In the fall of 2023 I was honored to be nominated for 2024-2025 Michigan Teacher of the Year (MTOY). As part of the nomination process, each nominee submitted a collection of essays responding to various prompts related to their career, experiences, key educational issues, and Michigan schools overall. While the audience of each essay was the MTOY committee, it felt inauthentic to keep my ruminations private, languishing in a forgotten folder on my desktop. The opportunity to reflect on these questions and formulate my ideas was a wonderfully rewarding experience twelve years into my career, and one that I would like to share if for no other reason than to push myself to keep these ideas, and the process, at the forefront of my mind while I continue to engage in the deep work that is education.

Formatting note: Each essay was limited to no more than 2 pages, double spaced, size 12 font. My original drafts exceeded this by several multitudes, but I appreciated the exercise in concise expression.

MTOY Essay #2:

What does equity mean to you in the context of education? How do teachers factor into equity? What have you personally done to ensure all students receive an equitable education?

In the field of education, teachers are faced with the challenge of providing high-quality educational opportunities to students with unique backgrounds, experiences, needs, and abilities. Regardless of the teaching context, educators often grapple with issues of equity and the potential negative impacts of inequities. It is essential to recognize the inherent inequalities in the learning journey and to implement systems that support individual student needs in an equitable manner.

Teachers play a crucial role in directly impacting the learning experience for each student in personalized ways. While they cannot single-handedly solve societal inequities, they can create an educational environment that fosters student growth and meets their individual needs. By keeping the focus on learning as the central mission, teachers can design pedagogical approaches that minimize barriers and maximize student success.

The increase of student reading skills has been a focus of our School Improvement Team, particularly for our non-white student population. It was this goal that led me to a conversation with our building librarian about how to more authentically cultivate a culture of reading within our student community. We identified a deficit between the text that students are assigned to read, and the culture, background or interest of some students. To address this we created an independent book project that focused on connecting student learning and student interest authentically, as opposed to prescriptively.  At the start of our course, students choose a book that is of interest to them, and then are given protected reading time in class each week to read. The goal is to address the potential inequity that might exist with the materials traditionally provided within school, as well as student time after school in which much of the student reading is expected to occur. This takes place consistently throughout the course with the culmination being a project where students need to create an artifact that illustrates the connection between a theme from their book and a theme from our Civics course. While it may seem as if those two are disconnected at first, it is actually that perceived disconnection that enhances the rigor of this project. By using student interest, and protected classroom time to facilitate this connection we are able to address multiple inequities that may exist but could have potentially gone unaddressed – that of cultural relevance of the material, and the imbalance of time outside of school to read. 

Providing high-quality education to students with diverse backgrounds and needs requires acknowledging and addressing inequalities. Teachers can make a significant difference by focusing on individual student needs, reevaluating assessment practices, and incorporating student interests into the learning process. Through these efforts, we can create more equitable educational environments and maximize student success.