With screams from his fifth-grade students at Kenneth R. Olson Middle School in Tabernacle, all Michael Dunlea III could do was smile.
“Mr. Dunlea, you are being inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame,” exclaimed David Begnaud, a contributor for CBS News Team, who traveled cross country to help announce five teachers headed to the National Teachers Hall of Fame in June.
“I’m blown away,” said Dunlea, a 22-year teaching veteran. “I’m absolutely stunned … and really uncomfortable.”
The honorees received surprise notifications of their selection at their schools earlier this spring. Thanks to a new collaboration between the Kansas-based hall of fame and the show “CBS Mornings,” all five teachers were flown to New York City to be celebrated together on national television.
With a collective 135 years of classroom experience spanning from New Jersey to Hawaii, the educators exemplify dedication, innovation and the transformative power of teaching, according to the hall.
Dunlea was honored along with Tom Jenkins, a retired STEM and science teacher from Greenon Junior Senior High School in Ohio; Dr. Valerie Camille Jones Ford, a middle-school math teacher and mathematics department chair at Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta; Michelle Pearson, a social studies teacher at Century Middle School in Colorado; and Pascale Creek Pinner, an eighth-grade science teacher at Hilo Intermediate School in Hawaii.
“Recognizing great educators is not just a celebration, it’s a statement about what we value as a nation,” noted Maddie Fennell, the hall of fame’s executive director.
Dunlea looks at teaching as his calling. He earned an education degree through an alternate route program and has taught in New Jersey schools since 2003. He has been at Olson since 2017. He says his overall goal is to uplift the students in his classroom and build a culture of empathy with them.
Superintendent Shaun Banin credits Dunlea for the soaring academic achievement of his students and for improving the culture of the school as a whole with his focus on inclusion and collaboration. As an educator, he has dedicated his career to building a classroom culture rooted in empathy, with a focus on breaking down racial and cultural barriers through student connections.
Dunlea’s teacher recognitions include:
- 2014 – National Teacher Fellow, American Achieves Fellowship for Teachers and Principals
- 2018 – Presidential Award of Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, National Science Foundation
- 2020 – New Jersey State Teacher of the Year Finalist, New Jersey Department of Education
- 2020 – Burlington County New Jersey Teacher of the Year, New Jersey Department of Education
- 2020 – Global Teacher Prize Top 50 Finalist, The Varkey Foundation
- 2021 – Innovative Teacher of the Year Award, The Henry Ford Center
Established in 1989 by Emporia State University, the National Teachers Hall of Fame honors career instructors from public, private, and parochial schools nationwide. To be eligible, nominees must have at least 20 years of full-time classroom experience and go through a rigorous selection process.
The five teachers inducted in June bring the number of hall of fame honorees to 170. They and their schools were awarded $200,000.
To learn more or to nominate a teacher for the hall, visit https://nthf.org.
