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I believe being a teacher-activist is...
seeing the injustices and inequities that my students face and fighting with them to overcome and better their lives. A teacher-activist is involved in her students community, and within their lives. She sees the importance and the beauty in black history, and teaches it year round rather than just during black history month. “It’s important for us to know the history of racial justice and racial injustice in our country and in our world . . . in order for us to address it. When we’re silent, we close off dialogue and we close the opportunity to learn and grow from each other” (Rethinking Schools, Au, 2017). A teacher-activist encourages students to openly talk about their history and the injustices they face in the classroom, the hallway, during after school activities, and in the community. A teacher-activist sees the importance in discussing racism, and works with her students to fight for social justice and equity. She stands up for the rights and the lives of her students. She works to uncover racism and discrimination and fights to overcome it. A teacher-activist supports and encourages students like DeShawn Jackson who "organized the “Black Men Uniting to Change the Narrative” event for that September morning, and in solidarity, school staff decided to wear T-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter/We Stand Together/John Muir Elementary” (Rethinking Schools, Au, 2017). A teacher-activist is not only supportive of students like DeShawn Jackson, but she also works alongside these students to help implement and plan the protest. A teacher-activist recognizes the destruction that racism causes, and works with her students to overcome it. She creates a classroom that refuses to use the zero-tolerance policy, and always addresses issues and struggles through restorative justice.  A teacher-activist works along side student to put together movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MarchForOurLives and proudly stands with her students as they go out and protest and fight for equity. Activism must begin the the classroom before it reaches out to the outer world. A teacher-activist continually sees the beauty and importance in each students life and history, and seeks to create a classroom that centers on social justice, diversity, and equity.

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I believe collaboration is... coming together as a classroom and working together as one whole to create an atmosphere that teaches equity, diversity, and empowerment. Collaboration is "people from different diverse backgrounds, with different levels of skill and different personality types, creating a space that allows each participant to fully engage in, and gain something from the fellowship with peers" (Emdin, pg. 64). Within a classroom that focuses on collaboration, no voice is privileged over another, each student has an equal chance to share and construct ideas, and students work better together than apart. I believe collaboration is not just teachers working with teachers or students working with students. I believe collaboration is teachers providing students with the opportunity to come together in groups, and create lessons that they can teach the students, which not only teacher students but also teach the teacher about what students need to learn and succeed. I believe collaboration sees students as "partners with the adults who are officially charged with the delivery content and be seen/named/treated as fellow teachers and coteachers" (Emdin, pg. 85). I believe collaboration is co-teaching and allowing students to become the teacher while the teacher becomes the learning facilitator. I believe that collaboration is important within the classroom because it helps you achieve the goal of making your students identities and understandings the center of the learning environment. Collaboration allows students to have a chance to lead classroom learning and provides students with equity through meeting their individual needs and learning styles.

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"I believe community/family is..."
I believe that community consists of a sense of family. A community is the atmosphere and surroundings that one lives in; families, beliefs, values, and cultures grow within communities. A community is not just filled with places, but it is also filled with personal emotional spaces. As an educator, "to be in touch with the community, one has to enter into the physical places where the students live, and work to be invited into the emotion-laden spaces youth inhabit" (Emdin, pg. 21, 2016). The events that take place in each distinct community can create different unique emotions within each students life. Family resides within communities. Family is not always identified by blood but by trust, shared experience, and friendship. Communities and families are what tend to make up the identities of our students. They are the lived experiences that no one can understand unless that step into that family or community and experience them for themselves.
"What lies beyond what we see are deep stories, complex connections, and realities that factors like race, class, power, and the beliefs/presuppositions educators hold inhibit them from seeing. Teaching to who students are requires a recognition of their realities" (Emdin, pg.25, 2016). Communities and families make up students realities. Communities and families are those deep stories, and complex connections that cannot be seen or understood from the outside looking in. These are the roots of our students & in order to understand them, we must enter them and become apart of them.

