I became a teacher by luck.
I was a chemical engineering major at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, where I grew up. There was a Special Olympics event, and I was setting up for it because I worked with a gym. One of the coaches said, ‘Hey, would you mind coming over and saying hi to the athletes? They are really enthralled by how tall you are.’ I’m six foot seven, and I went over.
They were the most authentic folks I’d met. All college-aged kids like dressing the same, talking the same, listening to the same music, and all of that. But the special ed students were really authentic. They were hugging each other. They were just really different. I wanted to be a part of that.
My decision was that fast. I called my mom from college. This was 1993—before everyone had cellphones. I called her from a landline and said, ‘Mom, I think I know what I want to be. I want to be a special ed teacher.’ I was deep into my chemical engineering major, but I realized I never really wanted to do that. I was just a good math and science student.
It was too late to change my major, so I went straight to graduate school to become a special ed teacher. As soon as I graduated, I got a job as a teacher assistant too—they call it ‘paraprofessional.’ I started going to night school at Jersey City College. I did it fast. I was taking a ton of classes. I did winter sessions and summer sessions. So a year and a half after I graduated undergrad, I had my master’s in special ed and my certification.
I can’t say that I felt prepared, but I think the time I spent as a teacher assistant was very helpful. When you get your first classroom, I can’t imagine there is a human who feels totally comfortable. It is a tricky thing. But it was great.
I would say there was one time in my career when I almost gave it up. I had been teaching for eight years, and I was broke—so broke that I had an eviction notice. I was getting payday loans just to get by. I had moved to Arizona with a woman I was dating in graduate school, but when we split up, I was closing in on 30 and suddenly on my own. An apartment in Phoenix, at the time, wasn’t that expensive. But in the early years of teaching, you don’t make much, and I had racked up debt just trying to survive.
I was scrambling every month, and one month, I just couldn’t make ends meet. A friend of mine from college had also moved to Arizona—he was a financial planner—and he told me, ‘You have a gift for speaking to people. You could be a financial planner.’ It was the end of the school year, so the timing was right. I figured, why not? I’ll give it a shot.
By September, I was trained and doing financial planning. But I decided to throw my resume online. My current district found it, reached out, and called me in for an interview. The moment they did, I knew—I had to get back into the classroom. I went to the interview, got the job, and I’ve been here ever since.
Those were some lean times. It’s tough to be a grown, professional adult and not be able to pay your rent, to have to borrow money just to stay afloat.
My classroom is a self-contained special education classroom. That typically means that students stay in that same learning environment all day. At our school, we have three self-contained classes, and our students get to move through those three classes, and they have electives like PE and art and things like that. However, the balance of their day is in the room with a teacher who specializes in teaching self-contained.
My high school students’ reading levels are typically pre-kindergarten—maybe a couple first grade reading and math levels. We do a lot of laundry in our classrooms. If you’re out and about in the world, you probably would know right off the bat that my students have a learning or physical disability, whereas there are special ed programs where you would never know that, right? So this space looks quite different from the typical learning environment.
I love this work. I love the Maryvale community at large. A lot of Hispanic folks came here in the ’80s, and they created this community. When I first arrived, I felt it looked like the space where I grew up in New Jersey.
Here, if you show that you care and give a full effort, the community rallies around you. I have a super close relationship with so many parents of students who have graduated. It’s given me so much love that I can’t imagine leaving.
I was this high-achieving student, and everybody said, ‘He’s gonna be a doctor.’ You know, all of that stuff for high-achieving kids in underserved communities. But I can also afford to love. And when your teaching salary increases, like it does in most jobs, eventually you hit a sweet spot, and you also have great benefits. I have great healthcare, and I have this great pension waiting for me. So now I am no longer worried about the financial aspects.
Now, I don’t think it’s possible for someone to pull me away from teaching. No way.
A lot of the folks I grew up around had an activist spirit, including my mom. She is my favorite person and who I’m the closest to in the world. In the beginning, when I met these super authentic kids, I wanted to be around them and I thought, ‘I need to be an advocate for these folks.’ They need a voice that is not just theirs.
I always joke about how my mom would say, ‘What about that engineering money?’ when I told her I wanted to be a special ed teacher. But my mom has always been about living your life fully and completely.
Around the pandemic, I felt like I was re-energizing as a teacher—I know, I know, it sounds weird.
From the beginning of my teaching career, people have told me I’m a good teacher, for whatever reason—whether it’s my classroom management, the fact that my kids seem to like me, or that they do well. Part of it is that I love it a lot. I try really hard to do well at it. It’s always been my thing.
When I was in grade school, I was always trying hard—I wanted to get all A’s and B’s. As a teacher, when your class is always solid, you can start coasting. And then you just keep doing the same thing to keep it that way.
