 As President and CEO of Horace Mann, a company founded by educators for educators, I'm proud to honor the five recipients of the Horace Mann 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 Horace Mann, 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, Horace Mann 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 Horace Mann Award Recipients. Somewhere in a secret underground military super secure high-tech scientific government base. I got it. Doctors, doctors, I cracked the code. What code? The formula for the perfect teacher, we could build her. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the first perfect teacher. Crystal Gordon will be their teacher. We'll build her hands to lead the way for others. I always say that Crystal not only engages her kids, but she engages with them. She engages them into the community, brings community leaders in, people to speak to her class, and she brings them out for community service. Her legs to take her everywhere. Well, I have never seen her sit down. She is from one desk to another and she's helping each kid and she seems to be able to grasp what each kid is about. She'll have a mouth with a welcoming, radiant smile. She's very passionate about her job and you can never tell what she's having a bad day. You know, she always keeps a smile on her face and very booze is a lifestyle, which is not a job for her. Her ears and ears, students' voices. She had a good listening ear, you know, and that's one of the things she does. She would key in on, I guess, different things that the kids may be going through and she would pick that up. Her heart of gold for compassion. Michael had a hard time during his sophomore year and I never forget one day he comes in and he said, Mom, I really had a good talk with Ms. Porter. She helped me and I felt like if I was talking to you. She'll have a brain that continually learns and grows. She wrote a multi-million dollar grant. We had a science initiative for grades K through 5. We covered approximately 53 elementary schools and we implemented a hands-on science program and Crystal gets all the credit for that. I think that public education is an important entity in our society. We need to instill in our students the importance of getting a good education.