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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Alex Robins | From singing to Socratic seminars
I studied history at the University of Michigan, and I played music for fun. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll graduate, and then I’ll go start a band.’ That’s what I did. We were called ‘Or, The Whale.’ I ended up moving to San Francisco and played in the band while waiting tables. It’s the kind of…
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Alexandra Mondelus-Duffy | Middle school math and Haitian-American community
I never thought of becoming a teacher. Early on, I wanted to be a pediatrician, but I was more interested in studying mental health and behavior vs. other sciences, so I thought, ‘Psychology would work.’ I thought it was a good middle ground, compared to medicine. I always wanted to know why things are the…
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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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Ashleen Calhan | “Kids can smell if you’re being a phony”
From a young age, I loved to read. My mom could be standing right in front of me calling my name and I literally would not hear her because I would be so engrossed in whatever I was reading. I read anything I could get my hands on. My grandma used to take us to…
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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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Ben Williams | Advocating for teachers on the DC State Board of Education
I was sworn into my role on the DC State Board of Education in January 2023. Over the last two years, one key accomplishment has been revising and updating DC’s social studies standards. As a social studies teacher, it was an honor to have a direct say in the revision process and ultimately get a…
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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 Dier | Collective trauma and collective hope
Hurricane Katrina, COVID, and the Ten Commandments in New Orleans. My mom has been teaching for fifty years. I grew up with her, literally grading papers and cooking at the same time. Back then, I never wanted to be a teacher. In undergrad, I took constitutional law classes. During my senior year, I got disillusioned…
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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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Ebony Manion | The many jobs of teaching
When I was in first grade or second grade, they pulled me out of the classroom to teach other students how to read. I guess I was a really good reader. I don’t remember why they asked me, but they were really curious how I knew how to read so well. My siblings and I…
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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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Hannah Halpern | Navigating the DC Public Schools system
I pretty much always knew I wanted to work with kids because I always found joy in it. I felt I had innate instincts, and I knew how to navigate different situations. When I was seven or eight years old, I remember being a caretaker for some of the toddlers at my synagogue. I was…
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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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Kareem Neal | Why I teach special education
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…
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Keshawn Bostic | High expectations in Dallas
When I was going into high school, I wanted to be a lawyer. That was my goal. I got into boarding school and during my freshman year, I played football. At the end of my freshman year, they cut the football team from the whole school, because we were terrible — like, 60 to 0…
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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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Lance Powell | The paradox of teaching
I always thought I wanted to go into law. I saw all these courtroom drama TV shows growing up, and that’s what I wanted to do. I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison with the intention of eventually going into environmental law, but I had a change of heart along the way. I really didn’t…
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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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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.