challenges and to face tough situations. Cicely creates a learning environment that is very student focused, student driven. She really makes it practical. She gives them real world application. Ms. Woodard's class is just a phenomenal classroom because she does hands on activities with us. I think there may be a correlation between your height and the circumference of your head. I think that my methods in class are different because they're very engaging. They get students involved right away. Adam's shaking his head, no, why not? My students sit at tables in groups and they often talk with each other and work together. Students and students are able to engage with learning through the use of hands on materials or engaging with peers. It helps them to latch onto the learning. She makes it fun, she makes it relevant and she makes it challenging. She makes it comfortable by encouraging us with her cheers. As a group we will often do little cheers that sort of encourage each other. She like to do a firework cheer which is like when a student is done presenting, you do, you got it. It definitely makes me feel good when people cheer because that makes me know that what I'm doing is good and that I should continue doing it. When a student overcomes a challenge and it clicks, it's a great feeling of accomplishment. It's why we show up every day as teachers. We want our students to overcome challenges. We want them to learn. We want them to grow. We want them to get better. And you think this is irrational so why? Yeah, good. And I want them to understand how important they are as people so that they walk out of here confident. Confident and knowing that they can do whatever they want to do when they grow up.