5-Day Campaign Results:
Share a teacher’s story on social media:
Click on any teacher below. You’ll find easy ways to share at the bottom of each post!
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“It’s hard to be what you can’t see.”
If our boys are in trouble, our society is in trouble. It’s hard to be what you can’t see.
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“The arts enhance every part of education.”
I’ve been told, “this student can’t read” or “they’re a non-reader.” But in my class, in my play, they’ve learned their lines. So I believe strongly: the arts enhance every part of education.
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“The classroom needs to be that space for dialogue.”
The fear in my mind of saying the wrong thing is a fear I have as a teacher constantly. And that scares me as an educator who constantly is trying to create positive dialogue that considers all sides of the debate.
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“This is my 9 to 5.”
I remember that Monday morning getting an email from our principal. We had lost a student. And I froze. I remember calling to the security guards, “Hey, watch my class.”
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“We’re not trying to do that anymore.”
I just love that she had that moment of feeling like a kid, and not feeling like she’s carrying anything… And hopefully she remembers that forever, ’cause I will.
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“When you see a teacher, it’s really a community.”
I’m originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Inner city, poverty-stricken area. My sister and I are first generation in our family to go to college and to get our advanced degrees.
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“Your calling is way beyond content.”
I think it was the first time that I realized how much impact teachers have. The experience that you give the learners in your classroom can change the paths that they walk for the rest of their lives.
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A high school trucking program
It was about the third classroom I walked into that I saw a distinct pattern. It was in the written instructions that the teacher would leave for me. It’s called the sub plans. And at the bottom of all the sub plans was always a list of students’ names. And above that list of names…
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Aidn White | Changing the narrative on caregiving
I grew up in Wisconsin with nine younger cousins and two younger siblings. I was constantly asked to babysit them, from the time I was nine years old all the way until I left for college. At the time, I hated it. I had to give up playtime to watch my younger cousins or make…
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Amy Traynor | A school led by teachers
Early on in my career, I was more afraid of talking to parents. But I had a principal who said, ‘If you’re not calling them first with a positive, then when you call them with a negative, it’s going to be harder.’ So I tried to do that. And I have had great success with…
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Ashley Kannan | “Teaching is about the presence of a soul”
I grew up in Oak Park in the 1980s. People were all about the melting pot. The idea was that everyone is the same and nobody looks different — we’re all part of this collective homogenous blob. One of the drawbacks to that was that I was never really seen.
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Benjamin Grignon | Teaching within the Menominee Indian Reservation
I was full-on ready to be a full-time artist. And then I was invited to be a teacher at a summer institute in Denver, through the Native American Youth Outreach Program. I think it was seeing those kids connect to our traditional arts — part of our cultural inheritance that they had little exposure to…
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Black History Month: Educators Share Their Thoughts
Throughout this month, we celebrate Black excellence, heritage, and tradition. Though it’s crucial to honor Black history all year long, Black History Month invites teachers to dig deeper, provide students with more context, and connect the past to the present in meaningful ways.
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Brown Deer High School | 3 art teachers share their stories
Three art teachers from Brown Deer High School in Brown Deer, Wisconsin share their perspectives on teaching and learning.
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BryAnn Sandy | Reflections of a new teacher
I was born in Brooklyn. I grew up from pre-K to seventh grade in the Bronx — but then they started to raise the rent. The buildings were terrible. My mom told us the rent prices and the conditions of living were not adding up, and when they raised the rent again, that was the…
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Chris Madson | “I think you’re the first teacher that ever recognized me”
I was in high school at the height of the AIDS crisis. And as a 13- and 14-year-old, I would sneak away into the city to meet up with this group of people, mostly gay men and Black women, who were part of ACT UP — a group who did intense activism around access to…
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Dan Shutes | How teaching is like coaching
The bulk of my fifth graders are just excited to see me. They want to talk to you in their downtime. They want to sit by you at lunch, and they want you to come to recess with them. That feeling is the driving force that made me become a teacher.
