Minneapolis Teacher Encourages Students to Bring All of Who They Are to School

Artiera Evans, a third-grade Spanish immersion teacher at Emerson Spanish Immersion Center in Minneapolis, MN, has been given the prestigious national Honored teaching award for January.  As part of her honor, Evans received a $5,000 cash award and a $1,000 DonorsChoose.org gift card, and she had her story composed by Steven Drummond, Senior Education Editor at NPR News.

Evans was nominated for the Honored award by Nilvia Brinkley, the mother of third grader Zoë Brinkley.  Brinkley wrote about Evans’ incredible dedication to her students, and how committed she is to their overall wellbeing — not just their academic success.  Evans believes that relationships with her students are the core of her teaching practice, saying,

“It’s super important that my students don’t leave any parts of themselves at the door. I want them to bring all of who they are.”

Evans encourages her students to use show-and-tell as a way to bring their home lives to school, and she co-founded an African American student affinity group at Emerson.  Evans saw that some African American families, like the Brinkleys, felt disconnected from the school, and along with another teacher founded a group to help create a safe space and give students a sense of belonging and buy-in to the school and its mission. As Nilvia Brinkley observed, “[Evans and her colleague] could have said, ‘We’ll leave it to the district or the PTA,’ but they did it themselves.” For Evans, concern for her students’ well-being as whole people is an essential part of her job.  “Teaching isn’t just what I do,” she says. “It’s who I am.”

Read the full story of Artiera Evans and Zoë Brinkley at www.honored.org/honoree/artiera-evans.

Honored is a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping great teachers in the classroom and to inspiring a new generation of talent to pursue teaching. Each month, Honored shines a spotlight on a teacher who has changed the life of a single student. The Honoree receives a $5,000 cash award, and Honored partners with a world-class writer to tell their story. Honorees are selected from K-12 teachers of all subjects at public, private and charter schools across the country. Honored’s National Advisory Board includes luminaries such as the internationally best-selling author Michael Lewis, DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best, Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp, and FEED cofounder Lauren Bush Lauren.

For more information about Honored, visit honored.org. For regular updates on Honored and our monthly Honorees, follow and like us on facebook.com/Honored.org, twitter.com/honored and instagram.com/honored.