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"I believe my students will learn best when I..." take the time to grow relationships with each of them, create culturally relevant material for them, meet their individual needs, and create a classroom that places their success at the center. I believe that my students will learn best when I take myself out of the superior role of "educator," and instead, place myself into the role of learning facilitator. I believe that my students will learn best when I pay attention and play a role in their interests, hobbies, and family life. I believe that my students will learn best when I become someone they can trust and confide in. I believe that I have to first create respectful relationships with my students in order for any learning to take place. My role as an educator is not to fix, manage, and control my students; my role is to inspire them, empower them, be their advocate, and help them achieve educational equity.
I believe that my students will learn when I empower them, which "provides the intellectual tools for creating a just society... empowerment gives people the ability to break out of these dependent states" (Spring, pg. 189). I believe that my students will learn when I bring relevant material into the classroom. I believe that my students will learn when I work with them to meet their own individual needs and goals. I believe that their learning will occur through a safe environment. Students need an environment that cares for their well being, and that seeks to restore what has been broken. I believe that all hostile, controlling, militaristic environments will shut down their minds to learning. I believe that my students will learn when I acknowledge them, their strengths, their successes, and their hopes. I have to be open to exploring the histories and lives of my students. I cannot just focus on looking forward and never looking back. As Acosta stated in a Rethinking Schools Article, "there's a lot of value in looking back at our ancestors and gathering strength from the generations before us so that we can make better and informed decisions" (Bloomekatz, Victory for Mexican American Studies in Arizona). I believe that my students will learn when I open up our classroom to be a place where real discussion can occur. Empowerment comes from seeking out the truth. Learning will occur when my students are impacted with information and experiences that came from their cultural past. A teacher can have such a dramatic impact on the learning that takes place within a child's mind. I must be real with them; vulnerable with them; respectful to them; understanding with them; and empowering to them.

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"I believe students learn best when they..." are first placed into environments that focus on each students individual cultures, learning needs, and interests. Students learn when they feel valued, respected, and loved, which means that the classroom needs to be a place that seeks to be a safe place for all children. Students need to feel and know that their teacher cares about their thoughts, ideas, lives, and experiences. When students feel ignored and unvalued, they close off, which makes it hard for learning to take place. I can remember when I was in fourth grade, I had a teacher who made it clear to all of us that she was uninterested in who we were, and didn't care if we failed or succeeded. The way she handled me and all of the students in class, made it really difficult to learn, or even want to learn. I remember ending fourth grade with several D's, and I couldn't understand what was wrong with me, because I did try. I lost a lot of confidence in my abilities that year and didn't think that I would ever succeed in school. Fast forward to fifth grade, where I had the most impactful teacher, Miss. Hall. Miss. Hall immediately got to know each of us at the beginning of the year, she made it a priority to spend time with us, whether that be during recess or inviting all of us to have lunch with her. She attended our sporting events, continually spoke with our parents, and was invested in our success inside of and outside of the classroom. She valued each of us and empowered us with her words, actions, and teaching methods. She made sure I knew my value. I left fifth grade with all A's and B's and a passion for learning.
It is teachers like Miss. Hall who create learning environments that encourage, motivate, and empower students to succeed and learn. However, that learning can not take place without a relationship. All students long to be loved, encouraged, and appreciated; it is a human need. So what better way to engage students in learning than through making the classroom into a second home for them. Therefore, I believe students learn best when they are placed into environments that seek to encourage, love, respect, and value them. Environments just like the one Miss. Hall created within her classroom.

