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Collin Binko was holding back tears as he told a room packed with students and local and state elected officials that he had the “best job in the world.”
Binko is a fine arts teacher at Jackson Hole High School and the district’s music coordinator.
Created in 1987, the Milken Educator Award honors 45 early-to-mid career K-12 educators around the country with an unrestricted $25,000 cash prize. Teachers cannot be nominated but are sourced through a confidential selection process and reviewed by state panels.
Jennifer Fuller, vice president of the Milken Family Foundation, compared the honor to gold medals in sports, Oscars or Grammys in entertainment or the Nobel prize in sciences.
“Isn’t it odd that the one profession that prepares all of these other professions to be successful hasn’t had that same kind of recognition?” she asked the students.
When Fuller announced Binko’s name as a 2025 recipient, her voice was quickly swallowed by students’ screams of excitement.
Eighth grader Annabelle Dombroski said Binko was the first to get her invested in choir when he was the choir teacher at Jackson Hole Middle School.
“I just feel like he’s an amazing person,” she said, “he totally deserved this award.”
The saxophonist for Jackson-based band Cache Funk will also receive an all-expenses paid trip to the Milken Educator Awards Forum in Los Angeles.
The last time a Teton County School District teacher won the award was in 2019. It went to Munger Mountain dual immersion second grade teacher Chris Bessonette.
Broadly, Jackson Hole High School is seen as a leader in the state, said Megan Degenfelder, Wyoming’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.
She spoke to students before the announcement.
“You’re getting credit for your summer job and your internships, those sports that you’re doing in the summer, your piano lessons,” she told students. “That’s what this district, this high school is a leader in.”
Jackson High School’s graduation rate is the highest of high schools in size at 93%, she said.
