EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

LUIS DURÁN: For anything that some people carry as part of their identities, I think we should raise awareness for it. I feel like that is one step closer to having everyone feel like they are not othered.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Hello everybody, and welcome back to Inspiring Teachers: The Honored Podcast, where we shine a spotlight on life-changing teachers across the country. I’m Hannah, your podcast host, and our podcast is brought to you by Honored, which is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and elevating great teachers nationwide. Our mission is to inspire and retain great teachers, keeping them in the classroom as long as possible. Every month of the school year at Honored, we select an exceptional educator in the United States to be the recipient of the Honored National Teaching Award. Each Honoree, as we call them, receives a $5,000 cash reward, and we then tell the story on our website and our social media platforms of how that teacher has impacted their students’ lives. To learn more about our organization, you can go to our website at honored.org. While you’re there, if you have a teacher you would like to recognize, you can nominate them at honored.org/nominate.

We are so excited to have you listening in on another Honoree podcast episode. Today, we are joined by Luis Durán, a 6th-8th-grade Special Education cluster class teacher at Talcott Fine Arts & Museum Academy in Chicago, Illinois. He was nominated for this award by his student, Kenny, and Kenny’s mother, Kimberlee. To help share the impact of Luis’s teaching, we are joined today by Kenny and Kimbelee.

Before we dive into Luis’s story, we are excited to kick off our Honoree episode with our special segment, ‘Teachers Who Inspired,’ which is featured at the beginning of each episode. Here, we invite well-known individuals to share a story about a teacher who had a lasting impact on their lives. These stories remind us that behind every great achievement, there’s often an inspiring teacher who believed in their potential.

Today, we’re thrilled to have our guest on our special segment, award-winning journalist Walter Ray Watson, Jr. He has produced and reported news stories, features, and specials for more than three decades with NPR. He launched NPR’s Code Switch podcast that explores race, identity, and culture. Walter previously produced the weekend broadcasts of NPR’s All Things Considered.

He is the recipient of a Peabody Award and several Salute to Excellence Awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, most recently, for a feature co-reported with correspondent Debbie Elliott in 2024, among other honors. He began his career writing about arts and culture for The New Pittsburgh Courier in Pennsylvania. Walter earned his Bachelor of Arts in English writing from the University of Pittsburgh and was a 2008 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

WALTER RAY WATSON, JR.: I’m Walter Ray Watson Jr. I grew up in Chicago and now live and work in Washington, DC, where I’m a journalist and senior producer of Tiny Desk Radio at NPR. My favorite teacher was Ethel Bell Curtis at Barron Springs Elementary School in Waco, Texas. She was like an auntie. She dressed modestly, neatly, her hair always in the stylish perm. Only my mommy gave me more attention. Miss Curtis taught the second grade and was only the second black teacher in my young life.

As the years passed, she was my last. Miss Curtis returned our homework papers with encouraging words next to letter grades. She kept us motivated. Our hands waving, flying up to answer her enticing questions. In a classroom full of mostly black children, she spent the whole school day with us. She took us through math at the blackboard, had us read aloud, and spell from our little desks. 

We addressed her as Miss Curtis or “yes, ma’am.” Her bright smiles, approving tones, and eye contact were everything. I remember one day I tried to pronounce the name of educator and civil rights activist Mary McCleod Bethune. I struggled and read it as Mc-CLEE-ode. I could not stick the landing. Miss Curtis explained that some names and words don’t sound the way they are spelled. 

She said it in a tone that reassured us everything was going to be all right. She led us to recess and the lunch room, where freshly made corn dogs were just the best. My favorite memory was the end of that school year. A few of us, boys and girls, got to perform on the auditorium stage in front of the whole school and our parents. We wore little sailor hats and matching shirts buttoned to the collar. 

We marched with toy band instruments in a pantomime to parade music on the record player. Miss Curtis drilled us a few weeks earlier on steps she choreographed for the big day. Then all of a sudden, the music stopped playing. We were done. Parents, teachers, and kids applauded, and refreshments cooled us down from all the excitement. I couldn’t wait to hear approval from Miss Curtis, and I missed her for a long time after that last day of school.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: To start our episode off, Luis reflects on his journey into teaching as a first-generation college student. As he cultivated a passion for helping and inspiring future generations, he discovered his pathway to becoming an educator.

LUIS DURÁN: How I became a teacher was very going backwards. I went to the University of Illinois Chicago, and I majored in sociology. And I wanted to use what I learned in a way to help the future generations and a way to help kids, especially in Chicago neighborhoods that are less fortunate than others. And I stumbled upon going to graduate school. My former football coach from high school, he told me about this opportunity to become a teacher, and I thought, “Wow.”

