The Seattle Teacher Residency helped Tess to design a student-centered classroom that best serves students of color furthest from educational justice.
Deep in community at West Seattle Elementary, second-grade teacher Tess Perkins is cultivating a student-first and equitable learning environment. Her journey into teaching began after moving to Seattle and serving in Americorps with City Year Seattle. She was inspired by the Seattle Public Schools’ mission to serve all students, with an emphasis on students of color furthest from educational justice.
“The classroom is for the kids. As a teacher, I have to function in this classroom, but everything here should be for them,” Tess explains, reflecting on a key takeaway from the Seattle Teacher Residency (STR) program. The program helped hone the importance of a student-centered approach, tailoring every aspect of the classroom to support each child’s needs and ideas.
STR’s strong emphasis on racial equity, not only in lesson planning but in overall teaching philosophy, was instrumental in forming Tess’s student-first approach. “The program pushes us to further educational equity by maintaining race and equity at the forefront of our mind,” she explains.
In her classroom, Tess ensures that planning always considers all students.
“When we’re planning we are planning for all of our students,” she notes, “[we think], how can we pull in student ideas, student thought, and student experience to make it a more equitable place for everyone?”
Beyond pedagogy, the mentorship during the STR program was especially impactful from Tess’ perspective. Observing a mentor and co-teaching in their class throughout an entire year provided her with a realistic understanding of the challenges and rewards of teaching.
“I think that [co-teaching] opened my mind up to the reality that this isn’t always going to be fun and easy. We are going to have times where there’s tough things happening for students, tough things happening for teachers, and we are going get through that together as a community. That’s what we sign up for as teachers.”
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