 As President and CEO of Horseman, a company founded by educators for educators, I'm proud to honor the five recipients of the Horseman Awards for Teaching Excellence. With three sisters, three nieces, and now potentially my daughter being teachers, I know some of the challenges they face in the classroom, and I hear about the rewards that make it all worth it. Teaching is more than a job. It's a higher calling and a critical role in our society. Teachers mold our future. And for these five finalists and many other teachers, the job isn't confined to the classroom. Teachers pick their students up when they're down, give gentle guidance in the right direction, help them find their strength and overcome their weaknesses. They build teaching teams and inspire some of their own students to hear the call to the profession. And it is a noble profession that is frequently underappreciated. At Horseman, our mission is protecting the short-term risks and securing the long-term financial future of educators. And we make recognizing teachers a part of what we do. For more than a decade, Horseman has sponsored the NEA Foundation Awards for Teaching Excellence because we know how important and deserving it is to shine a light on outstanding teachers who make a difference in their students' lives and who continue to elevate the role. So please join me in congratulating and honoring five individuals who have been singled out by their peers for going above and beyond and becoming this year's Horseman Award recipients. French, German, and Salish. Mexican, French, and English. Arleigh High School is on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Arleigh, Montana. The reservation is home to many different cultures, two of these being the Salish Tribe and the Kootenai Tribe. In Dr. Anna Baldwin's classroom, we form a bond that centers around our similarities while maintaining our individuality. She has immersed herself in this community. She is 100% Arleigh. She goes to, you know, all the pow-wow. She was on the sewer board. I mean, she's embraced the culture to be hers as well. So that's why she's so accepting. And she's here and she genuinely cares about the kids and the people here. So they reciprocate that care for her. She clearly knows each student and treats them as individuals. And I think that that helps give each student the feeling that they're valued, which is really, really important. Salish and Ponduré. Salish, French, and Irish. Though the Native American culture is not her own, she is sensitive to the issues faced by modern-day tribal people. One of the things she's done was to create the Reservation Ambassadors. So the Reservation Ambassadors was kind of an outgrowth of an experience that I had a couple of years ago with a school who wanted some information about what Reservation Life was like and maybe to dispel some of those stereotypes that they had. So there's a lot of interest in this, in helping kids and teachers, too, off the reservation to understand what it's really like to live here and maybe to counteract some of those beliefs that people have that are misguided. I think Ms. Baldwin is a very special teacher. She is very culturally entuned with this community. What she doesn't know, she is not afraid to ask questions about. She is very open to any suggestions, but she is also culturally sensitive. Scottish, Irish, and German. Norwegian, Irish, and Mespers. She has become, among other things, perhaps the chief classroom proponent of Indian education for all. Our Constitution requires that our instruction across K-12 deal with Indian-Mind-Region culture history. That no matter what the discipline, no matter what the grade level, all our children must learn something about the Native American cultures in our state. And Ms. Baldwin is a leader in that effort. I feel like I've always tried to serve my community with respect, and that means learning as much as I can and always deferring to the cultural experts that are surrounding our area. My efforts to demonstrate respect to the culture and the community that I serve have had the result of having drawing respect back. We are Ms. Baldwin's class.