In 2024, the mission of Honored remained vital to the ever-evolving landscape of teaching. Teachers across the country faced immense challenges, including rising burnout and low job satisfaction. Despite these challenges, educators continued to inspire and change their students’ lives in extraordinary ways.
At Honored, we pride ourselves on the power of storytelling to uplift great educators. Through testimonials directly from students and family members, teachers not only receive positive feedback, but they also feel more inspired to continue their profound work.
Through our national teacher recognition program, Honored National, students and families across the country have provided direct, meaningful recognition of their teachers. This year, we received over 600 Honor Stories from across 45 states, the District of Columbia, and Armed Forces Europe. We also recognized 10 of the teachers nominated by their students with the prestigious Honored National Teacher Award, which includes $5,000 in unrestricted cash as well as a profile by a world-class writer or a featured episode on Inspiring Teachers: The Honored Podcast.
Our in-school teacher recognition program, Honored Schools, also continued to thrive. In the spring, we recognized 11 Life-Changing Teacher Award recipients across five cities: Washington, DC; Indianapolis, IN; New Haven, CT; Houston, TX; and Inglewood, CA. For the 2024-2025 school year, we are *honored* to hand over leadership of this rapidly growing initiative to our amazing partners at the College Football Playoff Foundation. They plan to expand the program into Atlanta, GA, and New Orleans, LA, to partner with 99 schools.
“For the 2024-2025 school year, we are *honored* to hand over leadership of this rapidly growing initiative to our amazing partners at the College Football Playoff Foundation.”
- Karen Sonneborn, Co-Founder of Honored
During 2024, both programs received over 7,000 Honor Stories from students and families. These stories meaningfully impact educators, and the results of our teacher surveys consistently offer compelling evidence of program efficacy. In 2024:
In 2024, we launched Inspiring Teachers: The Honored Podcast to shine a spotlight on the extraordinary impact teachers make across the country. Every month, we will bring you the story of the recipient of our Honored National Teaching Award as they share their impact alongside their nominators.
In September, we welcomed a new Program Associate, Hannah Bowyer-Rivette, whose experience makes her the ideal person to support Honored’s National program as we embark upon our next phase of growth. Karen Sonneborn and Katherine Boone continue to partner closely with Hannah as Co-Chairs of Honored’s Board of Directors.
We couldn’t have done any of this without your incredible support as a member of our community. With your support, we continue to share the stories of powerful educators and uplift them through recognition.
We are excited to enter 2025, and we look forward to honoring even more life-changing teachers across the country! If you have a life-changing teacher you want to nominate for our $5,000 Honored National Teaching Award, head to Honored.org/nominate to share your story.