I never thought that I could do that, because I never thought that I would be able to get a master’s degree, because none of my family has gone to college. I’m the first college grad in my family. So I thought, let’s do it. Let’s give it a shot. And I joined a cohort where I would go to school, and at the same time, I would be student teaching. I started as a paraprofessional, and I just got in there and working with individual students, helping them with their needs and their accommodations. 

And working with the students, that just kept me going, because they were so fun to work with. They each had their own little stories with how their day is going, and that’s what kept me going. 

LUIS DURÁN: And she raised me with love and patience, so I feel it very easy to give to my students. And I started your at Talcott about four years ago, and I was introduced to a cluster program where we work with kids with moderate to severe learning disabilities, and basically every student has an IEP. And I have to work with each of the students either in small groups or as a whole class. 

And I just keep that in my head to teach with love, teach with patience, and make sure that they have fun. So yeah, I would say what keeps me going is my students, because they really brighten the day, and what my mom told me that day when I first started on my journey to become a teacher.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Luis’s teaching is rooted in creating an inclusive environment. Working with students of varying abilities, he takes the time to learn about their individuality and encourages awareness within the school to approach differences with curiosity. Whether he is decorating for awareness months, telling stories that honor different identities, or sharing resources for the school community to learn, he cultivates an environment where every student feels accepted and valued.

LUIS DURÁN: What motivates me is that I have a cluster class, and they have various disabilities. Some have autism, some have Down syndrome, some have Koolen-de Vries syndrome, some have DiGeorge syndrome. And I want to know more about them, and I think everyone else should know more about them, not just, “Oh, there go the cluster kids.” I want the whole school to know more about who they are, the part of their identity that we should encourage to raise awareness on. 

And I speak of this for also bullying prevention, for breast cancer, for just anything that some people carry as part of their identities, I think we should raise awareness for it. Because what I have noticed in the two years that I’ve been doing this is usually, the younger students, they ask questions. What is this month’s awareness about? And I’ll tell them, depending on what month it is, I’ll let them know, and they will ask even more questions. They’ll show their curiosity. 

And that is something that has shown that gets those students to feel closer to the students that I have in my class. A lot of the students in the other classes, they say hi to Kenny, they wave to him. And I think that is something that I love doing. To decorate, to add information on, for example, what Down syndrome is, and even give stories about famous people that have Down syndrome. And I just feel like that is one step closer to having everyone feel like they are not othered. And I think if I am able to do it, I should do it. I feel like it is my moral obligation to do so because I want my kids to be treated how they should be treated.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: To share about the impact of this inclusive environment, we spoke with Kenny’s mother, Kimberlee, who describes how Kenny’s confidence started to grow when he joined Luis’s class. With three years together in his cluster class, she has witnessed Kenny’s growth and shares that for Kenny, having someone who believes in him has nurtured his creativity, confidence, and joy. 

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: When Kenny got into Mr. Durán’s class, I watched the ship just slowly start to turn around. I watched his confidence start to come back. I saw the support that Mr. Durán provides, not only for the kids as a whole, but individually. He’s very tuned in to what’s happening with everybody in the classroom. And that is such a gift. He is 100% himself, and he’s fun. 

And when he advocates for Down syndrome, he’s creating these gorgeous posters and involving the kids, and they’re decorating the school, and it doesn’t matter if there’s one person. Because Mr. Durán is very clear that this is about creating awareness for everybody else. Kenny’s pretty clear on who he is, and we’re excited because it has been an evolution that I’m so grateful. 

And the fact that we won the lottery of getting to have him for three years in a row, he got to build on his learnings and his confidence building, and his creativity, and areas that he knew that Kenny needed work on. He can do this in his class, and for that, I’m supremely grateful. And he walks the walk.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Another central part of Luis’s approach is making learning enjoyable and interactive. Through utilizing games, he builds a community of fun competition and camaraderie. He creates a space where students are excited to learn and are reminded that they hold the power to have a good day. 

LUIS DURÁN: I try to make my lessons, my activities as fun as they are educational, because school is a very long day, so they might as well have fun. They might as well enjoy their day at school. There are some things where I make them into games. Where I have a whole table set down with sight words, and I split my class up into teams, and I pair them up so they match their learning level of the other students. 

And I tell them, “Okay, I’m looking for this word, and whoever gets that word, they grab the card, a bell rings, they get the point.” And we go a few rounds, and it starts getting a little competitive. Near the end, they start running to the table, and they start cheering each other on. And I like that it builds that camaraderie, also that they’re just rooting for each other. And near the end, we have them count up the cards. Whichever team has the most cards, they win, and we have a quick little celebration. And I don’t just congratulate the team that wins. I congratulate everyone because they all do their part, which is great. They really enjoy it. 

