In just ten days, 3,300 young people will gather in Portland for the 2026 Educators Rising National Conference. They’re coming to compete, to connect, and to be inspired. But something larger is also happening: they’re showing up to claim their place in the future of education. The question is whether the rest of us are ready for them.
That doesn’t begin at a national conference. It begins in school — in a classroom, with an educator who saw something in a young person and said, you could do this too.
We don’t always design schools as places where young people learn to lead, contribute, and shape the world around them. We relegate it to the margins — extracurricular, optional, reserved for students who’ve already proven themselves in other ways. The research challenges that assumption. A study published in the Journal of Research in Education found that high school students who had meaningful opportunities to participate in leadership and decision-making demonstrated stronger academic achievement and significantly greater civic engagement after graduation. A separate, landmark review commissioned by The Wallace Foundation found that leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that shape what students learn. These aren’t peripheral findings. These findings challenge us to rethink what school is for.
That belief is at the heart of this year’s Educators Rising National Conference theme: Teach with Purpose, Lead with Passion. It’s more than a tagline. It’s a reflection of what becomes possible when we see young people not simply as recipients of education, but as contributors to it.
The young people attending this conference are not waiting to become educators. In many ways, they already are. They’re peer mentors, classroom aides, leaders amongst their peers, and advocates reshaping the culture of learning in their own schools. They’re asking hard questions about what teaching and learning should look like. And they’re excited — genuinely, visibly excited — to be part of building something better.
Our responsibility as a profession is to meet that energy with intention.
I began my career in a Los Angeles classroom, and one question has guided my work ever since: How do we build conditions that expand what’s possible for young people? The educator pipeline challenge we face today isn’t simply about recruitment. It’s about signal. Too many talented young people — especially those from communities most underserved by the current system — never receive the message that education is a place where they can lead, not just a place they pass through.
The future of education will be determined long before someone applies to a teacher preparation program. It will be shaped by whether young people develop the confidence, purpose, and sense of possibility to see themselves as contributors to learning in the first place. That’s why Educators Rising exists. When thousands of future educators gather in Portland this June, they won’t just be preparing for careers. They’ll be rehearsing the profession they intend to build. They’ll be practicing leadership, building community, and imagining what education can become.
They’re ready. And claiming it. Are we?
