This year’s accolades for 2025 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year go to Bryan Silver of Kalani High School, a career technical education teacher with 24 years of experience. Silver created an engineering course at Kalani, and leads a robotics program that has secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant support, fostering students’ interest in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math.

“Our role as educators is evolving,” he said, at an award ceremony at Washington Place. “It is not just about imparting knowledge, but also fostering curiosity, encouraging new ways of thinking.”