During the Elevating & Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers (ECET²) convening in Seattle, Washington, Lauren Maucere, a high school English, ASL, Theater Arts and health teacher from Los Angeles Unified School district gives a keynote address reflecting on her call to become an educator.

“That scene (in Romeo and Juliet) was tough for my students who were reading far below their grade level. But, they were still expected to understand those monologues that were truly foreign to them. I asked myself in that moment, ‘Am I expecting too much?’ I could have perpetuated the status quo of low expectations for deaf students and deprive them of that opportunity to understand an important classic, cultural, and literacy work from our history but, in spite of those doubts, I continued on.”