For nearly fourteen weeks, genocidal events have been brought upon Gaza. To be honest, we struggled with how to best show support. We are a podcast that centers Teachers of Color and issues of Human Rights and Justice for all. So we have chosen to bring you stories of Palestinian American teachers. These stories are long-form, so they defy the sound-bite 24-hour news cycle. We ask participants to tell their stories with authenticity and courage. So yeah, this episode is longer.

Amal is a teacher in California who is proud to be Palestinian. She knows that her perspective is different, living stateside and not in Gaza, which has been described as of January 7 as “uninhabitable” by the United Nations. The days drag along as Amal tries to teach and support students. The courage to teach while your world burns is something Kevin and I cannot fathom.

But know that this story has emotion, passion, and knowledge. You will learn things that have not made it into the news cycle. You will learn how one teacher sees and experiences this horror.

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Gerardo and Kevin are here to accompany you through this holiday season! Whether you celebrate or not, we gotchu, and we hope to bring some affirmation and encouragement to you in these times that defy description.

As you know, Kevin has moved into school leadership, halfway through his first year as an assistant principal. He shares the highs, the lows, and reflects on being positioned to make a greater impact for the students in his community. Gerardo shares the hard-earned lessons of sixteen months as a central office manager, and shares the encouragement he has found in his work.

But ya boys haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be a classroom teacher. Teaching is our mother tongue, and no matter what other jobs we learn and become proficient, conversant, even fluent in, our hearts and minds will always be those of teachers. We hope we can encourage you to rest, reflect, and appreciate yourself.

Plus we share our holiday wish lists.

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It is no secret that the teaching profession has become increasingly challenging, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. For those of us who taught before and through the pandemic, it was never easy. Always challenging, always demanding, always underpaid. Kevin and I have both left classroom roles (although being an administrator is also difficult), and we are both still a little, what’s the word, surprised? When folx choose teaching in these times.

Filmmaker Adam Gacka, founder of Production House in Chicago, was hired to make a promotional video for the ambitious Chicago Teacher Residency and during the course of filming, got to know many of the teachers in the school. In particular, as he learned about Nkanga Nsa, a resident in the program, he felt that her story needed to be shared. So the result was Teacher, a film that would document her journey through her residency, as well as that of the community around her. As Adam boldly declares, saving our teachers will save our democracy.

Adam and Nkanga join us for an in-depth conversation on one teacher’s experience, the ongoing work to ensure that our American teaching corps better reflect children in most classrooms, and the ambitious dream to become “an island beyond oneself” in Nkanga’s words.

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For over two months, violence has raged on the Gaza Strip. Since the world snapped to attention on October 7, just under 20,000 Palestinians and 1300 Israelis (around 400 IDF soldiers) have died in the so-called “Israel-Hamas War” a carefully curated framing of the violence. This is an awful moment, and has led a number of experts to name the actions visited upon Palestinians as genocidal.

Kevin and Gerardo join the conversation. Perhaps later than some would hope. But we wanted to learn, listen, and elevate before seizing a social media moment.

Enter Abeer Shinnawi, our friend, a Palestinian teacher in the United States. Abeer calls upon us to teach the Palestinian struggle as a social justice/civil rights movement. She shares with us the privilege she has by living in the United States, but the pain she feels, as the Palestinian experience has been largely minimized, demonized, and erased. But in the midst of it all, she still believes that teachers can make a difference, to help students see that there is a civil rights imperative at work here.

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This episode was supposed to come out during AANHSAPI Heritage Month (Asian-American Native Hawaiian South Asian Pacific Islander) but for a host of reasons, it did not. Hear Gerardo break down his ambivalence about heritage months and why we actually decided to put the episode out.

John Arthur is the 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year, and a finalist for National Teacher of the Year for the same year. In the two years since being announced, John has found a new level of advocacy and activism, speaking out for the dignity and value of teachers and public education, students and families from marginalized and minoritized communities, and taking every opportunity to stand up for all kids.

In addition, John is sunshine personified. You cannot be in his presence without feeling his warmth. Enjoy this episode, it is full of joy and motivation.

