‘We Shouldn’t Just Stay in Our Classrooms. We’re Teachers’

Mandy Manning has not been shy about advocating for her immigrant and refugee students. When she was awarded the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, she presented President Donald Trump with letters from her students talking about what coming to the U.S. meant to them, but also how his negative rhetoric about immigrants empowers their classmates to say hateful things such as, “go back to your country.” Along with several state teachers of the year, she recently organized a Teach-In in El Paso, Texas, to protest undocumented families from being separated and detained. In an interview with correspondent Kavitha Cardoza, Manning talks about some of the early experiences she had teaching in Armenia and Japan and how feeling like an outsider informs her teaching. She also addresses how students are feeling more empowered (and why that’s not always a good thing) and why she continues to fight this fight.