Stories, interviews, and videos where teachers discuss what keeps them in teaching.

Aidn White

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…

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Chris Madson

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…

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Raymond Lie

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…

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Dillin Randolph

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 in communications.

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Lupe Ramirez

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 del maestro. 

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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 was a title. And that title said, “Problem students.”

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