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…
Portrait-based stories from Teachers in Their Power. These interviews use photography as the primary visual medium.
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…
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…
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…
Marwa Elmasry | Teaching Arabic in high school
My mother is a teacher. She is a wholehearted teacher. I grew up seeing her face light up with joy every time her students came up to her on the street: ‘Oh, hi, Miss, do you remember me? I was…
Sal Dibartolo | Building relationships with students
I grew up in New Jersey. I was born in Brooklyn, and my parents own a pizzeria in Manhattan. I spent a considerable chunk of my teenage years helping out at the pizzeria. I was a terrible student in high…
Raphael Bonhomme | Teacher collaboration and how “iron sharpens iron”
It wasn't my original plan to become a teacher. At first, I didn't know if I was gonna go to college or not, but I ended up getting accepted into three schools. I wanted to do advertising. I was being…
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,…
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…
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…