 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. In fencing, it's all about pretending to be a particular swordfighter in a place and time. And as a social studies teacher, Cindy wants to make sure that her students get involved and can feel history. I have to balance the very difficult conceptual stuff and abstract stuff with stuff that's practical, hands-on, and just a little bit wacky. For us in middle school, kinesthetic learning is the student gets out of their seat, moves their body to understand and learn a concept. It's a great way to, like, get your bones moving, plus when you're moving it makes your brain refresh. Giving students to create their own knowledge. It's not a passive experience for them. Her kids are doing Tai Chi outside. We've been doing Tai Chi, which is really fun. She gets them excited about their learning and moving. She has the skills and the passion and the vision to reclaim our schools to make public education what it should be. Her teaching is interactive, it's innovative, and she changes it up. It's not the same thing every day. We don't have repetition in this classroom. Instead of having kids memorize dates and names and to memorize history, kids are exploring history. Most Native Americans do not see the Earth the same way Europeans saw the Earth at that time. She tries to bring that energy into the classroom to make the kids enjoy history. Everything she does is rooted in history, but it's guiding them towards their own future. Teachers are supposed to help you and she is definitely a big help in helping me succeed. Miss Tong is always there for me when I have a problem or I need help. I demonstrate a lot of what I consider just basic aloha. My understanding of basic aloha is that everyone that I work with is part of my family. I'll feed you, I'll take you in, I'll shelter you when you need it. I'll give you a kick of the pants when you need it. I think that all of the activities that we do that are kinesthetic and tactile really are ways for kids to connect to lessons. Over the years I've developed a whole repertoire of ways to get kids out of their seats. All of those things make it easier for them to learn.