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Dana Guenterberg | Outdoor learning and helping students feel seen
I was pretty close with my brother. He ended up going to jail when I was in fourth grade. We were having morning meeting at school, and the question that day was, ‘How are you feeling?’
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Diana Callope | “Everything is different about middle school”
I have one student who really sticks out in my mind. I had him in my class when I taught seventh grade, and then he was in my class again when I switched to eighth grade. So I got to have him in my math class two years in a row. And he would do…
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Dillin Randolph | Advocating for students of color
When I was a teenager, I had summer jobs as a custodian. It paid pretty well. So when I got to college, even though I was working as an office assistant in the pharmacy department, I decided to look for more hours cleaning schools. I figured I could do that until I got my degree…
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Elliott Hile | “Teachers are in the business of people”
I was the kid who was under the table with a fireman’s helmet on, covering his ears because he didn’t understand what people were saying. I would get frustrated all the time because I didn’t understand multiple syllable words. So in elementary school, I was diagnosed with dyslexia.
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Francis Pina | Math, life skills, and Black male role models
I wanted to work at the Boston Federal Reserve and go to the London School of Economics. But I graduated in 2009, and there were no jobs available, due to the housing crisis and Great Recession. So I started working at a local public charter school.
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Hispanic Heritage Month: Educators Share Their Thoughts
Educators share their thoughts on Hispanic Heritage Month. This year’s theme is Building Prosperous and Healthy Communities, and we’re here to elevate and support a strong community of educators.
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Hot chocolate and parents as partners
In that moment, just sitting there enjoying that with them, I noticed that I was not doing those things as much in my last couple years of teaching. Because I was so exhausted. And those special moments that made me have this great connection with my students, those special moments that made me love my…
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Ja’Rahn Leveston | Transforming students through the arts
My mom taught for 30 years. And after I went to grad school she said, ‘Why don’t you get some experience in the city schools?’ I did it, and I haven’t left. You get really attached to the work and the students, especially once you see them meet the standards that you help them set…
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Jenna Hewitt King | “I wanted to work in the place that transformed me”
I went to high school here in San Leandro, at the school where I teach. We have three ‘academy programs,’ where students can apply to go through 10th through 12th grade in cohorts focused on multimedia, business and finance, or social justice. I was in the cohort called Social Justice Academy, so I took my…
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Jessica Lander | Teaching history and civics to immigrant students
I have the honor and joy of teaching U.S. history and civics to recent immigrant and refugee students. My students come from more than 30 countries: from Colombia, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to Cambodia. Most of my students have been in the U.S. for less than five years.
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Jireh Tanabe | English literature and mental health
When I was in eighth grade, I had this very eccentric English teacher. He would whack the desks whenever he wanted people to answer — and sometimes he would only call on the kids who were reliably the ‘smart kids.’ I wasn’t considered one of the smart kids, which was fine with me, because I…
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Khalid Birdsong | “You can leave education and come back into it”
At first, I didn’t want to be a teacher. I come from teachers. My mother’s a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher — on my mother’s side, there are teachers all the way back to slavery. I grew up in a classroom, helping my mother set up for first grade at the beginning of the…
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Kritika Srinivasan | Behavior and bearded dragons
My mom came to the U.S. from India. She got a scholarship to do her PhD in French at UCLA, and then she adopted me from India when I was six months old. It was a huge family occasion — they all banded together to help me to come to the U.S. I made it…
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Lauren Wesnak Smith | Personalized and extended learning
I remember being in a conversation with my mom in high school — I don’t know if we were driving somewhere, or just talking in the kitchen. But I remember her telling me that I was ‘a real people person’ and that that was a gift of mine. She told me I could strike up…
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Lupe Ramirez | “I am, beyond words, grateful to be a teacher right now”
It’s hard to view my career in stories. Maybe it’s not even my story. Maybe it’s the story of my dad. I grew up in South Chicago. My dad was a preschool teacher. And everywhere we went, it was like, ‘El maestro, el maestro!’ And so that made me a celebrity by extension: la hija…
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Madrid Neighborhood School | 7 teachers share their stories
Seven teachers from Madrid Neighborhood School in Phoenix, Arizona share their perspectives on K-12 education.
