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Like most teachers, the nation’s top four educators wear many hats. 

They are journalism advisors, volleyball coaches, mentors, authors, learners, environmental conservationists, meditation guides, literacy coaches, and equity advocates.

Their communities range from a small island in America Samoa serving multilingual, Indigenous students; a rural town in Pennsylvania; an immigrant hub in Denver; to a proud but underserved Black neighborhood in Washington D.C. 

Though the communities they serve cover a broad spectrum, 2025’s Teacher of the Year finalists recognized by the Council of Chief State School Officers are united in their commitment to children. 

Chosen from a pool of 56 local winners,they have found ways to make kids excited about school in a particularly difficult period in public education’s history. 

The finalists, all English and history educators, have designed lessons and extracurriculars for students to reflect on some of the most pressing issues today: Gun violence, substance abuse, suicide, poverty, food insecurity, health and hygiene, and the environment. 

They acknowledge the world outside school walls, involve local organizations to expand students’ opportunities, and prioritize building relationships with kids and their families. 

“Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” said elementary teacher Jazzmyne Townsend, Washington D.C.’s finalist. 

Utilizing family interview projects, field trips to hydroponic farms and herbal gardens, all four find ways to bring students’ experiences, cultures and curiosities into the classroom.  

At a time when public education is under fiscal and political threat from the Trump administration, finalists share what has nourished their careers and how they keep joy in learning: 

Mikaela Saelua 

All of Mikaela Saelua’s high school students are learning English as a second language. Their mother tongue is Samoan – poetic, full of expressive vowel sounds and unique – leaving most words without a direct English translation. 

To break up the monotony of reading and writing, she launched a song translation project. In what culminates in music videos, students learn figurative idioms, metaphors and words to capture the soul of Samoan songs. 

“The goal isn’t just to teach them English; it’s to help them appreciate and express themselves in a way that feels true to who they are,” Saelua wrote in her finalist application. 

Saelua encourages student expression outside the classroom as an advisor for a peer leader club, which with the help of a local nonprofit, performs skits at local elementary schools to discuss hard topics, from substance use to suicide. 

America Samoa exceeded the world’s average for suicide for over 20 years. Saelua’s school in particular has lost two students in the last three years. Their teachers are learning to spot warning signs in things like journal entries. 

Saelua, a proud product of America Samoa’s public education system who returned after  a spell of homesickness in California, is the first finalist from the seven islands in the program’s history. 

“I’m carrying that with me and I don’t carry it lightly,” she said. “… it’s more than just me. It’s now me and all of American Samoa.” 

Ashlie Crosson

As wildfires raged in Los Angeles earlier this year, two former students ran into Ashlie Crosson’s Pennsylvania classroom, cell phones in hand. 

The sophomores shared headlines about the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze and how it could threaten recovery – exclaiming how taking away resources during a catastrophe was exactly like what they’d read in Dry by Jarrod and Neal Shusterman. 

They were curious: How was the media covering this? What would happen next? 

Dry was the only fiction text from their course Survival Stories, a half-year elective designed by Crossen for students to build media literacy and talk about what they see happening in the real world. And though they’d read it months earlier, they were making connections and eager to chat.

In Survival Stories, they’d discussed humanitarian crises through the lens of young people surviving them – such as immigrant youth workers across the country and stories about families navigating the Darién Gap. 

Survival is not new to their community, deeply impacted by the opioid epidemic. 

Crosson brings in texts that show them “what you’re experiencing here isn’t isolated. These are problems that exist all over the place. Your hometown is not the ‘problem.’” 

Now in her fourteenth year teaching, she stays attuned to body language, emotional reactions, attendance. A kid’s experience in her classroom clues her into their world.  

She has also found ways for young people growing up in poverty to challenge negative associations with their area and build hope for future careers by taking reins of a dwindling journalism program.   

“I teach English, but I can’t really get to that content if I don’t have a rapport and understanding of my students and what their needs are,” Crosson said. “… There’s no content mastery happening in American schools right now if we’re not evaluating and meeting the needs of students and families.” 

Jazzmyne Townsend 

Coming from a family of teachers, Jazzmyne Townsend wanted to carve her own path in business. 

But today the Washington, D.C. Teacher of the Year is a self described “big kid” – eager to be on the floor, immersed in sand, Play-Doh, and paint, modeling active listening and motor skills.  

“I’m willing to hold your hand and walk you through it until you are in a place where I can release you to do that independently,” the special education teacher explained about her approach with her second and third graders. 

She’s the teacher that knows their families and weekend plans, who notices their haircuts and new shoes, who shows up to games that are important to them. 

Townsend launched a My Sister’s Keeper, a place for kids to gather twice a week to chat about their bodies, social media, healthy relationships and whatever was weighing on them. 

She makes a point, too, of sharing her experiences with kids so they can dream big. A children’s book author, she explained the process of drafting a manuscript, pairing with an illustrator and publishing. 

Her kids then became authors and illustrators themselves. Their book publishing project became a community showcase, with one student choosing the ability to manage the world’s trash, to keep the planet clean and healthy. 

“I’m showing you in my actions, how we interact and how we engage,” she said. “I’m showing you that I’m invested in you… Kids need people who are irrationally passionate about them.”

Janet Renee Damon

After 25 years in the classroom, high school history teacher Janet Renee Damon finds herself working at a transfer high school, a culmination of “all of my skills, all of my heart and all of my joy.” 

She spends her days joking and encouraging introverted, empathetic “diamond souls,” kids who’ve faced undue pressure who are still shining through parental death or incarceration, the trauma of immigration, homelessness, gun and gang violence and teen pregnancy. 

Over half of Damon’s students are immigrants, from Rwanda to Honduras and Iraq. All have mourned someone killed by gun violence. 

She guides students in breathing and meditation exercises, a tool for emotional regulation. They create “life maps,” imagining how to prepare for life’s milestones, like renting an apartment. 

She explores, “how history has impacted your own community, your own family.” After a project where students explored how the body’s DNA is impacted by generational trauma, one student told her he never used substances again. 

She and her administrators are committed: When kids don’t show, a team goes looking, conducting home visits. 

Damon also helped students’ bridge past and present through an ongoing podcast program. Students researched the history of mental health disparities and called attention to their high needs for support amid clinical shortages, landing on Colorado Public Radio.

Only 5% of registered psychologists nationwide speak Spanish. After their podcast went on air, a Therapists of Color collective reached out to provide care free of charge. The student podcast project led another to discover her family were survivors of the federal government’s Indian Residential Schools. A different high schooler interviewed a relative about his history with incarceration. Both said the work was “healing” and helped them feel closer to their families and identity.

“We have to make school a place where kids want to be,” Renee Damon said, “not just have to be.”

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