I wrote for the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards blog (a.k.a. The Standard) about my experience becoming National Board certified. I got the chance to shout out the folks who originally inspired me to become NBCT, and interweave equity and the future work for educators. Here’s some of it:

What drives us is the growth of the profession. As a Black / Latino male educator, I represent only 3% of the teaching profession. As someone who gets the opportunity to share my voice nationally, I am deeply humbled to represent that 3% of folks who don’t get to share, whose voices get ignored, and whose professionalism often comes into question. Since so many teachers of color are in schools that script their lessons, militarize their students, and strip autonomy, the NBCT label represents a lever for equity and opportunity for me and so many others. The idea that an organization has allowed for the best and brightest among them to develop standards for their own careers and evaluate their peers on rubrics they created represents an ideal. This grassroots thinking cultivates voice in a way that allows for educators like me to have ownership that we don’t have in our own schools.

For more, read here. Let me know what you think.