A whirlwind week of activities is now underway in Emporia, honoring the very best of the best in education.
The 2025 honorees arrived in Emporia on Monday evening, where they were welcomed with an informal dinner for themselves and their host families. The full slate of activities gets underway Tuesday with inductees set to tour the Hall of Fame, museum, and the city of Emporia with a historic tour led by Roger Heineken. Tuesday’s activities will also include a formal dinner and trivia challenge inside of the Lyon County History Center.
The schedule continues Wednesday with a meeting of the NTHF Board of Directors, the annual on-air interview with KVOE at 10 am, and the presentation of a proclamation from the Emporia City Commission. Thursday will see the inductees travel to Topeka to tour the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site with a lunch and roundtable to follow. Thursday evening will also see the annual Emporia Municipal Band concert and Root Beer Float social at Fremont Park.
This all leads up to the rededication ceremony for the Memorial to Fallen Educators on Friday morning, followed by the induction banquet, both at Emporia State, Friday evening. The rededication of the memorial will be broadcast on KVOE.com/TV.
Ahead of all of this, KVOE News spoke with NTHF Director Maddie Fennel, who says the excitement for the week is at an all-time high. While there were some changes to the slate of induction activities and those preceding it, including the announcement of the hall of fame class on CBS Mornings this year, Fennel says they have largely left the schedule of events unchanged as compared to years past.
That said, she tells KVOE News they have been very focused on increasing the amount of time inductees get to spend within the community and amongst the Emporia population.
Fennel tells KVOE News the hall wanted the inductees to have more time within the community to connect with it and its members, saying the one thing they hear each year is how welcoming and supportive the city is.
This year’s list of inductees is as follows:
*Michael Dunlea III, a fifth-grade teacher at Tabernacle, New Jersey
*Tom Jenkins, a retired STEM and science teacher in Enon, Ohio
*Dr Valerie Jones Ford, a middle school math teacher and department chair in Atlanta, Georgia
*Michelle Pearson, a social studies teacher at Thornton, Colorado
*Dr Pascale Creek Pinner, an eighth-grade science teacher from Hilo, Hawaii
More information is available at nthf.org.
