Arizona teacher honored nationally
Local educator named to Teachers Hall of Fame
“This is a job where you get to fill up your cup of love every day.”
Kareem Neal Special education teacher at Maryvale High School in Phoenix
Teacher Kareem Neal has a number of longtime friends who have taken different career paths. They’re bankers, accountants and engineers, but few of them, he says, seem to find the kind of daily joy that he has found working with students in special education for the past 24 years.
“If you can get through those early days, there are a lot of benefits, including that you go to a place where you’re loved on, and where you get to give love, every day,” said Neal, who teaches in a self-contained special education classroom at Maryvale High School in the Phoenix Union High School District.
“This is a job where you get to fill up your cup of love every day. And you’re never gonna be bored.”
As a Black male teacher in a workingclass Phoenix neighborhood teaching in a traditionally underfunded area of education, Neal knows being a teacher in Arizona isn’t easy: He once had three jobs to help support himself as an educator in the early days and is regularly mistaken for a sports coach.
But he also knows how impactful working with students can be. Neal has been recognized for this skill and dedication: as the Phoenix Union High School District Teacher of the Year in 2017, winner of the Diversity Award from the Arizona Education Association in 2018 and named as the Arizona State Teacher of the Year in 2019.
This year, he’ll be the first teacher from Arizona inducted into the Na
tional Teachers Hall of Fame.
But the clearest way he judges success is by the experience of the students who once were in his special education classroom and now are able to live and work independently or in supportive group spaces.
“When students leave my class, I want them not to have to rely on other people to do everything for them. That is Number One,” Neal said. “My classroom community and structure allow for the students to thrive in roles that they wouldn’t traditionally thrive in.”
The Arizona Republic caught up with Kareem Neal a few weeks before he traveled to Kansas for his June 17 induction into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What brought you to teaching, and to special education in particular?
In college, I was working at a gym that was holding a Special Olympics event. I was putting together the hurdles and all of those things that students were using. And one of the instructors called me over and said, everybody’s enthralled by how tall you are. Because I’m 6-foot-7. So I go over and I meet the kids. I was a junior in college. And they were just like super authentic. When I saw these folks who were just living their truth and speaking it, I loved that right off the bat. I was a chemical engineering major, and I was too far to switch, so I was like all right, I gotta go to grad school. I went straight to graduate school and I worked as a paraprofessional at a school that I wound up teaching at.
You run the diversity club at Maryvale High School. Can you talk to me about that?
Most of the first year that I was at Maryvale, I thought I would stick to working with students in my self-contained classroom. I can just be in my cocoon, and I don’t have to worry about the gen ed (general education) folks. Then one day a good friend of mine asked me to come into the gym and I saw the diversity club doing activities on how to connect better with humans and eliminate their biases.
And I was just blown away and I was like, all right, maybe I’m looking at this all wrong, right? It’s like, you can’t just be a person who’s stumping for the inclusiveness of the students in your classroom while saying, but I want to find a way to not be a part of the lives of the general students, right?
Now, I run the diversity club, it’s called Panthertown. It’s a place to build leaders, and a place to have students connect with their peers. It’s about eliminating biases, or concerns, they have about students who are not like them.
Students are saying, “That person is not like me, and I don’t know how to approach or connect with them.” The biggest focus for me has been the folks in the special ed program. Students don’t know how to approach them, so they are left alone. So I want people to understand: That person wearing a hijab still wants the same things, they have the same concerns, they are wondering what their crush is thinking about or how their parents are too hard on them at home.
What is your experience as a Black male teacher who works primarily with non-white students at a time when there is so much contention in Arizona, primarily in the Legislature, around the teaching of history and also mistrust of teachers in the classroom?
I want my students to be able to meet a variety of different people. And I wish that politician could see and meet them (my students) the same way. It would be like how I thought of general education students before I started working with them — like, oh, they seem so terrible from afar. And I met them and like, they’re all wonderful and every once in a while somebody frustrates you. And I think that it would be the same if politicians really had a chance to be in communities like Maryvale, which is not a community that many politicians would campaign in.
Would you encourage Black students to go into education?
I would encourage more folks (young Black people) to become teachers because of what it could do for Black kids in schools. I remember coming up in schools, I was a good student, so teachers took me in and they loved me, but they didn’t seem to pay much attention to my classmates.
When I think about, what is it going to take for a person to love the educational process, I think it’s teachers bringing them in. And to tell potential Black educators: Y’all can be the people to make sure these Black students aren’t forgotten in the classroom.
I’m from New Jersey, and I moved to Willingboro, New Jersey, when I was in 10th grade. I had one Black teacher, and his name was Mr. Belford, and he was a Black history teacher. We weren’t that close at all, but at least I saw it.
We also already know, Black families, their incomes are not as high as white families. So typically when Black folks get educated, it’s like OK, let’s try and find a way to be in a career where we can get money and start moving our families out of generational poverty. People think, ‘Oh, we’ll just make a stronger recruiting effort in these Black colleges and universities.’ But no, these folks are trying to earn some real money and teachers aren’t earning that when they start teaching.
Still, it’s important. I’ve spoken to Black students and they say: Seeing you makes all the difference. Like, I love the thought of a person who seems like he could do anything, but you chose teaching.
You work in a disinvested neighborhood in Phoenix — and special education could be considered one of the most disinvested parts of education. Talk to me about your classroom experience as a special education teacher in a self-contained classroom.
The funny thing is, one of the times that I was interviewed for The Arizona Republic in the past, I talked about how my classroom needed things like a refrigerator, washers and dryers, because sometimes there’s accidents, et cetera, et cetera. And so people read the article and started like actually sending us stuff, which was amazing. So that microwave, the refrigerator in there, I got from that conversation.
But the reality was that, it had to be from the outside. I am on DonorsChoose, all the time getting extra materials, because that’s just not our reality, you know? It is tough. You just always feel like you’re fighting when you are teaching in neighborhoods like Maryvale, teaching in classrooms like mine. I like to advocate for things that I feel passionately about. I feel like I’m an activist by nature. So fighting is not a problem. But you don’t always want to be fighting.
What do you see as the most urgent issue in education right now?
It is, without a question, the lack of teachers. It’s easily the most dire I’ve ever seen. I’m worried that schools won’t even be able to stay open. There are a ton of teachers who are leaving. The teacher shortage is really, really scary. It means either classes have to jump in size, or students are getting substitute teachers all day, every day in their classes. Either way, it’s scary to me. What I worry about is how we have to fight for every dollar. What if public education won’t survive? The fact that schools are politicized does make me worry that means one side hates them, and so we will allow schools to be absolutely shredded. It’s already happening slowly, while we’re not paying attention.