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Margi Bhansali | The importance of play in learning
I went to school to be a journalist. My financial aid package required that I take on a work-study job. So during my first year of school, I worked with Jumpstart, an AmeriCorps program where they put college kids in Title I preschools.
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Maribel Rosendo-Servin | Why I decided to be an ethnic studies teacher
My family is from a small village in Guanajuato, Mexico. My dad had been coming to the United States since he was 15 to provide for his family. My mom was hesitant to leave her family and friends, but she knew it was the best decision for her children. When I was four years old,…
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My perspective as a parent — and as a teacher
I know as a parent that I know my kids really well. I know what their strengths are, I know what their weaknesses are, and I have the idea of what I want my kids to have as a part of my family. As a teacher, I know that teachers bring a very different perspective.
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On AI & human connection
One of the differences between learning from an AI program and learning with a teacher in a dialectical manner is that you don’t have that empathy, connection, dialogue. All of our kids have so much potential and deserve for someone to have high expectations of them and to help them improve and grow, whatever that…
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On empathy for teenagers
Students have so many things that they have to do, both academically and non-academically, and I think it gets very easy for adults, whether they work in classrooms or not, to not have empathy for what students are going through developmentally, emotionally, academically.
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On parents communicating their joy
Parents are heard by the school administration… I would like to encourage parents to communicate their joy, not just their frustration.
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Pam Gresser | Love, logic, and finding your marigold
Teaching runs in my family. The bell was my grandma’s. She was the last teacher at a one room schoolhouse in Cold Spring, Wisconsin. Because she was the last teacher, they gave that bell to her. She wrote on that card that both her mother and her aunt also taught in that school.
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Raymond Lie | “I’ve never questioned staying in teaching”
I grew up in San Francisco. My dad was a lawyer. I was told in school that I was good at debating and arguing with people, and I decided that’s what I was gonna be: a lawyer. So for the first three years of college, everything I did was to become a lawyer. Between my…
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Sean Bui | “I left law and became a teacher”
For the majority of my life, I was convinced that my road ended with me becoming an attorney. My family set the value that attorney was the route to go, and I thought I was pretty good at public speaking and reading, so I went down that road. I graduated from Santa Clara University with…
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Supporting incarcerated students
I’m a teacher for the Department of Education at Rikers Island. My background is 35 years in the construction trades and six years now with the DOE teaching incarcerated students.
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Tamika Fluker | Community and containment drills
I was working at The Bridge Home at St. Mary’s Women and Children’s Center. It’s a shelter for infants to 12-year-olds. If the Department of Child and Family Services pulled a kid from their home, we housed and counseled them.
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Terrence Smith | Teaching in partnership with the community
My aunt and uncle raised me. I’m the youngest of seven kids; my brother and I were taken away from our biological parents due to their drug addiction. I was adopted by my mother’s sister right after I was born, and she and her husband became my parents. I was the only child at home.…
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About this initiative:
#passthe🎤 is a Teachers in Their Power campaign in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week.
Passing the mic is one of the best ways to support teachers and their students. Educators have a deep understanding of what’s happening in our schools, but they don’t always have the chance to be heard. By intentionally elevating the voices of teachers, we create spaces where teachers can share their experiences as professionals and as advocates for children.
Passing the mic can also help address inequities that exist in our education system. Teachers from all different backgrounds offer valuable perspectives. By amplifying their voices, we draw attention to the unique challenges of communities across the country — as well as possible solutions.
Did you know?
- Teachers and principals have 2x the stress rates of the general working adult population. (RAND 2022)
- Over half of American teachers plan to leave education earlier than they had planned. (NEA 2022)
- Although 94% of teachers believe they can make a difference in this world, only 60% feel confident voicing their opinions and concerns. Only 54% feel they have a voice in decision making at school. (Quaglia survey of 30,000 teachers)
You can learn more about Teachers in Their Power by reading the About page or browsing the FAQ.
As always, you can nominate a teacher or volunteer here.