Good morning class.
First of all, just an honor.
Thank you for having me, I appreciate this.
A couple of years ago, I had the honor of attending a panel,
a conference at The Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.
A black male educator by the name of Derek McCoy,
was asked a question around sustainability,
and what are the things that constantly keep him sustained as he's working.
And without missing a beat, the first thing he said was,
"Have you read Jose Vilson's blog? His posts just keep me going."
"Excuse me?" I was shocked, I didn't know what to do.
I was just there at the panel, I didn't even know he was there,
and I hadn't met him. It was the first time I'd met him.
It's thousands and thousands of miles away, and here he is saying,
I've inspired him by my posts and through my blog.
And so, when I talk about teacher voice out there,
I'm always thinking about what it means to actually be a teacher,
a full-time teacher.
I'm a full-time math teacher in Washington Heights, New York,
and I'm proud to represent that.
And I also know because of this,
I need to be very thoughtful about the things I say and do out there.
Because there's a lot of people who say, "Well, teachers shouldn't be speaking up.
There's no reason for them to talk when we can do all the talking."
"Um, excuse me? Okay, so then we have some work to do."
Teacher voice.
The individual and collective expression
of meaningful professional opinion based on classroom experience and expertise.
Now, these are the four guiding principles when I talk about teacher voice
there are four pieces that I always concentrate on,
when I'm talking about teacher voice.
The first is the individual element.
When people say, "The way you create true change is by starting with the individual"
our identities, our cultures, our ways of being,
inform our pedagogies and the cultures that are in our own classrooms
and so we have to constantly be thoughtful about the ways we interact with our kids,
in order for us to be the best practitioners as possible,
and in order for us to have a real teacher voice about this work.
And also, please keep in mind,
we don't always have to be the best speaker in the classroom,
because we ought to be the best listeners.
Now, the second element is this collective
because I can't think about my own profession,
without thinking about the person that is outsdie of my walls,
not just the person next door, but across the hallway
and perhaps across the city, across the state, across the country, right?
And you think about this.
If you're a good teacher, you know who you are.
Even when you don't speak the same language,
or you don't always have the same cultures,
there are touchpoints about all of our experiences
that allow us to be good teachers for each other and for ourselves.
There are things that we know about the teaching profession,
that we know what that's like.
And so when I ask you for collective,
I'm also thinking about not just everybody who's across the country,
and even across the world,
but across institutions too.
So including our prisons and our museums,
there are educators there too.
We need to think about all of these educators.
And then, again, when we come together,
whether we're celebrating our best and most accomplished teachers,
or we're protesting together in any number of states,
when our voices when they come together, they often get to be the loudest.
The third element is experience.
And when I talk about experience, it means that our stories matter too.
When you think about research, policy, practice,
you best believe that a teacher better be somewhere in there.
You can't just sanitize us, you have to be able to include us.
And then, when we're not included, we have to be able to fight back.
What you see in front of you,
two years ago, I was given a teacher performance rating of developing.
My teacher practices were "effective,"
but unfortunately the data that had come out was "ineffective,"
so somewhere in the middle was "developing."
And of course, mind you,
four-fifths of my students' data had mysteriously disappeared,
and it just confounded me, I just didn't know what was going on.
But even still,
it kind of hurt to think about the fact that I had put in so much work
and yet the assessments that were chosen were not reflective of the people we were
and the work that had been done in our classroom.
And that's where expertise comes in.
Because there are things that we know about our students.
There are things we think about our students on the daily.
We know how to not just write lesson plans and do-now's and closings.
We also know how to create communities in our own classrooms.
We know how to get kids to ask questions and to teach us, right?
Cause that's an important part of the listening piece.
We know, we know, and it's okay to say that we know.
That's an important part of all this work.
Because everytime I'm talking about whatever it is I'm talking about
I always think back to my kids.
I'm always thoughtful about the kids who I have in my classroom.
Children of immigrants, children of workers,
children of parents who've entrusted me on a daily basis, and for years now,
to make sure that their kids are well-educated
and well-prepared for the world we live in. Human beings, right?
The picture you see here by the way
is a picture of my students with the statue of Theodore Roosevelt
at the American Museum of Natural History.
Now, at first I didn't really want to take the picture.
But when I thought about it, I said to myself,
Well? Imagine if Teddy was having to sit next to people, immigrants,
who wouldn't want to assimilate into this country?
Imagine having a teacher who believed in students.
So when I tell you that a teacher who believes in students
is core to our democracy,
this is the picture I'm talking about.
I think about all the teachers who are passionate about this,
who've sacrificed their livelihoods, who've sacrificed their lives
to make sure that our students feel social justice within their classrooms,
their neighborhoods, who've been out there on a daily basis,
who've visited the churches, gone to parent meetings, who know what it's like
to be directly affected by so many of the policies that don't work for us.
I work for them because they keep me on my toes.
They are the best educators.
And speaking of which, the best educator in our house
also happens to be not just in the audience
but also, the best mother she could possibly be to our son, Alejandro.
And when I think about Luz, when I think about Alejandro,
they teach me lessons everyday. They teach me constant lessons.
And so I'm always thinking about, "Oh my gosh,
How am I gonna be a better teacher, when they're already so much better than I am
at whatever it is that I'm trying to do. But they keep me grounded
even when my voice shakes.
I think about the thousands and thousands of students
who I've had the pleasure, the honor of teaching
over thirteen-going-on-fourteen years now.
A career that has spanned so many lifetimes it feels like.
And whenever I look at these students, I'm always like,
"Oh my gosh, I've taught you!"
So many of my kids have gone to so many different places.
And even when they don't go to places that I necessarily am happy about?
I know that I've done everything I possibly could in my being
to make sure that they felt like human beings in my classroom.
And that is the work.
And it keeps me up at times.
I know that when I go to my desk,
and I wake up, and I think about failing and winning and failing and winning,
I also know that I've created lesson plans that can engage my kids
and bring them in, and I say good morning.
And when parents come in, I'm always like,
"A su orden."
Which means, I'm at your service, I'm here for you, I'm here to teach kids.
How welcoming is that?
These are the things that keep me up at night,
these are the things that keep me up early in the morning as well.
This is the love work.
This is the thing we're constantly striving for,
So when I say Teacher Voice, it's not just about being the loudest.
It's about using our actions and aligning them to the work we're doing
and that we say we're doing.
We want our kids to be reflected in curriculum,
in our practices, in our pedagogy,
and we want them to feel like they have a belonging somewhere.
What is it like to feel like you have a home?
Not just your actual home.
For so many of our kids, they may not have one.
What is it like to actually create that and have the power to be able to do that?
I don't know, but I know what I know.
And furthermore, I also know, that I'm willing to do this forever and ever.
I'm so passionate about this, I gotta keep going.
Are you gonna join me?