The following is an excerpt from Shamari Reid’s Humans Who Teach.

I have always believed that art is alive. Like Toni Morrison, I believe that writers must expect and encourage readers to read. We must assume that they will engage with and interpret our words, our art, from and within their own lived experiences, biases, and commitments causing our work to take on a life of its own. A life with each reader as they collaborate with our language to make meaning. I have to come to know deep peace in the art of letting go. I release this book. I gift it to you. And I know that you will do with it what you will, and I cannot control that. What you do with my words is up to you, but I would like to share that I created this book with intention. Not rules, but intention(s).

I intend:

• For this book to embrace you while inviting you to be vulnerable, honest.
• For my words and stories to make community with yours.
• For this book to remind you that you’re able to choose, center, and be love.
• Not to pressure you to act before you feel.
• Not to make you think that there is no action necessary to take up the ideas I share throughout this book.
• Not to make you think that what I share in this text is all feeling, without action.
• Not to make you think that the ideas I share across these pages will be easy to act on, nor impossible.
• Not to add the voices that make you feel like you must neglect your humanity to be a successful human who teaches.
• Not to make you feel like practicing self-care alone will result in the world you, your students, and their communities deserve.
• For this book to result in large-scale transformation of the ways humans who teach treat themselves and are treated.
• For this book to result in large-scale transformation of the ways young people experience schools.
• For this book to be a starting place…for more love-filled schools and a more loving world.
• To share my humanity with you.

I intend for this book to embrace you while inviting you to be vulnerable and honest.

Listen to Shamari Reid on the Heinemann podcast discuss his forthcoming book.

Humans Who Teach: A Guide for Centering Love, Justice, and Liberation in Schools will be released on March 26th, 2024.

Shamari Reid (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU. He has taught Spanish, English as a new language, and ELA at the elementary, secondary, and post secondary levels in Oklahoma, New York, Uruguay, and Spain. As a scholar-educator, Shamari’s work centers love as a moral imperative in social justice education, and as a path toward culturally sustaining school communities.