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Yahoo
10-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
El Dorado teacher honored with prestigious education award
One more mark of prestige was added atop the tall pile of educational accolades held by Hope Cahill on Friday morning. But for Cahill, 50, one of five New Mexicans honored this year with the Golden Apple teacher's award — and the only recipient in the Santa Fe school district — it was an elaborate surprise. Students at El Dorado Community School were lured to the school gym Friday morning under the guise of throwing Jell-O at their school principal John Sais, who said a big announcement was to come. ' Somebody in this room is going to be very surprised here in a few minutes,' Sais announced, wearing a full-body plastic suit to stain-proof himself. 'Can I have Ms. Cahill come down please?' he said to the students in the bleachers, with Cahill standing at the top. The students would later have their chance to pelt Sais with Jell-O, but the immediate electrified reactions to Cahill's name — without mentioning the award — proved they didn't need deception to show up and support a beloved educator. 'That's my teacher!' yelled one student, while the rest cheered wildly as Cahill bashfully descended to the center of the gym to accept the award. 050925_md_goldenapple2.jpg Richard Grainger III, right, executive director of the Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico, presents El Dorado Community School science teacher/instructional leader Hope Cahill, center, with a Golden Apple Excellence in Teaching Award on Friday, May 9, 2025. While it is her first Golden Apple, it's not her first accolade. Cahill is heavily decorated, a recipient of the 2020 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching and the district's 2021 Teachers who Inspire Award. And she was one of two honored in 2022 as an Outstanding New Mexico Science Teacher Awardee by the New Mexico Academy of Science. Her latest award is presented by the Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico, a teacher-centered nonprofit that has been issuing the honors for almost 30 years. Aileen Garcia, a former principal and educator, is 'probably the longest-serving member,' of the selection committee, she said, and one of the ones who sat in on Cahill's classroom. 'Hope is very humble,' Garcia said in an inerview. 'And her name, Hope, reflects the attitude she emits to all her students.' Site-visitors like Garcia from the nonprofit sit in on a teacher's classroom after they've been nominated by a student's parents and selected as a finalist by a committee consisting largely of former educators and administrators. Cahill is a relationship-builder, Garcia added, who takes serious stock in students, parents, and colleagues — and she uses those relationships to recognize how to motivate others to succeed. ' She's not just a teacher. She helps with the whole school. I mean, there's nothing she doesn't do,' Garcia said. 050925_md_goldenapple3.jpg El Dorado Community School science teacher/instructional leader Hope Cahill, center holding flowers, poses for a picture as students raise their arms in the air after Cahill was presented with a Golden Apple Excellence in Teaching Award on Friday, May 9, 2025. Cahill, who has taught across subjects and across grades at El Dorado since 2012, is heavily involved, even outside of the school. 'It's about opportunity,' Cahill said in an interview. 'We want our students to be creative, constructive thinkers, and I think it takes opportunities beyond … the classroom to get them there." Outside of her duties as teacher, Cahill also organizes the school's science fair, participates in the STEM Pathways for Girls Conference and serves as a mentor for the Santa Fe High School Supercomputing Challenge team, to name a few of her involvements. 'School was a place I've always felt safe, and I've wanted to be a teacher since I was a little girl,' said Cahill, who moved to Santa Fe from upstate New York over two decades ago. She taught at Capshaw Middle School, now Milagro Middle School in the '90s, she said, before taking a break to be a parent. She returned to teaching at El Dorado Community School in 2012. 'It's never about being the best for me,' Cahill said. 'It's about being my best. and that's what I always tell my students too.'
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Liberty Common teacher, administrator earns prestigioius Milken Educator Award
Chris Reynolds was sitting in the back of the gym with a handful of other teachers during an all-school assembly Friday morning at Liberty Common High School. He had no idea, what was coming. Then, in an effort to mimic a televised entertainment awards show, Colorado Commissioner of Education Susana Cordova, opened a sealed envelope and announced that Reynolds had won a Milken Educator Award, complete with an unrestricted $25,000 cash prize. The awards were designed to be 'the Oscars of education,' said presenter Jane Foley, senior vice president of the Milken Educator Awards. 'We have a great Spanish teacher who was sitting behind me, and I was like, 'Oh gosh, it's going to be you,'' Reynolds said. 'I was kind of shocked when they said my name.' Reynolds is the only Milken Educator Award winner in Colorado this year and one of just 45 nationally, Foley said. Besides Foley, a 1994 winner while she was teaching in Indiana, 10 other previous winners from five different states were on hand for the award presentation, including Scott DeVries, a retired teacher at Preston Middle School in Fort Collins who won the award in 1999. More: Rocky Mountain High School science teacher receives Presidential Award for Excellence All of this year's winners also receive an all-expenses paid trip to the Milken Educator Awards Forum from April 1-3 in Los Angeles, where they will have the opportunity to network with other educators 'about how to broaden their impact on K-12 education,' the Milken Family Foundation said in a news release. This year's winners will each be paired with a veteran Milken Educator mentor. 'I'm at a loss for words,' Reynolds told the assembly after receiving his award. 'My main thought is there's so many other deserving people in this building that could have and should have won this award. And so, I'm grateful to all of you that I get to work with all of you. I love my students.' Reynolds is the assistant principal at Liberty Common High School, a charter school authorized by Poudre School District. He teaches an Advanced Placement course in microeconomics and also is the school's cross-country coach and former athletic director. Reynolds taught economics, government, history and philosophy for 11 years at Mead High School before coming to Liberty Common four years ago, after the oldest of his two children was selected through a lottery to attend Liberty Common's elementary school. 'He's just been a perfect addition to the teaching faculty and now the administration,' said Bob Schaffer, Liberty Common's co-founder, headmaster and a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. 'His training is classical, his commitment to the academic discipline of his coursework is pretty profound and pretty deep. He's an academic leader not just in his classroom and his department but for the entire school.' Reynolds has a particular knack, Schaffer said, for helping students 'who have to put a little extra effort and work into getting across the finish line' to earn a high school diploma. 'He's a godsend.' Foley travels the country throughout the school year honoring winners of the Milken Educator Awards, created in 1987 by philanthropist Lowell Milken. The goal, she said, is to honor teachers who are in the early to middle stages of their career for what they have achieved and the promise of what they can accomplish. There are three goals, she said, in honoring the nation's top K-12 educators. The first is to 'reward them and give them an incentive to stay in the profession,' Foley said. 'The second goal is to bring public recognition and acknowledgement' of the 'good that's happening in education.' And the third, she said, is to get students in the audience to consider careers in education. 'We hope somebody will go home today and say, 'I'm going to be a teacher; I'm going to be a principal, just like Mr. Reynolds.' Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@ and This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Liberty Common teacher, administrator wins prestigious national award
