Known as the Academy of Awards of public education, the Gala features award presentations to 35 educators, who were nominated by their National Education Association state affiliate, including the five Horace Mann awardees, announced today, and the recipient of one of public education’s most prestigious honors, The NEA Member Benefits Award for Teaching Excellence, which comes with an additional $25,000. The awards recognize, reward, and promote excellence in teaching and advocacy for the profession.

"Jonathan Gillentine has been selected for this award by his peers because he has attained the highest standards of the profession, as shown by his exemplary instruction, advocacy for public education, a commitment to diversity, and engagement of parents and community," said Harriet Sanford, President and CEO of the NEA Foundation. "Honoring these educators is our way of thanking them for their excellent work."

"We exist as a company to support those who take care of our children’s future, and the teachers we’re honoring with this award are the best of the best," said Horace Mann President and CEO Pete Heckman. "We salute them for their commitment and thank them for making a difference every day. Our collective future is brighter because of them."

Gillentine was nominated for the award by the Hawaii State Teachers Association, the state’s National Education Association affiliate.

"Dr. Gillentine’s commitment to excellence in teaching and advocacy for the teaching profession touches many lives in many different ways through practice in his classroom, professional development, cultural sensitivity, community engagement, and leadership roles in HSTA," said Wil Okabe, HSTA President. “He is an accomplished, dedicated, but humble educator whose professionalism, advocacy, and personal mission deserve to be recognized. We are honored to count him as a member. He truly embodies teaching – and personal -- excellence."

The other four recipients of the Horace Mann Awards for Teaching Excellence are:

• Lisa Esquibel, a Kindergarten teacher at Davis Elementary School in Cheyenne, WY, holds a Masters degree, ESL Endorsement, and Collaborative Literacy Intervention Project Certification;
• Cara Haney, a Kindergarten teacher at Panther Lake Elementary in Kent, WA, is a National Board Certified and holds a Masters degree;
• Danielle Kovach, a third grade Special Education teacher at Hopatcong Public Schools Hopatcong, NJ, holds two Masters degrees: in Special Education and in Educational Technology; and
• Jeffry Peneston, a ninth grade Earth Sciences teacher at Liverpool High School Liverpool, NY, who is a PhD candidate.

In addition to the recognition, students and educators at the awardees’ school will receive digital arts training from the Pearson Foundation. Video profiles of the awardees will be produced during the trainings and presented at the Gala in February, to an audience of 850 national leaders from the public education, philanthropic, and business sectors. The video profiles of last year’s finalists can be viewed at neafoundation.org.

The NEA Foundation and the National Education Association jointly present the awards with support from NEA Member Benefits, the Horace Mann Companies, the Pearson Foundation, and California Casualty.

The NEA Foundation
The NEA Foundation is a public charity supported by contributions from educators' dues, corporate sponsors, and others who support public education initiatives.We partner with education unions, districts, and communities to create powerful, sustainable improvements in teaching and learning. Visit www.neafoundation.org for more information. Find us on Facebook and Twitter, and visit our blog

I dedicate this work to teachers and I offer them these words of advice: Be who you are. Think and feel and teach the way you do. But stop once in a while and take a look around. Look at where you have been, where you are, where you are going. Only you can decide whether to repave the road, redirect the journey, or redraw the map of your teaching. Our solitude notwithstanding, in this vocation we travel together and share our stories making us less alone and all the richer. ~ From: Understanding Early Literacy Development: The Impact of a Collaborative Professional Development Course, Dissertation submitted, Doctor of Philosophy in Education, Jonathan Gillentine, May 2005.

What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated?
I originally wrote this several weeks ago, but I'd like to publish it again in the hopes that I can help advance a more serious (and genuine) conversation about education in this country. Before we move any further down a path to "reform," we need to take some time to talk about what, exactly, our goals are for our children.

"What does it mean to be well-educated?" This is another one of those simple, but complicated questions I consider daily. Whenever I summarize my view for others, I say something along the lines of, "An educated person is someone who has the habits of mind, hand, and heart to adapt to whatever life might throw at him or her." So what does that mean?

