BATESVILLE, Ark. – A Batesville fifth-grade math teacher won a $25,000 Milken Educator Award during a school assembly on Thursday.
Derek Tharp is the 2024-25 winner of the prestigious award, made as a surprise to him at the assembly hosting Arkansas Department of Education Secretary Jacob Oliva, students, staff, visiting dignitaries and media.
The award was presented by Milken Family Foundation representative and National Institute of Excellence in Teaching CEO Joshua Barnett, including an unrestricted $25,000 check. Tharp is the first-ever Milken Educator Award recipient in Batesville’s Southside School District and the 82nd recipient in Arkansas.
Officials said Tharp received the award for his quality as a teacher, including his going the extra mile with students outside scheduled classroom times and acting as a positive, stable role model. This goes as far as Tharp pre-recording lessons for substitute teachers to use on the days he is not in class.
Tharp helps provide dyslexia screenings and services for fourth through 12th-grade students and serves as an interventionalist during the school’s Response to Intervention periods.
For the district, Tharp serves as a testing coordinator, mentor teacher, and personnel policy committee member, and presents professional development sessions on test-taking strategies, classroom management, and more. He has presented at a state reading conference and is a guide for the Arkansas Teaching, Learning and Assessment System (ATLAS) Classroom Tool.
At Southside Middle, Tharp holds a leadership role in his Professional Learning Community (PLC) as a mentor for new educators and has helped develop inclusion model unit lessons for a PLC science program.
The Milken Educator award was first presented in 1987 to promote excellence in education. Lowell Milken is a philanthropist with a strong interest in education.
To read more about Tharp, visit MilkenEducatorAwards.org.