A former top teacher in Minnesota took a knee during the national anthem at Monday’s college football championship — which President Trump attended — to stand up for “marginalized and oppressed people,” she said.

Kelly Holstine, the state’s “Teacher of the Year” in 2018, was among a group of educators honored before the game at the Superdome in New Orleans.

She later tweeted a photograph of herself kneeling while referencing former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Like many before, I respectfully kneeled during Nat’l Anthem because, ‘No one is free until we are all free,’” wrote Holstine, who resigned last summer as an English teacher at an alternative high school in Shakopee.

The tweet also included photographs of Trump alongside First Lady Melania.

Holstine’s decision to protest follows her call to boycott a White House ceremony in April honoring top educators from around the country. An award-winning teacher from Kentucky also skipped the visit.

“I just decided that it felt like the right thing to do, to have a very respectful protest,” Holstine told The Hill. “It’s really Martin Luther King Jr. says it best: ‘Nobody’s free until we’re all free.”

Holstine learned that Trump would be on the field prior to her decision to take a knee. She and other honorees were told they could place their hands on their hearts while the national anthem played — or choose instead not to do so, she told the outlet.

That led Holstine – who now works at OutFront Minnesota, an LGBTQ advocacy group – to question whether standing without putting her hand on her heart would be “enough” to show her support of marginalized people.

She then made the decision to kneel after consulting with her wife, the Hill reported.

“Not everybody is given the opportunity to have a voice, and I can take a small moment, a respectful moment of protest, and exercise my First Amendment rights, and stand up for my students and for vulnerable adults and for people who are not treated in the way that they should be,” Holstine said. “It feels like my responsibility to do that.”

The other teachers who realized what was happening were “very supportive,” she said.

Her tweet, however, garnered some criticism, including from some who called her behavior “embarrassing” and claimed it “invalidated” her previous work as an educator.

“I would make sure my child never sat in your classroom,” one woman wrote. “Not sure how you received teacher of the year!”

In the past, Trump has castigated NFL players like Kaepernick for taking a knee during the National Anthem, calling them disrespectful and unpatriotic.