Well, for starters, it's a lot broader than simply being prepared for the work force. My whole body cringes whenever I hear politicians and other public figures talk about education as though its most important (or even sole!) function is serving the needs of the economy. Of course, making a living is important. But one major reason we try to educate all of our citizens in America (something most other countries make no attempt to do -- including many of those we're unfairly compared to in those misleading international rankings!) is to prepare us to act as full participants in a democratic republic. Likewise, I believe that education can and should be personally fulfilling, allowing us to appreciate life more by giving us the power to do things like read for pleasure, or compose music, or better understand the world around us, and so on and so forth.

To me, a good education is about developing:

Habits of mind like curiosity, analysis, criticism, problem-solving and creativity.

The ability to make things, to satisfy a need or just for fun.

The capacity to love yourself, other people, and the environment; and to find an appropriate balance between your own needs and the needs of the group and/or the natural world.

That's way more than can be accomplished in the school day, which is one reason why I reject the idea that teachers and schools are the only ones responsible for educating children. Everyone -- parents, teachers,community members and institutions -- has a role to play, and one of our main goals should be to work together to ensure that this happens. During the school day, however, we can do a lot to achieve these goals. The best classrooms and schools I've seen/worked in embrace the idea that their job is not to fill students' heads with facts and information, but to help them develop certain skills and habits that will be useful in a wide variety of situations. Some do it using project-based learning, where students are continually engaged in a collaborative process of researching, creating, and presenting their learning to others. Others integrate all aspects of the curriculum through the in-depth study of a topic (Ancient Greece, the local watershed, etc.) or questions generated by the teacher and/or students. They take the time to teach and review certain skills to ensure students "get it" whenever necessary. But students spend most of the day actively approaching their learning the way it happens in real life -- where knowledge isn't broken up into subjects, where you have to work with others, and where you must draw upon several skill-sets and bodies of knowledge simultaneously in order to solve problems.

I think there are a lot of ways to provide children with a rich, useful education; there is no one "right" answer that will work for every child or every school. I do believe there are some wrong answers, though, and that's why I do what I do.

For starters, the schools that I'd call "great" assess students frequently to ensure that they're progressing, but their instruction is not "data-driven." After all, if you're trying to develop students into productive, whole people, there is no one measure -- and no valid number! -- that can tell you if you've done that. Great schools do not spend three months of the year on testing, and they certainly don't base all of their instruction on measures as narrow as the ones required by state and federal law. Rather, they observe students all the time, examine the work they produce, and offer ongoing feedback and adjust instruction as necessary.

These schools also operate collaboratively, and recognize that all stakeholders' input can be valid. They don't persecute and blacklist teachers for having differences of opinion or philosophy, or retaliate against them for involving parents in important decisions. They share responsibility and accountability, rather than concentrating power and control into a select few people's hands. (They also make sure that there is enough time for such collaboration to take place; the norm at these schools was for teachers to have 90 or more minutes of planning time. In Denver, for example, teachers get 45 minutes. Whatever additional time is needed has to come from their own "free" time. How many parents out there like the idea of their children's teachers sacrificing sleep and/or lunch to get their work done? Fatigue and low blood sugar... A productive combination, no?)

Finally, good schools aren't forced to treat children or teachers as objects to be standardized. They don't necessarily expect that each student will graduate thinking, talking, and acting like everyone else in the class, and they don't expect that all teachers will practice in exactly the same way. I think that's a really important point to be emphasized. Right now, our school "reform" regime is pushing to make students, teachers, and schools increasingly alike -- by adopting the same standards, pushing for certain types of performance on certain tests, and trying to identify and "scale up" teaching practices and interventions that increase test scores. This will never be a successful process -- human beings are not widgets, and they won't all fit the same mold.

And would that be desirable, if it were possible? I look back at the other part of my view of a good education -- "to adapt to whatever life might throw at him or her." What would happen to a society of people who have been trained to think and act exactly alike? Monocultures in farming are dangerous because when plants are genetically identical,anything that can destroy one of them can destroy them all, causing famine or other problems. Monocultures of thought could be equally dangerous -- what will happen to our democracy if we create students who are uniformly incapable of thinking critically? What will happen if we encourage students to specialize in a certain field, in a world where people's jobs and roles in life change every few years? What will happen if we train children to be dependent on "21st Century" technology, and something happens to render that technology useless? Individuals and societies need to have a wide range of capabilities in order to survive when -- not if -- the world around us changes. I don't see how that can happen when school systems are bribed or forced to submit to one way of doing things.

But that's enough from me. What do you think it means to be well-educated?

Follow Sabrina Stevens Shupe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TeacherSabrina