A Minneapolis Spanish and history teacher describes how, amid a school year shaped by mass violence and family removals connected to ICE, she is pushing for lessons rooted in joy, equity, and humanity—using “freedom dreaming” to keep hope alive in the classroo
When the 2025–26 school year began in Minneapolis, it arrived with a violence most classrooms never prepare for. The day marked a mass shooting at Annunciation School—a community the teacher says has close ties to her own school.
In December, the fear did not stay outside the school walls. The teacher describes the “havoc of ICE removing neighbors and family members from our communities,” culminating in the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. On the hardest days, she held back tears while trying to instruct her classes.
Her students and she were scared. Mental health, she says, was tested, and learning was often derailed by what students were facing beyond school.
She also points to a broader fight over meaning—how some narratives. in her view. are used to justify stripping communities and classrooms of the very support students need. She says she can’t help but feel that one of the first steps in legitimizing the “brutal and dehumanizing treatment of Brown and Black people” and of people protesting against ICE was the creation of a story that DEI is antithetical to academic learning. In her classroom experience, she argues the opposite: “DEI pumps life into the themes and lessons” she teaches.
As a Spanish and history teacher. she centers women’s voices and Indigenous histories. and she says she honors Black and Afrolatine lives in her curriculum—building lessons with what she calls more complex. richer perspectives. To help bring that philosophy into daily life. she refers to her students as family and has a banner on her door featuring a quote by Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s magnitude and bond.” Photos of her students fill the space around the banner.
The new year’s emotional strain doesn’t remove the teacher’s effort to change what students learn about the world. “Freedom dreaming,” she says, has become a daily practice—an attempt to channel the world she wants students to inherit into the curriculum.
Neighbors and friends in Minneapolis, she writes, have also mattered in sustaining her. She describes watching people rise up to protect the safety. integrity. and “heartbeat” of the city amid the violence and injustice tied to ICE. In that spirit, she and her students work to banish hate and inequity they feel infiltrating their lives.
Her classroom lessons mirror that aim. In Spanish. she built a unit titled “In Times of Crisis. Humanitarian Help.” Students learned about the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa in many Caribbean countries. but the class focused on World Central Kitchen and on humanitarian José Andrés’s work to restore people’s dignity and ability to live after natural disasters by preparing meals for them. She shares that one student told her the lesson made her strongly consider converting to Buddhism.
In world history. the teacher says she spent longer than necessary on the Mauryan Empire and Ashoka’s legacy in Buddhism. emphasizing principles of peace. nonviolence. and respect for all creation. For her. the point is to show students that even when politics and society feel overwhelmed by conflict. it is possible to lead with peace. love. and “fierce empathy.”.
The teacher’s approach has been shaped by learning beyond her classroom, too. She says “Facing History and Ourselves” and the “Remedial Herstory Project” helped her find her way and voice as a history teacher. Earlier in her writing life. she describes the Voices of Change fellowship as both a growth moment for her writing and a source of inspiration from educators who gave her the gift of “freedom dreaming.” After that fellowship. she says she earned a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry in 2024.
That momentum, she says, led to a summer writers’ residency this year, after which she is eager to keep exploring what she wants to write about—her experiences in and out of the classroom—no matter how challenging they may be.
What remains, after more than 20 years of teaching, is a stubborn insistence on building moments of joy, humor, and connection. She says students still work on competencies “not just for school. but for life.” Her goal. she writes. is for each school day to be permeated by the unwritten hope of freedom dreaming—so students. she says. and the wider community can believe in “the barrier-breaking power of unity” and in a world that makes dignity and respect for all non-negotiable.
Amanda Rosas, a mother, veteran educator, and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, teaches in Mendota Heights, Minnesota.
education curriculum Minneapolis ICE Annunciation School DEI freedom dreaming Spanish teaching world history Mauryan Empire Ashoka World Central Kitchen José Andrés Voices of Change fellowship Pushcart Prize nomination