Reflection Questions

Each chapter includes the following elements. • An explanation of how the American education system serves to create the rigged game of education • Action steps specified for teachers and school leaders in the How to Make Change sections • Lighthouse Beacons, which spotlight educators and activists who, through their tireless work, point the way toward educational justice and equity • Reflection Questions, which readers answer as individuals and teams to ponder how they can become change makers in their own communities

Before we continue, let me tell you a story. One day early in my teaching career, my building principal asked me the following question: “What would you have done if you were around during the civil rights movement?” My mind filled with images of freedom rides, sit-ins, marches, and demonstrations. I told myself I would have done it all! Next, the principal said, “Well, whatever you would have done, you better start now, because the civil rights movement is happening now” (S. El Mekki, personal communication, August 2021). So long as the education system denies students their right to quality education, the work of dismantling broken systems and bridging the opportunity, equity, and justice gaps in American education continues. So long as schools are funded by zip code, so long as students of color face a school-to-prison pipeline, and so long as the least prepared and least experienced teachers are funneled into under-resourced schools, the work continues. The road is long, but we will walk it together.

Let’s get to work.

3

Teacher Preparation

When someone asks students what they want to be when they grow up, what do they often say? Professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, mechanics, astronauts, paleontologists, software designers, musicians, actors. What do they rarely say? Teachers.

Being a teacher isn’t glamorous; it comes with no big paycheck, no social media status, and no clout, and anybody who says the summer vacation is a draw has never taught a class, let alone six periods a day, five days a week, for nine months a year. Nobody goes into teaching for the money. Indeed, while the average teaching salary has increased since 1993 to the tune of $56,383 total annually, these increases have risen far slower than inflation has (Alexander, 2020). To put it another way, “if a school teacher is the sole source of income for a family of four in South Dakota or Mississippi, her/his child would qualify for federal reduced-price meals as a student” (Alexander et al., 2015, p. 248).

If a profession’s value is measured by pay, then teaching is simply not valued in America. Relatively lower pay than other professions combined with reported lack of support and prolonged stress has led to near perennial lack of qualified educators (Hester, Bridges, & Rollins, 2020). Teachers reporting being overworked is not hyperbole. Indeed, American teachers spend on average forty-six hours a week teaching—far more than the worldwide average of twenty-eight hours per week (Camera, 2019). Teaching, therefore, is an alternative profession, a job for those who are either altruistically inclined, financially secure, or unable or unwilling to pursue more lucrative professions. After all, from a purely economic vantage point, why would anybody go to college, accrue mountains of student loan debt, and then enter a teaching workforce,