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16 March 2022
The honor: The Milken Educator Award — the Milken Family Foundation's national award, given since 1987 to early-to-mid-career educators for what they have achieved and for the promise of what they will do, and famous for arriving unannounced at a school assembly with a $25,000 check — came to Mishawaka on 16 March 2022. The Foundation's own educator record names Ryan Towner, principal of Walt Disney Elementary School, as its Indiana recipient of the 2021 season ("IN '21"), one of more than sixty educators honored nationwide that year, surprised before his own school. Towner had been Walt Disney's principal since 2017; the school stands on the city's northwest side in the Penn-Harris-Madison district. The Foundation's profile carries his present post as well — assistant superintendent of Edwardsburg Public Schools, across the Michigan line — and the ledger notes it as the record gives it: the award was earned at a Mishawaka desk, whatever desk he sits at now. With the two Presidential Awards above, the Milken gives this city's schools three national teaching honors in five years, a cluster no reader of the city's size would predict, and one the grantors' records — not local pride — establish.
Sources:
- Milken Educator Awards (milkeneducatorawards.org), educator profile of Ryan Towner, "IN '21," Walt Disney Elementary School, Mishawaka — the award, the school, the principalship from 2017, and the present Edwardsburg post.
- Milken Family Foundation, press release of 16 March 2022 — the $25,000 award presented at the school; Towner among more than sixty educators honored nationwide that season.