This decision turned out to be one of the most impactful choices of my life. Although I’d thought this job would only be a temporary stop while I waited to get back to my real life, I found myself falling in love with teaching. I loved building relationships with the preschoolers in my class, joking around with them at lunch time, encouraging their creativity, and guiding them through emotional moments. 

I also discovered difficult things about teaching. The work of teaching felt natural to me, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. The more experienced teachers in my classroom became my mentors, and I absorbed the wisdom that I saw in their teaching practices. But I also saw some teachers behave in ways that infuriated me– picking on certain children more than others, raising their voices in anger, or shaming children for their behavior instead of helping them make better choices. These frustrating moments helped me understand my own beliefs and values as an educator, and envision the type of teacher I wanted to be someday.

When I returned to Wellesley College for my sophomore year, I declared my major in Education Studies. I studied under incredible educators like Soo Hong, Deepa Vasudevan, Noah Rubin, and Pamela D’Andrea Martínez, who opened my mind to the possibilities of what education could be, as well as what it has, unfortunately, historically been. For every way that education has uplifted children, broken down barriers, and helped communities fight for liberation, I discovered another way that education has subjugated children, excluded marginalized communities, and worked as a tool of colonialism. 

The destructive and oppressive potential of education weighed heavily on me. How could I become the social justice-minded, liberatory educator I wanted to be, when the landscape of education was so inequitable? There was no way I could fix the education system on my own.

Luckily, I didn’t have to. My professors introduced me to visionary figures in the education world such as Carla Shalaby, bell hooks, and Bettina Love. These authors showed me I wasn’t alone. They introduced me to ways of seeing and practicing education that felt exciting, rebellious, and compassionate. Education didn’t have to be about control and repression. It could be, as bell hooks stated, “the practice of freedom.” I also found like-minded students among my peers in the Education Studies program, who became life-long friends and allies in the fight for educational justice.

My passion for education as the practice of freedom led me to choose a career in the social impact field, where I could dedicate myself to social justice and liberatory educational practices. Through the FAO Schwarz Fellowship, I took a position with The Clay Studio in Philadelphia. My values have really found a home here. With Claymobile, we work to bring arts education to children and adults all over Philadelphia, especially to marginalized communities who are normally excluded from ceramics and arts in general. Every time we bring a project to a site, I truly believe we are practicing freedom with our participants; practicing joy, practicing empowerment, practicing justice. I don’t think Claymobile is fixing the education system on our own. I don’t think we can. But I believe in the impact we make. I love being an educator. In other words, I love freedom– for my students, for myself, for my community, for the world.

If you’re interested in learning more about educational justice, here are a few of my favorite texts to start with:

• Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal, Bettina L. Love

• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks

• Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School, Carla Shalaby
• Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out!: Voices from the Front Lines of the Educational Justice Movement, Mark R. Warren and David Goodman