I really enjoy the excitement of, okay, who’s going to get it? Who’s going to get it? It really keeps me going, and it keeps them going too. And I make sure to tell them that they’re going to have a good day, if they want to. And I try to model that as much as I can.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Expanding on his fun learning environment, Kimbelee shares how Luis brings joy into the classroom through music and encourages the students to try new things. He has empowered Kenny to believe in his abilities to gain new skills inside and outside the classroom. Through his teaching, Kenny is excited to go to school and knows he can overcome whatever obstacle is thrown his way.  

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: Kenny will talk about Mr. Durán. Like he remembers things that he does like, even including, for instance, songs he plays on his guitar. Like Mr. Durán will play hard rock. And Kenny has located, on the TV, The Muppets playing some of the same songs that Mr. Durán has. 

KIMBERLEE OVINK: So he doesn’t have that narrative of, maybe I’m not coordinated enough or maybe I’m not smart enough. He doesn’t have that, and Mr. Durán is a big part of that. I mean, Kenny will ask for a tutorial to learn something, whether it’s the moon walk or whatever kind of dance it is, and he will work on it until he gets it. 

And that’s a big deal these days, because to have a teacher or a leader demonstrate focus to where a child can carry it out, even out of the classroom, to where they’re executing and helping themselves develop, that’s a big deal. And Kenny doesn’t stop at that. So we’re very grateful, and he’s very excited to go to school. And I love that too. 

Like he does not want to miss, there’s never “I don’t feel good, and I’m not going to go in,” or something like that. He’s always ready to go, and I am grateful for that. I think Mr. Durán has really helped him try, even if it gets hard, he continues to try. And that’s that’s a big deal.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: In a heartfelt conversation, Kimberlee and Kenny recall how Luis helped bring the Special Olympics to their school. This opportunity allowed students to participate in games together as a class, nurture friendships, and build a sense of community. This moment of joy has stuck with Kenny and is a testament to the inclusive environment Luis builds.  

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: You mentioned Special Olympics.

KENNY OVNIK: Yeah.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: How was it that Mr. Durán arranged the Special Olympics for you and your friends?

KENNY OVNIK: It was fun.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: It was fun?

KENNY OVNIK: Mhm.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: And you had lots of different sports. 

KENNY OVNIK: Yeah, I had sports.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: You won the medals. Was that exciting?

KENNY OVNIK: It was good.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: It was good. What else? Mr. Durán had a lot of music in his class?

KENNY OVNIK: Class, yeah.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: And it was fun?

KENNY OVNIK: Fun, yeah.

KIMBERLEE OVNIK: Good.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Each morning, Luis starts his class with an emotional check-in by sharing his feelings and inviting students to do the same. He utilizes different colored zones to help the students identify and understand their emotions. Not only does this set students up to have a good day, but it also helps him know how he can support them.  

LUIS DURÁN: When I first started, I started in high school, and the students, some of them, would always seem to be just already frustrated with the day, or overwhelmed, or with very strong emotions in the morning. So what I started doing was, before anything, just check in with how they’re doing. Teaching at Talcott with sixth-eighth graders that are a little younger,

LUIS DURÁN: Each zone, whether it be that you’re sad, that you’re frustrated, that you’re angry, that you’re happy, that you’re calm. Each of those feelings falls into one of those four. And I let them know when I’m feeling sad, I let them know when I’m feeling angry, I let them know when I’m feeling happy. So I try to let them feel okay with being vulnerable by me myself, showing my vulnerability, and it’s something that has shown me that it really sets them up to have a good day. Whether some students are tired or sad, or they feel sick, that will let me know what to watch out for.

Like if they’re sick, if they’re just feeling groggy, okay, that’s not them not wanting to do anything. That’s them because they’re not feeling well. If they’re tired or if they had a bad day the day before, that gives them the opportunity to have the power to say how they’re feeling, and gives them the power to be able to tell themselves, “I’m going to have a good day.” Even if I start in the red zone, if I’m angry and frustrated and just overwhelmed, I can turn that around and have a good day and end up in the green zone.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Reflecting on his classroom, Luis celebrates the paraprofessionals who work alongside him. He expresses how they are the backbone of his class and are essential to cultivating the inclusive, supportive environment students are excited about every day. 

LUIS DURÁN: I would like to thank all of my SECA’s. They are also called paraprofessionals. All the SECA’s that I’ve worked with, they have shown me so many things. They have shown me their dedication and just their love for working with these students.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Thank you so much for listening and joining us today to learn more about Luis Durán, our December Honoree and recipient of the Honored National Teaching Award. To read more about his story, you can visit our website at honored.org or click the link in the episode description. If you have a teacher who you want to recognize and nominate for our teaching award, you can head to honored.org/nominate. If you enjoyed today’s episode, you can follow us and leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening in from. Thanks again for listening, and make sure to tune in next month to hear the incredible story of our January Honoree.