Saturday night, Educators Rising keynote speaker Ashlie Crosson entered the main stage to thunderous applause and immediately demonstrated why she was named the 2025 National Teacher of the Year. Crosson navigated the stage with the skill of a polished politician and showed us how she decorates her laptop. Every year, Crosson has her students at Mifflin County High School in Pennsylvania decorate their laptops with stickers that represent their identity. This exercise helps the class get to know each other, and Saturday night Crosson showed us her stickers.
Each sticker represented one of her EdRising Moments, she told the audience, using the popular student competition to illustrate the events that kept her motivated after 15 years of teaching.
Ashlie’s rising moment is a sticker of her 11th grade journalism teacher, Ms. Williams, hugging Ashlie at her college graduation. As an adolescent, Ashlie didn’t have support at home, and she didn’t have goals because she was afraid to dream. She was an OK student, but her attendance was bad, even in Ms. Williams’ class. But that changed one day when Ms. Williams made a simple request: “Be here”. Ms. Williams convinced Crosson that the class wasn’t the same without her, and that she made a difference.
When Ashlie went to college, she thought she would major in journalism because that had been her favorite class. But she realized it wasn’t journalism she loved — it was the feeling she got from the class and her teacher that she mattered and made a difference. She wanted to instill this feeling of significance in others and decided that if she could do for one kid what Ms. Williams did for her, she would be a success.
Ashlie’s most meaningful moments have been helping her students through similarly hard times. She represented this with a sticker based on a student named Mina who struggled with attendance issues like Crosson did in high school. But Crosson’s words of encouragement, “You deserve to make it,” inspired Mina to graduate. And this advice was so meaningful that Mina tattooed the words on her left arm in Crosson’s handwriting.
Teaching, Crosson told us, is reciprocal: “We rise by lifting others. When you give joy, happiness, and success to your students, they will give you joy, happiness, and success back.” She still feels the ache in her ribs from the hug a student gave her when he received his college acceptance. She emphasized that, in teaching, you get what you give because your students will give back. Saturday night Crosson gave us a speech to be remembered.