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"I believe all of my future students are..."
Meaning makers; owners of experience and knowledge; minds with unique ideas; and possessors of thoughts, cultures, ideas, and feelings. I believe that all of my future students are capable of striving, reaching their full potential, and growing personally and intellectually. I believe that all of my future students are owners of the experiences, feelings, thoughts, cultures, and traditions that the bring into the classroom with them. I believe that my future students are capable of breaking stereotypes, through discovering their strengths and fighting for equity. I believe that my future students are part of a greater future that neither of us could have ever imagined. I believe that my future students are deserving of equality of opportunity. Joel Spring states, "equality of opportunity means that all members of a society are given equal chances to pursue wealth and enter any occupation or social class" (Spring, pg.69). I believe that my future students are going to be aware of their history, and are going to need a classroom and environment that seeks to explore and uncover the truth, struggles, and inequality that once occurred, and that still occurs today. I truly believe that there will be so much when it comes to the lives of each of my future students. With the diversity and difference, it will be critical that I enter the classroom each day with a mindset that seeks to empower each students and provide them each with equity through social justice. I believe that my future students are bodies filled with love and a sense of belonging, some of them just may be waiting to find a teacher who helps bring those characteristics out in them.

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"I believe the purpose of schooling is..."
To provide a safe place for students and families to come enter, where they know their lives will be respected, discussed, challenged, and welcomed.
From this weeks readings over the school to prison pipeline, I cannot believe that so many schools seek to kick students out, and support this continual process of mass incarceration. I believe that schooling should I always have a focus on
- How can we reach and meet the needs of all of our students?
- How can we empower all students and seek to have a school community that provides social justice?
- How can we help our students feel safe and valued?
- How can we change our ways to fight against the school to prison pipeline?
School communities are meant to be safe, justice seeking, empowering communities and families.
Therefore, I believe the purpose of schooling is to seek social justice, empowerment, and equity for every student that enters the building. I believe schooling should be a place that seeks to engage students in personal and worldly issues, and help them become social advocates. I believe that schools should seek to work together as a whole to fight for the justice of students, while seeking to provide the best education. I believe that schooling was always meant to empower others through exploration, discovery, and growth, but this purpose was lost through political wars, racial injustices, and standardized expectations. I believe schooling is meant to be the one constant aspect in our students lives; schools should be the one place where students feel valued, appreciated, accepted, and empowered. I think that schooling should always seek to provide what is best for students, rather than what is best for individuals on a school board. Today I believe that schooling can be a place that pushes out people that don't fit into the "perfect norm." I believe it can be a place that ignores the needs of students, and often dehumanizes students for who they are. I believe that schooling today can be blinded by the "we have to's" and as a result forgets to establish and implement the "we need to's." I believe that schooling has the power to change lives and change our world for the better. This must first come from the teachers who step foot into the schools.

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"I believe that teaching..."
is a diverse, caring, committed, and social justice seeking job. I believe that teaching must be focused on how we can enhance and change the lives of our students through the power of learning. I believe that teaching is meant to empower students to reach their full potential. I believe that teaching is multi-layered. Teaching must seek out how to open doors and minds for our students. Curtis Acosta states, "when we grow up with a single narrative, we can't see each other, we can't humanize one another, because we really don't know each other" (Rethinking Schools, Acosta). I believe that teaching is seeking how to approach these single narratives, break down walls, and allow students to truly see each other. Teaching must seek to provide social justice by talking about the events that are taking place in our world, the oppression that is taking place, the cultures of students, how students cultures have shaped our world today, how our students can work to have an impact on our world, and how our students can see one another as a collective family who loves and supports. Teaching is meeting the state standards and exceeding over the standards. Teaching is looking to meet all of the needs of our students through inclusion, learning needs, family history, etc. Teaching is helping to facilitate knowledge with our students, while allowing them to lead us through current issues, ideas, or educational topics. Teaching is seeking to create a powerful, safe space for students to be brave, grow into their strengths, seeking honest truth, feeling loved, and understanding that a united whole can change the world. Teaching is being open to stopping a particular lesson to address an issue that has been brought up in class by a concerned student. Teaching is what Tom McKenna chose to do within his classroom when a student asked the question, "why do people sat that Mexicans are stealing Americans' jobs?" (McKenna, 'Who's Stealing Our Jobs?") Instead of ignoring this students question and continuing on with the present topic, this teacher chose to take his students question and create a weeks worth of lesson plans to address this question. Teaching is being willing to change plans to address the questions and needs of students. Teaching is discussing important issues within students lives and searching for ways to better the discussed issue. Teaching is hands-on, discovery, exploration, truth seeking, creative, deep, and student centered. Teaching cannot be boiled down into the traditional idea, "providing students with knowledge and assessing their knowledge." Teaching is so much greater than providing knowledge and assessing that knowledge. Teaching can be life changing. I believe teaching occurs through an individual who is passionate about learning, empowering and making a difference within the lives of students.

