From the Desk I Once Sat In: What Educators Who Came from Poverty Know That Policy Makers Often Miss
How educators from poverty bring essential insight that transforms school reform from the inside out.
I still remember the desk.
It wobbled when I leaned too hard on it, its surface carved with initials from students who came long before me—proof that many had passed through, but few had truly been seen. From that seat in an under-resourced classroom, school felt less like a launchpad and more like a holding space. I was capable, curious, and determined, yet the system around me was not designed to recognize potential that didn’t arrive neatly packaged.
Years later, I stand at the front of a classroom remarkably similar to the one I once sat in. I am now an educator in a turnaround charter school, tasked with improving outcomes for students whose lives mirror my own adolescent experience in unsettlingly familiar ways. The difference between then and now is not intelligence, effort, or aspiration—it is access, advocacy, and who is empowered to make decisions.
That dual perspective—former student and current reform-minded educator—has taught me something essential: lived experience is not anecdotal. It is expertise.
Lived Experience as Educational Insight
Educators who come from poverty carry a kind of professional vision that cannot be taught in graduate programs or measured in data dashboards. We recognize the subtle signs of instability long before they appear in attendance records. We understand that silence can be a coping mechanism, that defiance can be fear, and that disengagement often signals overwhelm rather than apathy.
In reform-oriented schools, where urgency and accountability are rightly emphasized, this insight becomes an asset. High expectations matter. Structure matters. Consistency matters. But so does knowing when a student’s behavior is shaped by forces far beyond the classroom walls. The ability to hold both truths—to demand excellence while honoring context—is a leadership skill born from lived experience.
Students do not need lowered standards; they need adults who understand the terrain they are navigating while climbing toward those standards.
Reform Works Best When It Is Informed
As a proponent of school reform, I believe deeply in the promise of turnaround models. I have seen what is possible when schools are redesigned with intention: longer instructional time, data-informed teaching, clear culture, and relentless belief in students’ potential. These approaches can and do change lives.
However, reform is most powerful when it is informed by voices closest to the problem. Policies crafted without representation risk addressing symptoms rather than root causes. Metrics may capture outcomes, but they rarely capture the emotional labor required to achieve them—labor disproportionately carried by women educators in high-need schools.
Educators with lived experience of poverty often serve as translators between systems and communities. We explain school expectations to families who may have been alienated by education themselves. We contextualize student behavior for colleagues. We build trust where institutions historically have failed. This work is not incidental to reform; it is foundational to its success.
First-Generation Leadership in Action
Being a first-generation college graduate shapes how I lead. Without inherited knowledge of academic systems, I learned to navigate institutions through observation, persistence, and mentorship. That journey now informs how I support students and families encountering these systems for the first time.
First-generation educators tend to lead with transparency. We demystify processes that others may assume are intuitive—applications, assessments, discipline policies, postsecondary planning. We anticipate confusion because we once lived it. In reform settings that prioritize outcomes, this clarity becomes a strategic advantage.
Leadership does not always look like authority; sometimes it looks like access.
Teaching the Child I Used to Be
There are moments in my classroom when the distance between past and present collapses. A student’s frustration, a parent’s hesitation, a child’s quiet brilliance overlooked by circumstance—I recognize them because I was them.
This recognition is both a responsibility and a privilege. It demands that I teach with urgency, empathy, and an unwavering belief in possibility. It also requires boundaries, resilience, and faith in systems that are evolving but imperfect.
Reform-minded schools often ask educators to do more, believe more, and push further. When paired with leaders who value lived experience, this environment can be transformative rather than extractive. It allows educators like me to turn personal history into professional purpose.
A Call to Influential Women
Influence in education reform should not be measured solely by proximity to power, but by proximity to truth. Women who have navigated poverty, first-generation pathways, and under-resourced schools bring indispensable insight to leadership tables where decisions are made.
To truly transform schools, we must elevate voices that understand both the promise of reform and the realities of the communities it serves. When lived experience informs policy, reform becomes not just effective, but humane.
I once sat at a desk that told me little was expected. Today, I stand in a system that asks much of me—and I ask even more of it. Progress happens when those who once survived our schools are empowered to help lead them forward.
