Curating Truth

As a teacher educator, I sometimes have to choose which truth to tell.

It isn’t that I’m lying. It’s more like curating truth, shaped by love, frustration, and necessity. We live in a society where teachers are systemically undervalued, especially in my state. Low pay, punitive accountability measures, and eroded autonomy paint a picture of distrust. And yet, I still tell 20- to 24-year-olds that teaching is worth it.

That conversation isn’t hollow. It is hopeful. It’s layered with conviction, concern, and care. My undergraduate students bring passion and possibility into the room, and I honor that by helping them build a professional identity rooted in advocacy and awareness. Some bring stories of childhood teachers who changed their lives. Others speak of wanting to be the adult they needed when they were younger. These moments are powerful, and they shape the way I approach truth with them. Still, it is hard. Selling hope without glossing over reality hurts.

Sometimes, the undergrads wear rose-colored glasses, brimming with passion and wide-eyed hope. My graduate students, who are pursuing certification through alternative pathways and have already spent time in classrooms, arrive with transition lenses. Their views have been shaded by real classroom struggles and resilience born from frustration. They see teaching through a different lens.

In our courses, we explore theories and practices that often assume ideal conditions: time, autonomy, and support. But reality is not ideal. It is negotiated daily. In every class that I teach, whether it is for undergraduate or graduate students, I am not offering platitudes. I am offering practice. That practice is anchored in spectrum-based survival.

Imagine a spectrum with teacher-centered practices on one end and child-centered practices on the other. Every educator I work with falls somewhere along that continuum. Where they fall is shaped not only by their beliefs but by the realities of their schools, the expectations they face, and their own comfort with challenging the status quo.

Many want to shift closer to child-centered practices, but they also want to stay employed. That tension is real. Survival doesn’t mean selling out. It means practicing resistance in the margins, finding agency where possible, and recognizing that the spectrum is not a ladder to climb. Rather, it’s a landscape to move through.

When I taught from 1999 to 2012, the terrain was different: pre-COVID, pre-political warfare, pre-scripted mandates. Would I survive as a classroom teacher today? I honestly don’t know. But I do know this. The teachers I prepare aren’t naïve. They’re learning to survive on the spectrum with dignity, creativity, and critical reflection.

And maybe that’s the truth worth telling, one of resilience, hope, and real change waiting just beneath the surface.

(Image Credit: Canva AI Generator)