Teachers Speak Up!

In the past several years, we have witnessed unprecedented political, racial, economic, and health-related ruptures in society. The resulting turmoil has had an inevitable and negative impact on students, teachers, the profession of education, and especially marginalized and vulnerable populations. Academics and policymakers have had their say on how to address today’s volatile issues, but teachers and other practitioners closest to students have not had the same visibility or access. This volume is an attempt to remedy that absence, resulting in a compelling picture of education today. Chapters highlight essays written by a diverse group of K–12 classroom teachers who share their visions for education and describe their empowering classroom practices. At times hopeful and full of joy, at other times angry and full of frustration, these essays speak to what classrooms and schools based on social justice might mean for our nation. Teachers Speak Up! presents a bold vision of what education could be if teachers were to have a more direct influence on the purpose and aims of learning and teaching.

Book Features:

• Offers grounded accounts about creating classrooms filled with hope and promise amid the many challenges to everyday practice.
• Addresses the harm done by universal school closures due to the pandemic, growing political divisions, the ugly specter of racism, book bans, and more.
• Gives voice to classroom teachers who describe their vision for education, as well as their successful practice teaching diverse students.
• Includes chapter authors who are diverse in their identities, the subject matter they teach, and their time in the profession.

Sonia Nieto is professor emerita of language, literacy, and culture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her books include The Light in Their Eyes, Why We Teach, and Why We Teach Now. She received the 2024 Multistate Association for Bilingual Education (MABE) Lifetime Service Award. In 2024, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Alicia López Nieto is an ELL teacher in the Amherst Public Schools, Massachusetts. Together, they are the authors of Teaching, A Life's Work: A Mother–Daughter Dialogue.

"Once again, Nieto and López Nieto bring us the authentic, unfiltered voices of teachers who help us understand what they do, why they do it, and how they do it in the face of opposition and discouragement. Their love of teachers and teaching shines brightly through this volume and reminds us once again why teaching is the most noble of professions."
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Contents

Introduction  1

1.  Facing a New World in Teaching and Learning  7
Sonia Nieto

Part I: Identity, Family, and Community

2.  You Lead Who You Are  27
Sonie Felix

3.  Who Is That in the Mirror? A Journey of Self-Discovery, Resilience, and Pride  39
Nadla Tavares Smith

4.  Cabo Verdean Kriolu, From the Community to the Classroom  47
Ambrizeth H. Lima, Dawna Marie Thomas, Abel Djassi Amado, Marlyse Baptista, and Lourenço Garcia

Part II: Love and Affirming Practices

5.  The Art of Intention  65
Odalis Amparo

6.  From Prescriptions to Descriptions: Shaping Teacher Practice for Equity and Justice Through Aesthetic Experience  75
Suzanna Dali-Parker

7.  Journey Onward, Beloved Educators  95
Mary Jade Haney

Part III: The Many Faces of Social Justice

8.  Slowing Down, Learning from Canaries, and Listening to Resistance  107
Beth Wohlleb Adel

9.  Running on Empty: Using Empathy and Kindness to Challenge Classroom Practices  117
Adriana Martinez

Part IV: Teaching and Activism in the Classroom and Beyond

10.  The Winding Road to Educational Activism  133
Laurie García

11.  Write to the City: Practicing Humanizing Pedagogy and Ethnic Studies in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles  147
Jorge Lopez

12.  Finding My Place in the Education Ecosystem: From Classroom Teacher to Teacherpreneur  171
Heather Robertson-Devine

Part V: Teaching, Heartbreak, and Redemption

13.  Why Are We Here?: The Power of Being Seen and of Belonging  193
Yahaira D. Márquez

14.  Why I Still Teach: High School Is a Haunted House, but My Students Are Ghostbusters  205
Seth Peterson

15.  Developing a Humane Pedagogy in Order to Live in the Sticky Promises of Hope  225
Kerrita K. Mayfield

16.  Love, Hope, Empathy, and the Way Forward  237
Alicia López Nieto

About the Editors and Contributors  249

Index  255

Congratulations to Sonia Nieto, winner of the 2024 Multistate Association for Bilingual Education (MABE) Lifetime Service Award

Sonia Nieto, Winner, 2019 LRA Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award