The Eye Opening PD Session

That Changed My Teaching Forever

There are moments in a teacher’s journey that quietly rewrite everything you thought you knew. For me, that moment came during a professional development session I almost didn’t take seriously.

A Room Full of Educators and One Line That Landed Differently

My colleagues and I were gathered for a professional development session centered on the work of Rita Pearson, the celebrated educator and TED Talk speaker whose words had stirred teachers across the country. When her famous line landed, “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like,” I watched it ripple through the room. Heads nodded. Pens moved across notebooks.

But that wasn’t the line that stopped me.

What caught my attention was Pearson’s description of the motto she shared with her students, a declaration she built her classroom culture around:

“I am somebody. I was somebody when I came. And I will be a better somebody when I leave.”

Pearson explained that this motto wasn’t just an affirmation; it was the architecture of her classroom. It set high expectations. It built a culture of excellence. But more than that, it cultivated something that test scores can’t easily measure: endurance. Perseverance. A willingness to face hard things without flinching. Her students, she said, were not afraid of challenges because they had come to understand that struggle was simply part of the process.

That idea planted a seed in me. I didn’t know it yet, but it would grow into the framework I now use to guide everything I do in the classroom.

The T.E.A.C.H. Framework: A Map for the Journey

In my book Teach the Curriculum, I break down the teaching framework I’ve developed over the years in the classroom. I call it T.E.A.C.H., and each letter represents a principle I believe every educator needs to hold on to, not just as theory but as daily practice.

T — Target the Thinking, Not Just the Standard. Standards tell us what to teach. But targeting the thinking asks us to go deeper: What cognitive moves do we want students to make? What kind of thinkers are we building?

E — Engineer Access Through the Curriculum. Every student deserves a doorway into the content. This principle is about intentionally designing learning experiences so that no child is locked out before they even begin.

A — Activate Meaning-Making. Learning isn’t passive. Students need to connect new information to what they already know and care about. This is where understanding is built — not just memorized.

C — Connect Identity and Voice. Students learn best when they see themselves in the curriculum, when their stories, cultures, and perspectives are not just tolerated but celebrated. Identity and voice are not extras. They are the engine.

H — Hold the Work Sustainably. Teaching is a long game. This principle is a reminder that we must build structures for our students and for ourselves that can carry the weight of real, rigorous work over time.

Jesse Jackson Was Right — and Sesame Street Knew It Too

The more I sat with Pearson’s motto, the more I recognized its roots. Jesse Jackson’s iconic poem “I Am Somebody,” first delivered in the 1970s and later made into a celebrated Sesame Street segment, carries the same truth. And Sesame Street’s choice to feature it was not accidental.

When Sesame Street launched in 1969, it was, at its core, an experiment: could television teach children? The show was developed with lower-income families in mind, and its iconic set was designed to represent a block in Harlem, New York. It was a deliberate act of inclusion, a signal to children who rarely saw their world reflected on screen that they belonged, that they mattered, that they were somebody.

Looking back, I can see the fingerprints of my T.E.A.C.H. framework all over that original vision, even though I hadn’t yet developed it. Connecting identity and voice. Engineering access. Activating meaning. These weren’t new ideas. They were old truths, finally being put on television.

The Bigger Picture: A Dream Worth Protecting

What I find most meaningful and most urgent is the through-line connecting Rita Pearson, Jesse Jackson, Sesame Street, and the work I try to do every day: all of it pushes back against the idea that education is primarily about efficiency, compliance, or standardized outcomes. All of it insists that children are whole people, not data points.

In today’s educational landscape, teachers face relentless pressure from a neoliberal framework that measures worth in test scores and treats learning as a transaction. It is easy, under that pressure, to lose your footing and forget why you walked into a classroom in the first place.

That’s why I hold onto moments like the one in that professional development room. The alignment between Pearson’s words, Jackson’s vision, and the framework I’ve built gives me something every educator needs: assurance. Assurance that this work matters. That it is rooted in something deeper than policy cycles and accountability metrics; it is rooted in the dream that Martin Luther King articulated for educators and children everywhere.

We are somebody. We were somebody when we came. And the children in our classrooms will be better somebodies when they leave.

That is the work. That has always been the work.