Taking the Weight: A Youth Activist Becomes an Educator

• In Event: Let the Fire Burn: A 10-Year Retrospective on Public School Reform in Philadelphia

Abstract

Tamir Harper is a second year SDP educator who has transitioned from classroom teacher during the 2022-2023 school year to the school’s climate manager for the 2023-2024 school year. For this panel, he will discuss his experiences of school reform in SDP as a student and student activist and what he sees now that he has returned home as an educator. Harper will focus on the unique weight of worries borne by the most challenging and most marginalized students in his school and SDP, concerned with the potential of future school closures, violence and death, and other circumstances beyond their control. Harper will also discuss being a non-traditional climate manager, one who challenges notions of Black students as unsalvageable and unruly but instead seeks to cultivate a climate of learning, engagement, concern, and community activism with and among his students, their families, and the community.

Author

• Tamir Harper, City of Philadelphia