As a kid, Kheshawn Wynn, ’23, had contemplated a career as a music teacher. By the time he got to Stanford, he’d pivoted toward pediatrics—he knew, at least, that he wanted to work with children. But then came a life-changing class—a lecture in Psych 1 that taught him how social biases form. He soon joined a psychology lab as a research assistant and, working under the guidance of associate professor of psychology Steven Roberts and his PhD students, sought to understand how children perceive themselves, and how their experiences in school influence the development of those perceptions.
MINDSET MATTERS: Wynn wants students to view mistakes as learning opportunities. He wants their parents to do that too. (Photos: Courtesy Kheshawn Wynn)
During his junior year, he served as an RA in Lantana, where one of his fellow staff members shared that she wanted to be a high school English teacher. “She was the first person I met at Stanford who told me that they were in college studying to be a teacher,” Wynn says. “It relit a spark that I once had.” He majored in psychology, minored in education, and then earned a Be GLAD education certificate in June 2024. Wynn is now enrolled in a teacher preparation program, with plans to earn his credential by next spring. And for the past two years, he’s been teaching second grade at REACH Academy, a public school in Oakland that’s one block away from his childhood home. This fall he’ll be teaching a combo third- and fourth-grade class. He hopes to stay at REACH once his credential requirements are complete. “I want to continue to create experiences for students and their families to achieve new and unthought-of realities,” he says.
STANFORD: What inspired you to pursue a career in teaching, and why did you choose to work in Oakland?
My senior year, I staffed Ujamaa. While staffing Uj and taking courses in education, I originally thought that I wanted to work in higher education and help Black students navigate these spaces. I thought about teaching because I had my [Lantana co-staff] friend who told me she wanted to be a teacher. She ran a tutoring program with a trailer-park community in Palo Alto, and I was doing that with her. And from those tutoring experiences, I thought I would be interested in something like teaching.
The traditional route would be to apply to a teacher education or teacher preparation program and do that for a year or two, get a master’s, do student teaching, and then get a job as a teacher. That is not the route that I took. During the months after graduation, I had seen plenty of stuff from Oakland Unified School District hiring teachers with just a bachelor’s degree because of the national teacher shortage. I also saw a posting at the school that I work at now.
I just took a chance and submitted my application. I figured I would do OK without going the traditional route because of the type of environment that Stanford is—the fast pace of being at Stanford on the quarter system, doing research, and the spaces that I’ve been in. I was offered a position at this school close to the start of the school year. A nontraditional route was better for me—I needed a source of income coming out of undergrad. And with my passion for education, it quickly turned into something that I could definitely see myself doing long term.
What are your daily tasks? Can you walk me through a typical day of work in the classroom?
I try to get to work between 7 and 7:30. Our report time is 8:00, but being in the space helps me get ready for the day. I do more of my planning and preparation before the day instead of after [the previous day]. I’m writing my objectives on the whiteboard, looking through my plans. Other teachers come in sometime between 7:30 and 8, and we’ll debrief the previous day. Sometimes we’ll just do personal check-ins.
At 8:30, I get my students, bring them into the classroom, and we start our day with breakfast. I circulate and check in on the conversations. I’ll do morning announcements, and then, at 9:00, we start with our reading block. As a second-grade teacher, I do foundational literacy, math, and ELA [English language arts]. Students come in at different levels, so in addition to whole-class instruction, I also implement small- or half-group rotations to meet the needs of all learners and provide extra scaffolding and engagement opportunities. I really encourage collaboration—I see myself as facilitating the learning experiences, guiding them with questions.
At 10 a.m., we go to recess, and you can see their identities forming, watching them play. Whatever they choose to do in this free 15 minutes is so interesting. I’m seeing how they socialize themselves—who plays what sport, who chooses to do what. All those things have implications for who they will be later in life, which is very interesting to think about.
After recess, we do math, which is also very collaborative. Next, there is lunchtime. This is my second-year teaching, so a lot of my students from last year will ask if they can have lunch with me. I really see it as an opportunity to just get to know the students better. I think it’s like, if we were walking around the same block, I might have walked around that block a couple of more times. But we’re still walking around that block together.
After lunch they go to lunch recess, and at 12:30, they come back in for ELA, which is like social studies. At 2:45 there’s dismissal and we’ll wait with the students until their parents pick them up.
I’m also on a couple of leadership teams at my site, so some days after school I’d be in an hourlong meeting on topics like instructional leadership, culture, or climate. Meetings are over around 4:15 p.m., and I will leave school, at the latest, 5 o’clock.
Can you tell me about a moment when you felt like your teaching made a real impact on a student’s life?
Yes. Two.
In Oakland, there’s a high and rising population of newcomers. These are students who are new to the country. I’m not a dual language teacher, but I understand Spanish. I can have conversations with my students and their parents related to their education. Parents are not necessarily afraid, but parents don’t know how their students are going to adjust to being in school in America. The rewarding experience is being able to sit in a parent-teacher conference with the parent, and the parent just tells me nothing but good things that are happening at home. They’re like, “Oh, so-and-so is speaking more English at home,” or “So-and-so really enjoys being at school or being in your classroom. So-and-so talks about you all the time.”
When I can, I try to change the students’ mindsets. I hope the parents’ mindsets can also change with that. So, some students would stay away from harder problems because if they get them wrong they think that means they’re not smart. But I really go out of my way to encourage mistakes or frame mistakes as learning opportunities. I really want to create experiences where students can believe in themselves and do things that they not only don’t think they can do but that they never would have thought of doing. And in doing that I want my students to teach their family something. The family then tells me excitedly about what the student is learning or teaching them. I think that’s very awesome.
What are some of the more challenging aspects of teaching?
A lot of my students are carrying heavy things, whether it’s poverty, food insecurity, housing instability, or stress from immigration. And the hardest part of teaching, for me, is figuring out how to talk about those real parts of life and honor students’ cultural experiences while still making sure they get to feel like kids.
The trauma and things that they bring show up in their emotions, their bodies, and, most importantly, their attention spans. It’s hard knowing I have so little control over what happens outside of school and that I can’t fix everything outside, but it empowers me to really take creating my classroom culture and community seriously.
What do you envision your career path looking like?
Eventually I would like to get my master’s in education, but I would love to stay in elementary school teaching. I love connecting with my students, and there are so many other students that I wish I could connect with outside of my classroom of students. I see myself thinking about ways to engage other teachers or people that work in education.
A lot of students don’t know the things that exist outside of their neighborhood or outside of their school. So, it would be great to start some type of program that creates resources or provides outside experiences so students can see things, get exposed to different trades.
What is one piece of advice that you would offer to anyone interested in a career in teaching or in public service more broadly?
I would say that the relationships with the people you’re serving come first. I’d also say that partnership is really important. Teaching is not an individualized career. I’m in partnership with the students. I’m in partnership with other teachers. I’m in partnership with the administration. I’m in partnership with parents and families. Being intentional with partnerships will go a long way. Remember that everything happens in partnership.
Zora Hudson, ’24, is a former editorial intern at Stanford. Email her at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
