Hello, there! My name is Tricia Ebarvia—and I am an educator. For twenty years, from 2001-2021, I taught high school English outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and served as Department Chair. Beginning in July 2021, I will become the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Greene Street Friends School.

AS AN EDUCATOR, I believe that developing a love of learning begins by centering students’ natural curiosity and nurturing a love of reading—a love I try to foster each day in the classroom. I also believe that developing student voice is not only an important skill in writing, but a necessary one for students to become engaged, informed citizens. Building a racially and socially just society begins in our classrooms, and it is this belief that is at the root of all work I do and each of my relationships.

As a teacher, I often invited students to ask me questions, usually via index card during the opening week of school. Inevitably, a student asks what my dream job would be. It’s an interesting question, because it assumes that my dream job would be something other than teaching. But the truth is, I can’t imagine doing anything else but teaching. I’ve always believed teaching to be a vocation—from the Old French, “a calling”—and not just a job. And although I may no longer have my own classroom, I will alway be a teacher at heart, and work to effect positive change in every role I walk to ensure that all children can be their most authentic and best selves.

My former classroom library: if you build it, they will come.

My hope for all students is that they, too, find their calling, that they find a purpose—a purpose that inspires them to work hard, that contributes positively to the world by making the lives of others better. We are, after all, ultimately bound up in the welfare of each other; we are, as Gwendolyn Brooks reminds us, “each other’s harvest . . . business . . . magnitude and bond.” I believe that teachers and students, in community with one another in classrooms everywhere, can be a powerful and transformative force for good. Each day, I walk into school and do my best to help students develop the skills they need not for the world as it is, but for the kind of world I think we all want—one built on the foundations of empathy, compassion, service, and justice.

IN ADDITION TO TEACHING, I am proud to have been the faculty sponsor of S.O.A.R. group (Students Organizing for Anti-Racism), an Asian American Culture Club, Students Against Gun Violence, and StogaDigiMag, a student-run online magazine that seeks to highlight all voices. I’ve also participated on various district. equity, curriculum, and technology committees. Outside of school, I serve on the advisory boards for the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project (PAWLP), a site of the National Writing Project (NWP), as well as the Center for Antiracist Education (CARE).

In addition to my blog here, my writing has also been published in English Journal, Literacy Today, and Education Week. In May 2016, I was named to the second cohort of Heinemann Fellows, an action-research “think tank” of teachers led by Ellin Keene. In 2018, I co-founded the anti-bias, anti-racist pedagogy effort #DisruptTexts with the goal of advocating for more inclusive and equitable curricula and pedagogies. Because I believe that amplifying the voices of educators of color is critical to antiracist teaching and learning, Dr. Kim Parker and I co-host the annual #31DaysIBPOC collaborative blog project every May. Each summer, Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul and I co-lead IREL, the Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy.

OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM, you can find me spending time with my husband as we raise our three boys. Because they are growing up too fast, I document our lives through my passion for photography.  Our young Jedi-in-training remind me every day that learning can be—and should be—filled with wonder and joy.

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NOTE: Please note that opinions expressed here and elsewhere are my own and not necessarily reflective of any of my employers or other affiliations.