You Can Do Hard Things: One Teacher’s Journey from Para to a Top Teacher

Rocketship Public Schools

Meet Emily Suarez Del Real, a dedicated first grade teacher at Rocketship Southside Community Prep in Milwaukee who is from the very community she serves. Yet, even though Emily grew up in the South side community, she had to travel a long distance to get a quality education.

“My mom believed the only way I could get a good education was taking long buses to the white surburban areas in Milwaukee,” Emily recalls. “I grew up five houses down from this school. I know I’m a talented teacher, and so I believe in making an impact in my community. I want to make sure kids here can get a good education right in their own neighborhood.”

Emily is a top tier educator and just this past school year led her humanities students to nearly 1.2 years of academic growth in a single first grade year. Her Rocketeers are quite literally leaving her classroom ahead of their peers at the average public school. In her classroom, Emily brings a brightness and a warmth that’s impossible not to notice. Her chants, encouragement, and heartfelt support to Rocketeers make it easy to see why students love learning with her day after day.

But Emily’s worked hard to get to where she is and get her students to where they are. Like many growth-oriented educators at Rocketship, Emily enthusiastically leaned into the many coaching opportunities that come with being an educator here. Our school model is founded upon unleashing potential. Yet, our educators know to unleash potential in their students, they also must come ready to unleash the fullest potential in themselves. So, while working part-time as a para-professional at Rocketship, supporting teachers in the classroom throughout the day, Emily decided to go back to school to get her bachelors in education. She knew going to school full-time and working full-time would be no easy feat, but she couldn’t help but be inspired by all of her incredible colleagues lighting up their classrooms and making a difference in her community.

“Going back to school wasn’t easy, but one of the moments I knew I made the right choice by working at Rocketship, was when the staff here found out I was going back to my school. Without me knowing, they went to my college and bought sweatshirts and gifts for me. They said, ‘we know this is going to be hard but we support you.’ That meant so much to me,” she says.

Emily credits much of her growth at Rocketship to the robust and rigorous professional development offerings. Each educator has a coach where they receive in-the-moment feedback as they’re teaching, support with adjusting upcoming curriculum to maximize student success, and regularly reviewing progress to find new ways to improve.

“I truly see my coaching as a piece of feedback that only helps me get better. I can testify that I am where I am today due to my super critical, but not in a bad way, feedback from my coaches,” Emily says. “I think coaching should be mandatory at every school, and in the way that Rocketship does it.”

With the support of this coaching paired with her own natural knack for bringing joy in the classroom, Rocketeers in Emily’s first grade spend each day believing they can achieve whatever they set their sights on. As she was starting her teaching career she began saying affirmations out loud in the classroom – a tool that’s she’s seen do wonders as her young Rocketeers take on difficult assignments and independently hype themselves up in her absence.

“When I was in my first year of teaching I was nervous so I’d say affirmations to myself. “I am strong. I am smart. I can do hard things.” So I tell that to my students every day. And then, I see it in action. Just today I saw a young girl working on a math assignment. She was having a hard time and she closed her eyes and whispered to herself, “I am smart. I can do hard things.” And then, she opened her eyes and got back to work. Or we’ll be on the carpet and one student will be having trouble answering a question and a friend will yell, “You can do it! You can hard things!”

Emily’s story is a powerful example of how structured support and commitment to becoming our best selves can not only one take one person’s career to new heights, but also every student who that teacher connects with along the way.

Published on July 22, 2024