Updated, 8:30 a.m.

Good morning on this warmer Tuesday.

This month, we asked our readers to nominate candidates for our New Yorker of the Year column. (We offered a few suggestions to get the ball rolling.) We received more than 100 submissions about model citizens who have made a difference — in ways big and small — during 2016.

This week, we are highlighting a few of the exemplary (noncelebrity) neighbors you nominated. We look forward to meeting more of them in 2017. And as always, if you would like to share a story, you can write to us at nytoday@nytimes.com.

Lee Gabay, an Inspiring New Yorker

“Before we go on, I want to congratulate you on finishing a book,” Lee Gabay told his students. “That’s a beautiful thing you did today.”

Mr. Gabay, an English teacher at Brooklyn Democracy Academy in the Brownsville section of the borough, was finishing a lecture on John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”