Education Liberates by April

Education Liberates by April - April 2025 Scholarship Essay

For the last decade of my life, I have pursued and honed my craft in education as an English teacher. When I first set out on this journey as an undergraduate student, I discovered not only that I felt compelled to give students greater access to themselves through literature and writing, but it is in the classroom setting where I found a true love of interacting with students. This is because when I was a student, I found that education was the only opportunity I would have to escape many of the traumatic experiences that I lived outside of the classroom; every time that I studied and aced a test or made a novel connection between a poem and a historical movement, I felt like I had the power to rewrite the destiny of my intergenerational trauma. It is true what the renowned poet Maya Angelou says: “education liberates.”

However, in the past few years working in the education system, I’ve come to realize that while education liberates, we’re not providing education to all. In many of my encounters as a teacher, I’ve found that the vehicle by which we facilitate that access often runs through systems outside of the classroom itself. As a classroom teacher, I was determined to eradicate the barriers that prevented them from learning the skills I felt they were entitled to learn. I worked to find new and effective ways to address barriers that existed outside of my classroom; I bought food for students who would come to class hungry, I provided iPad chargers and books to students whose access had been denied due to unpaid fines, and I discreetly shared community resources in my classroom which were aimed at aiding vulnerable populations.

Reckoning with the reality that the system which inspired me to achieve was failing others left me feeling misplaced, and continuing to teach in a world where I couldn’t impact the reasons which prevented students from learning overwhelmed the belief I had that I could make a difference; I felt lost.

This is when I reached a conclusion that I knew all along: while one teacher can make a difference, an effective system can impact all of the students that a school serves, supporting students and their families and bettering the community as a whole. Giving up teaching didn’t mean I had failed as a teacher - it was that I realized my potential outside of the classroom. I decided to pursue a career in school psychology so that I can dedicate myself to supporting students’ academic, emotional, and social needs directly and I can work to implement systems within schools which better serve all students.