LEWISTOWN, Pa. — When Mifflin County High School English teacher Ashlie Crosson made the decision to become an educator after starting her college career as a journalism major, it was because she felt nothing would be more fulfilling than to make a difference in the lives of students just the way her teachers had for her.

Suffice it to say, she has achieved that goal and then some.

Crosson — who received a master’s degree in educational leadership from the Penn State College of Education — was recently named Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year by the Pennsylvania Department of Education at an event in Hershey. That she was chosen as the winner from a pool of 12 finalists came as a surprise, at least to her.

“They didn't give you any advance notice that you were winning,” Crosson said. “You just find out, and then you give a speech when you win. So, we all wrote a speech, and I had been very flippantly referring to it as ‘the speech I'll never give.’ And that's what I titled it in my Google Docs. So, I guess the joke was on me.

"The other teachers are also amazing people. I really felt like I was in a room of giants, and most of them have more years of experience than I do. All 11 of them over me was how it felt. So, I'm very honored and privileged to represent our class because there are tremendous educators amongst the 2024 finalists.”

Crosson, who received her bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Susquehanna University in 2011, began her teaching career in Delaware. After a year, she was able to return to Pennsylvania as she joined the Bellefonte Area School District. It was during her eight-year tenure there that she opted to pursue a master’s degree from Penn State, taking a mixture of online courses through World Campus and in-person classes at the nearby University Park campus.

She enrolled in the Educational Leadership program, which appealed to her because of her desire to study curriculum and development in a program that wasn’t geared toward aspiring school principals — a combination that proved difficult to find. She found what she was looking for at Penn State and credits the program and the faculty who taught and advised her with taking her career to the next level.

“That helped me thrive and that helped me become a much stronger teacher because I was looking through the lens of curriculum and through the lens of coaching,” Crosson said. “My adviser was Nona Prestine. She was fantastic. She really showed me what it was like to be a professional in the field of education rather than a teacher in the field of education.”

After finishing her master’s, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the opportunity for a homecoming arose and Crosson took it — accepting a position in the very same Mifflin County School District she had attended as a student.

Crosson says she always felt a calling to return to her hometown to teach and become a colleague of some of the same people who had been impactful in her life. She now gets to do that teaching the subjects she loves — Advanced Placement (AP) writing and journalism.

She now finds herself as that teacher uplifting her students while working with the very educator who was most impactful in her own life.

“Tona Williams is the number one reason I'm a teacher,” Crosson said. “She was my journalism teacher and my media teacher, and she's the one who wrote my letter of recommendation for college, proofread my essays. She saw potential in me when I didn't see it in myself. She made her students feel like they matter, and she still does. And she teaches 27 steps away from me now. So, coming back and being able to teach with her, that's really been like a personal dream come true for me.”

Crosson has made it her mission to ensure her students’ education is as authentic as possible. In her journalism classes, the students publish a school newspaper, run social media accounts including TikTok, and produce a magazine about the school district.

Not only do these experiences give students in her classes a taste of what working professionals do, said Crosson, but by highlighting the good things happening within the district, it serves to combat some of the negativity surrounding public education in recent years, and it allows the local community to celebrate the strengths of their children's school experiences the public might not learn about otherwise.

Her teaching style is also clearly making an impression on her pupils. When Crosson returned to her classroom after spending a few days away at the awards ceremony, she walked into a room that had been caringly decorated by her students in celebration — often requiring them to give up their after-school free time to do so.

She has also experienced students sharing major life milestones with her — sometimes before their parents even find out the news.

“Twice actually, there were kids that came to me and told me about their college acceptance before they told their family and that's wild,” Crosson said. “To know that they're so excited and they feel like you're such a part of their success and their future that they want to share that with you instantaneously is like — you get chills for that kind of stuff.”

It's that power to drastically change someone’s life for the better that drives Crosson’s dedication to teaching and learning, she said — and probably was a big reason why she was chosen as Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year.

“Education is the great equalizer,” Crosson said. “It’s the thing that can pull somebody out of poverty. It's the thing that can humble you. The reason that we believe in public education and the reason that we invest in it as a society is because that's how we better our country, that's how we create our next leaders and inventors and trailblazers and entrepreneurs.”

As Teacher of the Year, Crosson now has several public engagements and new opportunities on her calendar. Over the next two years, her obligations include several appearances in Pennsylvania as well as a trip to Washington, D.C. While it's been an exciting adventure so far, Crosson said she still looks forward to returning to her classroom — and her students — each day.

“It’s the lasting impact that you get to have and that you get to see kids grow up and become the people that you always knew they could be — it was just a matter of time until they figured it out, too,” she said.