In support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in recognition of the urgent need to recruit and empower educators of color, Penguin Random House Education (PRHE) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) have reimagined their annual Teacher Awards program for 2020, which they began cosponsoring and administering in 2019.

This year, in lieu of distributing grants for its two competitions, the National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry, which honor teachers’ creativity in successfully instilling a lifelong love of reading and poetry in their students’ classrooms, PRHE and NCTE jointly will make a $25,000 donation on behalf of both award programs to the Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award Program (EC-EOC), which supports early-career teachers of color as they build accomplished teaching careers in literacy education.

This dual donation will double the number of teachers who can be accepted into the program next year.

Built upon the Penguin Random House Teacher Awards for Literacy, which began in 2012 and has awarded more than $180,000 in teacher grants to date, this new NCTE partnership awards two separate and distinct grants, each $10,000.

The National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers honors a teacher who inspires their students to read all genres of writing. The Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry honors Ms. Angelou’s legacy by recognizing a teacher who inspires their students to love poetry. In addition, honorable mentions receive book donations for their classrooms from Penguin Random House. Click here for more information, and view the 2019 winners below.