When COVID happened, I suddenly felt like a new teacher again. Teaching online, I wasn’t getting the engagement I was used to, so I got creative. I was teaching some kids at 9:00 at night, doing individual 30-minute sessions throughout the day on top of our group lessons. I know it was easier for me because I don’t have kids or pets; I had the flexibility to do that.
I started seeing my students in a different light. When I came back to the classroom, I knew what I needed to do—I had to make space for individual time every day. I have a student who is so good at history; she could be in a general education classroom, right? But her reading skills are not there. I changed up my style based on virtual learning. I also got way closer to the parents, and it improved my classroom community as well. That whole experience recharged me.
I also run a social justice camp with general education students. Some of my special ed students come too, but their parents have to be willing to let them go to an overnight camp for five days. For most parents, that’s too much. But I tell them: this camp helps students connect with peers they wouldn’t otherwise meet. It’s about doing that justice work—not just for the sake of it, but to build real community here at Maryvale High.
There are 3,000 students in this school. They’re not automatically connected. We have to make it happen.
We’ve been building this camp for years and years, and we’ve been co-directing it the whole time. I’m always trying to update the activities we do and constantly recruiting students because I truly believe it makes our school community so much better. It helps students become better versions of themselves, so when they go out into the world, they have more open minds and are better prepared to connect with people who are gonna be different from those in the Maryvale community.
They’re gonna leave and go out there—whether it’s for college, where they’ll definitely meet people who are very different from them, or for jobs, where they’ll encounter coworkers from different backgrounds, genders, and ability levels—and they’ll need those skills.
You always have to be fighting to be better, to learn what people outside of your own experience are going through. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, I know everything there is to know about what Black people need, what Native American people need, what trans folks need, or what people with different ability levels need.’ That is a constantly evolving thing.
I think about a specific student—she graduated about four years ago. I talk to her all the time, and actually, I talked to her today. She came into my classroom because her parents felt she needed a self-contained environment for safety. Her learning level was maybe a little higher than most of my students, and she grasped academics pretty quickly.
I remember she had a fear of football. We use ClassDojo, which is like a token economy where students earn points for different things. I told my class, ‘If y’all come to the football game, you’ll get school spirit points for the day.’ She said, ‘Oh, I kind of want to go.’ So I talked to her mom and told her, ‘I’ll be working at the game. She can come up into the press box with me.’ That made her comfortable, and that’s how it worked out.
Then, she wanted to go to a school dance. Her mom said no, but I told her, ‘I’ll come to your car, walk her into the dance, watch her for the night, and then walk her back to your car.’ Her mom was apprehensive at first, but I reassured her.
I told her mom, ‘I think she’s ready to be out and about. She doesn’t need a self-contained curriculum academically. She could stay in my advisory class and maybe one other class because I know I can support her in certain ways. But she could use some next-level academic work. I can’t be the one providing all of it.’
By her senior year, she was on the basketball team. On senior night, she made a three-point basket, and the whole place erupted. She was in student government. She was also a leader at my social justice camp for five days. And now, she’s in college—my first and only student who has gone to a college program.
Her journey was a transformation of our expectations. It was proof that our expectations for students need to be limitless. If her mom and I hadn’t built the kind of trust where she felt comfortable letting her daughter go to camp for five days, or go to games, or be in student government, or play on a basketball team, her life would be very different today.
It’s important to build a strong community—with your classroom, with parents, and with students—and students shouldn’t be limited or boxed in. This is particularly important for special education classes, because these students have individualized education plans for a reason. They have the ability to break out of whatever expectations we place on them. It needs to be about the individual.
The beauty of my classroom is that my students really love school. If a high school teacher is listening to this and hears me say that all of my students love school—I know that’s not typically how high school works. But they come in ready to love each other. They are super open to learning all things, building a family-like environment, and experiencing life fully. They give you their full selves.
I talk a lot about authenticity. When I first meet my students, I can immediately tell if a student doesn’t love me—they don’t hide how they feel. They show their full selves, which allows me to adjust. If a student is frustrated or angry about how the classroom environment feels, I know because they tell me. That lets me ask: How do I change it to make it better? If other students love it, what is it they love? How do I do more of that? My students are always showing up as their authentic selves.
They’re super happy to be here. It feels like family. My family is all in New Jersey, but I feel like I have family in my classroom. My paraprofessionals help make the experience amazing, and they’ve been working with me for a long time. The students give full effort, and it’s really a beautiful thing. To have students who are ready to learn and love learning—man, it makes me appreciate it even more. Not everyone in the world has the opportunity to learn, and my students are taking full advantage of theirs.
–Kareem Neal
Teacher at Phoenix Union High School District
Phoenix, AZ
