In Conversation With 2025 National Teacher of the Year Ashlie Crosson
Meet the 2025 National Teacher of the Year—Ashlie Crosson—an educator ensuring that students in her small hometown grow into lifelong learners who feel confident stepping into a world outside of the one they know
In a thoughtful interview with the Under Secretary for Education at Smithsonian, Dr. Monique M. Chism, Ashlie Crosson spoke with honesty and authenticity about what it means to take on this new role. Their conversation offered a glimpse into the values that shape her work, the community that raised her, and the strength it takes to lead while keeping students at the center.
Meeting the Moment
“As teachers, we are often not comfortable in the spotlight,” Ashlie Crosson says. “We push a spotlight onto our students – and step into the background.”
But this year, as the 2025 National Teacher of the Year, Crosson is doing something that she often encourages her students to do: step forward, take up space, and use her voice. For the rural Pennsylvania educator and the first from her state to be named National Teacher of the Year, this new role is not only about recognition —it's a personal challenge to grow, stretch, and model the kind of risk-taking she believes is essential to learning. “Take the risk—your capabilities are endless,” she tells students. Stepping outside your comfort zone is not just how growth happens—it's how transformation begins.
Crosson is a Mifflin County School District educator teaching a variety of English courses, including an inspiring “Survival Stories” course – a course that invites students to consider the lived experiences of teen peers across the globe – and to recognize their shared humanity. When asked how she invites diverse viewpoints into a rural classroom, Crosson simply responded, “If other people are living it, we should be able to talk about it.”
This foundational belief in shared stories and perspectives shapes Crosson’s larger educational philosophy. She sees the classroom as both a sanctuary and a launchpad—a place where students can be grounded and expand their worldviews. From day one, she invites students to help shape an environment built on empathy, openness, and curiosity.
“We start by asking: What does it mean to be open-minded, empathetic, tolerant? What does real dialogue look like?” In encouraging students to wrestle with these questions, she is also teaching them to find their voice, reflect on what authenticity looks like, and lift others up along the way.
Formative Moments Offer Parallel Experiences
Ashlie Crosson’s journey is a powerful full-circle story: she now teaches in the same district that once inspired her to pursue teaching. She recalls being able to “name great teacher after great teacher as early as kindergarten” and speaks fondly of a particular high school journalism teacher, who invested in her personal growth and helped her believe in herself. She now continues to be that kind of teacher for her students.
Another formative moment in her career came from a high school trip to Europe, visiting seven countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, the Vatican, and England). It was the first time she had been on a plane, had used her passport, and spent time away from home. That trip, offered to her by an art educator at her school, changed her sense of the world and her place within it. After experiencing this trip and later in her teaching career experiencing a year-long fellowship with the U.S. Fulbright Program, Crosson realized the impact of global education and advocated to her superintendent to make such opportunities available to her own students. Today, Crosson is leading a similar trip to Europe for her high schoolers, bringing these transformative and expansive experiences back to her students!
A Milestone Moment
Crosson will serve as an opening keynote speaker in this year’s Smithsonian National Education Summit. The Summit’s theme is “Together We Thrive: One Nation, Indivisible” and is intended to prepare educators to teach about the semiquincentennial.
In the coming 250th anniversary of the nation, Crosson hopes her students can revisit the nation’s founding documents and reflect on areas that the nation has surpassed what we ever expected, and ways that we can still grow. Through the idea of “A More Perfect Union,” she expresses to her students the beauty in the concept that we are always working towards perfection as a nation, despite knowing it is an endless pursuit. She reminds them that perfection isn’t a fixed destination, but a direction—an ongoing journey marked by effort, resilience, and growth. In her classroom, failure is not final; it’s simply part of becoming.
And with that, Crosson leaves us with a question she returns to often—both for herself and for those she teaches: “Can you facilitate your own growth in a way that is authentic to you?”
Editor's Note: Join 2025 National Teacher of the Year, Ashlie Crosson, for the 2025 Smithsonian National Education Summit on July 15-17. Crosson will deliver an online keynote address on Tuesday, July 15 at 10:45 a.m., Eastern. More information about the session line-up and free registration is available here: https://s.si.edu/EducationSummit2025
