Distinguished Educator Award to be presented to Ripon High School math teacher Hannah Truesdale

Hannah Truesdale, a math teacher at Ripon High School, will be honored as Ripon College’s Distinguished Educator for 2025 at the commencement ceremony May 18.

The Distinguished Educator Award is given out annually to an elementary, middle or high school teacher or administrator who has greatly impacted students. Nominations are made by Ripon College seniors and recent graduates. This year’s honoree was nominated by a student who wishes to remain anonymous.

“It’s an honor to be recognized this way,” Truesdale said. “I know that it’s a very special thing for a student to feel that I was an influence in this way.”

Truesdale is from New London, Wisconsin, and received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics education from UW-Stevens Point. After graduating, she started teaching at Ripon High School and has continued to work there for the last 13 years.

“I come from a family of educators, so education was always really important,” Truesdale said. “My dad was an elementary school teacher and my grandpa was a teacher and later a principal. Some of my dad’s siblings, as well as extended family members, were also teachers. I knew I wanted to do something in the math field (in college), but I had to prove to myself that I actually wanted to teach, just because I think everybody expected that I probably would.”

Truesdale said another inspiration for her becoming a math teacher came from the math teachers she had in high school, one to whom she was a teacher’s assistant.

She teaches juniors, seniors and a few sophomores in Algebra II, Trigonometry/Precalculus and AP Calculus.

“I’ve always had the mindset of, ‘I know I love math, but math is not many people’s favorite subject,’” Truesdale said. “My goal is to make students feel like they can be successful in my class, whether or not they have that mindset. I just want them to feel like they can do it if they try and that they can get help when they need it.”

Truesdale said it’s meaningful to her that she’s an adult who her students can learn from as they become adults and go into the world.

“I try to show them that they should treat people with kindness and be welcoming to others’ opinions,” Truesdale said. “You’re always going to be working with people, so be confident in sharing your ideas, but also be willing to truly listen to the ideas that other people have.”

She said as a school, she and her colleagues have focused on helping students focus on the skills they are learning and how those skills will be used in life outside of the class curriculum and content.

“Students might not use all of the content that we’re learning in class outside of these walls, but they will be using the skills from their math class like problem-solving, having to reason and use critical thinking every day,” Truesdale said. “I want to help them learn skills they can use to be successful in life, as well as how to be a good person.”