Ted Hoskinson didn’t move to Boca Raton with big plans of launching a nonprofit. When he arrived, he had little on his mind except improving his tennis game and enjoying retirement with his wife, Anne. The couple had long discussed ways to give back—even writing into their wills that all of the money they left behind would go to support children in need—but they hadn’t decided what that support would look like.
“We didn’t know what exactly that meant, because we didn’t think we were ever going to die,” Hoskinson says. “Who plans to die, right?”
Unfortunately, the couple never got around to making those plans together. Anne passed away in 2016, and the daunting task of fulfilling the couple’s philanthropic ambitions fell to Hoskinson. Luckily, he knew where to start.
Prior to Anne’s passing, Hoskinson, along with two friends, had been visiting public elementary schools and surprising teachers with “Snickers Awards” as a way to show appreciation for their hard work, with $100 in gift cards presented in a bag with a Snickers bar taped to the back. Having been an educator for nearly 20 years, Hoskinson knew what that recognition meant to the teachers.
“You could see it in the teachers’ eyes, how great that was, how they felt that they were appreciated,” Hoskinson says. “To me, that was the real key.”
Hoskinson decided that showing appreciation for extraordinary teachers would form the foundation of a nonprofit he would call Roots and Wings, a name that carried special significance for both he and his wife. “[Anne] found this passage in a book which talked about the roots, which is the foundation that you have before you can spread your wings,” Hoskinson recalls.
In the first year alone, Hoskinson presented the newly dubbed Above and Beyond Awards to 135 teachers across five Title I schools—schools that receive federal funding to assist students from low-income families—in Palm Beach County. At the end of the school year, he asked the principal of a local school what else he could do to help, and she gave him an answer he didn’t expect. “She said, ‘help my kids read,’” Hoskinson says. It was a profound ask, which Hoskinson responded to with a profoundly simple solution: Give the teachers who see these kids every day the funding to provide struggling students extra attention.
Hoskinson soon launched Roots and Wings’ Project UpLift program, the funding of which pays teachers to give students after-school instruction that addresses their difficulties on an individual level.
“That’s part of the sweet sauce that makes the difference,” explains Hoskinson. “Because you have a teacher who, during the day, can’t really reach those kids, but if they really want to make a difference in those kids’ lives, now they get that real chance.”
But there’s another, more crucial ingredient to this “sweet sauce.” “The most important thing that you can do for a child is to build their confidence and self-esteem,” Hoskinson says. Since its founding, Roots and Wings has helped more than 4,500 students spread their wings through Project UpLift, and honored more than 1,400 teachers with Above and Beyond Awards. Kids that go through the Project UpLift program, who start at the bottom 25th percentile of their class, are being promoted to the next grade at rates sometimes exceeding that of the rest of the class.
Roots and Wings’ effectiveness in achieving tangible results for students has earned Hoskinson and the organization several awards, including a President’s Lifetime Achievement Award given by former President Joe Biden. And while Hoskinson appreciates the recognition, he sees the awards more as “stepping stones” to addressing the existential issue of childhood illiteracy.
Quoting a study from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, Hoskinson says, “In the fourth grade, if you’re not proficient in reading, there’s a two-third’s chance that you’re going to end up in prison or on welfare.
“The problem is massive, but it is solvable,” he adds. “The good news for us is that I know that we’re changing lives … by making them feel more important, and by being happy about what they do.”
To learn more about Roots and Wings, visit rootsandwingsinc.org.
This story is from the May/June 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