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Deepali Vyas is the Founder and CEO of Fearless+, an EdTech platform that is on a mission to empower the younger generation. Deepali is a serial entrepreneur, advisory board member, career strategist, and executive search consultant with a recognized eye for spotting talent, rising trends and breakout business models. Deepali has over 20 years of experience in executive recruiting, having reviewed more than 100,000 resumes and placed thousands of executives in Fortune 500 companies. She has advised companies like Disney, JP Morgan, Uber, Google, IBM and the NFL to name a few.

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Gerardo met NYC History teacher and social media phenomenon Sari Rosenberg at the NNSTOY conference in July. For a long time, we have followed Sari’s Instagram where she posts Reels of her pushback against racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic ideas and policies that seem to be all too common in today’s civic discourse. Sari, whose path into teaching was considerably more tentative than her life as a teacher-activist, has become an outspoken voice for equity, justice, and teaching history honestly.

We have a fun conversation, which includes Sari’s early forays into popular music and innovative entertainment technology, and her how she really feels about the trolls and hate groups on social media platforms (spoiler: she honestly does not care), and we hear a terrific Top Five (ish)

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This week’s guest is a direct challenge to how many of us are living our education lives in 2023. Believing is hard. Optimism is something we can switch on with students, when we need to maintain our authority in the classroom, but we struggle to live in optimism. Look, we get it. Teachers are entering yet another school year of unrealistic pressure, political attacks, and dwindling capacity to teach our students and live joyfully.

Rebecka Peterson has an idea for all of us.

Rebecka Peterson, the 2023 National Teacher of the Year, is a math teacher who loves stories.

Rebecka has taught high school math classes ranging from intermediate algebra to Advanced Placement calculus, for 11 years at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Amid a difficult first year of high school teaching, she found the “One Good Thing” blog. She credits daily posting there to helping her recognize the beautiful and positive experiences occurring in her classroom, which inspired her to stay in the profession. She has since contributed 1,400 posts to the blog. As Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, she has visited teachers across the state to highlight their important work through the Teachers of Oklahoma campaign. 

As National Teacher of the Year, Rebecka plans to use her platform to highlight teachers’ stories of the good that’s happening in education. Teaching is a profession that affords creativity, autonomy and purpose, and Rebecka believes that highlighting the stories of joy happening in classrooms across the country will help encourage current teachers and attract new educators to the profession. 

Rebecka is a proud immigrant of Swedish-Iranian descent and lived in several countries around the world as her parents traveled as medical missionaries. Her own experience with supportive teachers who celebrated her diversity and math abilities informs Rebecka’s efforts to create a supportive and accessible classroom for students. She values listening to students’ stories as a way to better understand them and elevate their voice. 

Before joining the faculty at Union High School, Rebecka taught for three years at the collegiate level. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oklahoma Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of South Dakota. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her husband, Brett, and son, Jonas, and she enjoys reading, crafting and playing board games.

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he 2023 Summer Revolution Mixtape is here, at last! It’s late, but as friend of the podcast Marylin Zuñiga told us so many years ago, we gotta decolonize time, y’all! We know you are mostly back in the teaching game, but the time for radical imagination is always RIGHT. NOW.

The mixtape series is when we bring experimental, cutting-edge and unexpected ideas to you to consider as you enter another year guiding students. We hope to challenge and inspire you with these conversations.

Generative Artificial Intelligence, best identified through apps like ChatGPT, stands to hit education like that meteor that did the dinosaurs in, and if we aren’t careful, it will do the same to us in education. So argues our guest, Ben Farrell, a principal at a school that had the audacity to embrace this terrifying technology.

Is it the pedagogical equivalent of Oppenheimer’s experiment, or is it like the invention of pockets? Sorta depends on who you talk to. If you talk to Ben, he will tell you some of his school’s generative AI practices, and how we may all learn from them. No spoilers, tho. Y’all gotta listen.

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Laura Cortez was a soccer player in Texas. Her coach required that players run track and cross country in order to maintain their fitness for the season. A self-identified tejana, she grew up with community, culture, and of course, Selena.

Having relocated to Colorado, Laura, along with Victor Fallon, formed the Trailtinos, a Latiné running collective that spans generations, experience levels, and culture. I had a chance to run with the crew, a nice 7-miler that was extremely hard without water. The conversations were incredible, and it was beautiful to see so many members of our raza prioritizing fitness, wellness, and community.

Laura joins me to discuss the formation of the Trailtinos, and the importance of community wellness.

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