When it became clear someone at Comfort Agboola’s school in Pullman was going to win a national teaching award, Agboola thought of colleagues who fit the prize.
Moments later, Agboola was crying tears of joy and hugging her colleagues after finding out she was a winner of a Milken Educator Award as blue confetti and bubbles sprung up behind her.
“I saw my students cheering, and I was just amazed,” Agboola, a middle school teacher at Edgar Allan Poe Classical Elementary School, told the Sun-Times Friday morning. “I’m still in a state of shock. I can’t believe this.”
Agboola is one of up to 75 recipients of the award nationwide for the 2023-24 school year, according to the Milken Family Foundation.
Her passion for her job “bleeds into the classroom,” the foundation said. Agboola provides project-based learning opportunities, such as a classroom economy system where students earn “money” by doing class jobs, filing taxes, balancing a checkbook and banking online.
And students had nothing but cheers for “Boo” — their affectionate nickname for Agboola — who they say makes it all fun.
Calvin Humphrey, a 13-year-old student in Agboola’s English class, said she has a “laugh that makes other people laugh.”
“She makes me want to learn more,” the eighth grader said. “She’s simple with her teaching, but also complex at the same time.”
Like combining history with learning to write.
“While learning about typewriter mechanics, upkeep and history, students truly get ‘hands-on’ when using the devices to practice spelling or respond to writing prompts,” according to the foundation.
Agboola is the only educator in Illinois to receive the award for the current school year, and is one of 110 state recipients of the award since the program began in Illinois in 1988.
She will receive $25,000 and an all-expenses paid trip to California to be honored at a red carpet ceremony, where she will meet other recipients from the 2023-24 school year.
“[Being recognized] pushes me to do more in the classroom,” Agboola said. “I can see the growth of my students.”
Each year, educators are considered by a blue-ribbon panel appointed by each state’s department of education, according to the foundation. The educators don’t know they are under consideration.
Described as the “Oscars of teaching,” the Milken Educator Awards were created by Lowell Milken in 1987, recognizing excellence in teaching to inspire educators, students and communities to “celebrate, elevate and activate” teachers from kindergarten through high school.
This year’s awards will bring the total given to recipients to $75 million since the initiative began and the amount invested in the Milken Educator Award national network overall to more than $144 million, according to a news release from the Milken Family Foundation.
Jane Foley, Milken Educator Awards senior vice president, travels from school to school all over the country to help distribute the awards and says every school is “unique in its energy and excitement.”
“Every educator has their own story and their own reason why we want them to be in our network,” Foley told the Sun-Times.
Agboola was honored at a school assembly in front of over 100 students, staff, parents and administrators at the school. Previous Milken Educator Award winners from Illinois were in attendance, as was U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez and Illinois State Supt. of Education Tony Sanders.
“[Agboola] becomes a part of a rich tradition of past Illinois Milken awardees that shape our children’s future,” Kelly said at the assembly.
Martinez said he was “thrilled to join the Milken Family Foundation and the Illinois State Board of Education in celebrating Agboola’s incredible work.”
“Ms. Agboola’s exceptional efforts to ensure her students receive individualized support exemplify the extraordinary efforts by our educators at Poe and throughout the District,” Martinez said in a statement. “Ms. Agboola and every staff member at Poe Classical are held in my highest esteem and exhibit what we as a District can accomplish if we continue to focus on core instruction and welcoming, supportive school communities.”
During the assembly, Agboola thanked her students and said they teach her just as much as she teaches them.
“I am very grateful to be your teacher,” Agboola said, on the brink of tears. “I am grateful to your parents for linking you to me.”
Agboola told the Sun-Times her students have taught her about compassion, honesty and humor. “[They’ve taught me] just how to keep pushing forward.”
Mya Holloway, a seventh grade student in Agboola’s math class, says she is a “very understanding teacher.”
“She doesn’t yell at all,” Mya, 12, said. “If you don’t understand the work, she knows how to explain it in a way where you would.”
