Rebecka Peterson asked her audience of aspiring educators and teacher leaders to think of a teacher “who made you want to be a teacher.” After encouraging audience members to say the names of their teachers out loud, she said, “At some point down the road, a student will be asked that same question — who inspired you — and your name will exit their mouths.”
The 2023 National Teacher of the Year, Peterson, a Tulsa, Oklahoma, high school math teacher, gave the opening keynote address at the Educators Rising conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday. The address was her last public appearance as the National Teacher of the Year. “I can think of no better exclamation point on my year than to be with students who want to be educators,” she said.
A daughter of an Iranian father and Swedish mother, Peterson was born in Sweden and lived in several countries around the world as her parents traveled as medical missionaries. They eventually moved to Tulsa, where Peterson attended high school. She remembers the teachers who helped and inspired her along the way. “Because of a teacher, I am a teacher,” she said.
As a student who moved from continent to continent, Peterson said she felt like she had to earn her seat at the table. “I never felt like I belonged.” She took these experiences to heart in her own classroom, where, she said, everyone is welcome, and no one had to earn their spot. “I created a space for them to be themselves and through that I created a space where I feel I belong. As a teacher, I found my most authentic self.”
In her classrooms every Friday, Peterson asks her students to spend two minutes writing about something good that happened during the week. It’s a practice she does for herself, that sustained her during her first difficult years as a new teacher. She tells her students, “We will end the week on the good.” They take inspiration from Alice Morse Earle, who wrote, “Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.”
This practice, among many others that Peterson uses in her with her students, has helped students connect with each other and connect with her. “I get to watch my students grow as mathematicians and as students, and I get to watch them grow as human beings,” she said. As teachers, “we get to bear witness to students growing into the fullest version of themselves.”
Peterson took questions from the audience. One audience member asked if she had advice for new teachers. She recommended that job seekers find schools where teachers talk and interact with students the way they would want to interact with students. Find principals who back their teachers. “If we are not spaces with other educators who love being in education, it will drain us,” she said.
Another attendee asked what she was looking forward to seeing in the future of education. Peterson said she was looking forward to the teaching profession becoming more diversified. She wants schools to be places of pride where parents and guardians work together with educators. She hopes schools will be seen as “a beacon of hope for your communities that bring out the very best in all of us. “
Her final question: What do you say to naysayers who don’t believe teaching is a worthy profession? “I don’t know any other profession like this one,” she answered. “Yes, it’s going to be hard, but anything worth doing is going to be difficult. I believe in the power of education. I believe that access to quality education is the foundation of our democracy. That’s why I want to teach.”
