The aspiration was always about transforming the vision of what the teaching profession could be, big moments at a time. Writing a politically-oriented race-centric education blog while employed back in 2007 felt dangerous in some ways, but little did I know that the NYC Department of Education I worked for would block my blog from every computer in the nation's largest public school system. Getting chances to speak includes being the only current classroom teacher in the midst of education luminaries to front the nation's largest anti-testing rally in the country. Time and again, I got the blessing to be a featured speaker where I got to be the first current classroom teacher, but left these spaces hoping I wasn't going to be the only current classroom teacher.

Then, I wrote my first solo book This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education, a best-selling book coming up against dozens of books from major publishers giving voice to folks who either left the classroom long ago or those who had never been. I focused mine on those who stayed and those who believed in the power of our students, especially those most marginalized by our school system. Since then, I've been to the White House, The United Nations, Gracie Mansion, done hundreds of speaking engagements, traveled across the country, and supported a plethora of educator-centered movements, including EduColor, an organization that helped set the future for education and digital organizing and community building.

I believe not just in the thousand-plus students I had in the Heights or the plethora of colleagues who served communities, but because I believe in us. Teaching mattered to me a ton when I was a younger man, but now as a father to a nine-year-old who attends a public school and husband to a wife who works at public school, I more viscerally understand the depths of education as a life's calling but as societal right.

So now I have a call to action and so do we. Join me in making the work happen. Do you believe?