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"I believe my responsibilities as a teacher are..."
to enter the classroom each morning and seek out how to be an advocate for my students and how to provide them with equity and social justice. There are so many responsibilities placed onto the shoulders of a teacher. These responsibilities cannot possibly be summed up in a few short words. I believe our greatest responsibility that we will have is that care, information, and knowledge we provide to our students minds. Our students enter our classroom with their own experiences and beliefs, and it is our responsibility to be a source of important knowledge, equity, care, and love for each student!
Catherine Capellaro interviews Howard Zinn in the article, "A Pedagogy of Resistance." Within this article Zinn states that teachers must be bold with their students and willing to take risks to really address the world we live in and how each of our students are affected by todays past and todays present. It is our responsibility to remove our "protective pillows" (DiAngelo, pg.55, 2011) and seek to see the truth within our society. It is our responsibility to remove segregation, bias, and racism that may take place within the minds of some of our students. It is our job to show them why these acts and thoughts are wrong, inaccurate, hurtful, and harmful to our world. We are meant to teach our students that even the most ordinary people can change the world. James Baldwin would say that it is our job to help our students have the ability to honestly look at the world for themselves, to make their own decisions, to ask questions of the universe and why things are what they are, and to discover ones true identity (Baldwin, pg. 678). It is a teachers responsibility to show students how to look deeply, while encouraging students to really look at the world before conclusions are drawn. It is our job to not lie about history or current events, but to be honest and seek out the truth as to why these things took place, and why they may still be taking place today.
I will always remember a Ted Talk I watched a few years ago. Rita Pierson passionately states, how as teachers, it is critical to seek to have human relationships with their students. When we teach out of love and relational connections, we are able to work to be a champion within our students lives. I believe that this can be done through honest communication, open discussion, authenticity, and awareness.

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Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, “They don’t pay me to like the kids.” Her response: “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.’” A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

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"I believe that learning..."
starts with what our students already know. We cannot enter our classrooms and expect our students to have knowledge on topics that they have not previously learned. We must meet our students where they are at by gathering what they already know and understand and building off of that.
I believe that learning is interchangeable and occurs through differing methods such as visually, tacitly, audibly, or kinesthetically. As teachers it is important to discover how each of our students learn and make an effort to incorporate each different learning style into everyday lessons.
I believe that learning comes from culture and society. Just as stated in Anita Bohn "A Framework for Understanding," Ruby Payne states that learning and lifestyles occur through hidden rules in the society that the students are brought up in. The example in this reading are the hidden rules of poverty that children are taught. They are not taught how to go out and succeed in school, they are taught how to get someone out of jail, win in a fight, and survive off of what they have. Therefore, I believe that culture plays a large role in students learning. This is why we must discuss culture within the classroom, while also discussing the cultures of others. Our students will learn through a connection to their background, knowledge, language, and beliefs. Incorporating these aspects into lessons engage students and allow us to compare the differences among all students.
I believe that learning occurs through active, open engagement within the classroom. Students should feel open to discuss their backgrounds, thoughts, and feelings within the classroom. However, in order to do this, a teacher must establish rules, boundaries, and relationships with students.
I believe that learning takes place through the equity of opportunity that students are given. I think that equity comes in a variety of ways: multicultural teaching, social and cultural empowerment, social action, learning needs, etc.
Lastly, I believe that learning occurs through an interest in the topic of conversation. I believe that to be successful with this, teachers need to get to know students for who they are so that they can incorporate their interests into the learning environment.