“True leadership includes encouraging teachers to reunite with their own purposes, but also ensuring that they are seen, heard and supported,” writes Ryan Burns, mentoring coach and adjunct professor in Warwick, Rhode Island, and fellow 2024-2025 of Edlage’s Voice Voice 2024-2025.
Over the past nine months, we have worked with eight fellows whose education pathways are as diverse as ever. It includes early childhood counselors who became trauma psychotherapists, physics teachers, physics teachers who like storytelling, and Jordanian-born immigrants who moved to the United States to pursue their passion for education. During that time, each fellow was able to speak vulnerably about educational leadership, student engagement and systematic challenges in K-12 education.
The opening quote from Byrne reminds us that education is a purpose-driven job and that student growth and development relies on supporting teachers and school leaders.
Before guiding through the 2025-2026 Edsurge Voices of Change Fellows, we would like to reflect on the key topics that a recent cohort of fellows wrote in their personal essays. Each story written by these educators reaffirmed that the educator’s voice was strong and deserved to be heard through platforms like Edsurge.
Vulnerability and mental health in educational leadership
These peers reflected early and often the implications of being vulnerable as education leaders and how the challenges affected their mental health. In her first essay, Noelani Gabriel Holt talked about how she learned to manage her anxiety as the principal of a Bronx elementary school and ride the waves rather than seeing it as a weakness.
Similarly, Ryan Burns felt the need to comply with school authority and over time he realized that well-behaved teacher scripts have been at the expense of advocating for the necessary changes in the school community.
Shortly after becoming a school leader, I received the best advice I had for managing my anxiety from the greatest therapist I’ve ever worked for. She said, “You have anxiety. You just have to accept it. Learn to ride the waves.” In order to ride the waves of anxiety and not let me control it, I had to reject the competent notion that anxiety is weakness.
Similarly, Ryan Burns felt the need to comply with school authority and over time he realized that well-behaved teacher scripts have been at the expense of advocating for the necessary changes in the school community.
I was eager to grow as an educator, but I never felt as deflated as I expected to be a “well-behaved teacher” who didn’t question authority. This narrow role was exhausting and dishonest. I realized I was dialing down my teacher self and emerged in a way that didn’t reflect or respect my commitment to teaching and learning.
Rethinking the curriculum to promote engagement and identity
Over the years, fellows have pointed out how difficult it has become to find ways to not only create engaging curricula for students, but also to promote community and identity development in the classroom. Edgar Miguel Grajeda, an elementary art teacher in Washington, DC, teaches in schools alongside numerous learners, has found ways to rethink his curriculum while maximizing the cultural wealth of his students.
As a visual arts teacher dedicated to teaching in schools with a high proportion of multilingual learners, I design my curriculum at the intersection of language development and artistic expression, creating an environment where multilingual students can thrive.
Another way educators have sought to cultivate identity and link curriculum involvement is social-emotional learning practices and strategies. Lauren Snelling, a childhood counselor in Chicago, made the cells a fundamental part of the curriculum so that students could bring their identity into the classroom.
When I built these basic skills together with my students, my school gave me plenty of time to build expectations for students to discuss their identity as a valuable component within the cell curriculum. My teachers and administrators understand that this is essential to the work they do in creating systematic change.
Advocating for representation in education
Identity was at the heart of many of these peers, and they sought opportunities to advocate for not only the student identity, but also the community around their parents and alumni. Gene Fasho, a middle school mathematics teacher in Aurora, Colorado, teaches in the same district he attended school as a child, reflecting the implicit bias that black students experience in mathematics and how this affects their confidence.
Educators and education systems often suffer from implicit biases that lower expectations among black students, especially in mathematics. These biases manifest in a variety of ways, including underestimating the mathematical abilities of black students and providing less encouragement. This lack of belief in the potential of black students can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.
In addition to students, these peers emphasized how important their identity was as classroom teachers. Hind Haddad, an Arabic language teacher in Columbus, Ohio, has experienced many microattacks as a Muslim educator. Despite these challenges, she believed her story was important to construct and advocate for students who share the same social identity.
Yet despite these challenges, I believe my story is important. Not only can we better understand Muslim culture and Muslim women’s identity, we can also create a more welcoming educational environment for Muslim educators and students.
Address systematic challenges and support educators’ sustainability
Finally, educators not only made assertions about the systematic challenges of K-12 education, but also expressed ways in which schools and districts could better support the maintenance of school educators. Fatema Elbakoury, a high school English teacher in San Francisco, spoke about her struggle with mental health and why she feels it is important to be honest about nervousness to herself and her students.
The truth is that there have been no days in my life that I have not struggled with my mental health. The only difference is that I have the tools and discipline to manage it sustainably now. When I first got my education, I wanted to be there emotionally for the young people. Now I realized that it’s not just about being there for them, but about passing on the skills I gained to live with my nerve production.
Meanwhile, Rachel Herrera, a high school physics teacher who also teaches in San Francisco, spoke about her journey from the company to the classroom. He also spoke about how education professionals often place structural emphasis on career development.
This is important as teachers lack the structure and career development of other industry and occupational work, and this is one of the key factors in creating a broken public education system. Compared to what I have experienced myself and learned from my colleagues and former classmates in the consulting, finance and technology industries, I feel that there is a lack of opportunities for career advancement within K-12 education.
2025-2026 Welcome to the voices of change fellows
With six new fellows participating in the 2025-2026 academic year fellowship programme, fellows can not only reflect the changing teacher and educator identity of the educational environment, but also explore emerging trends in educational practices and new technologies to support students’ learning.
To conclude another successful year of fellowship, I am excited to see, read and learn what this new cohort of peers has to say about the state of K-12 education.
