why i started
The story behind Deeply Human Teaching and why I almost gave up on it entirely.
When my seniors graduate, I give them my contact info and offer a standing invitation: to come visit and reach out when they need some help.
Well, at least that’s what I used to do what I was a high school teacher. I’ve been out of the classroom for about a year now.
I couldn’t tell you which stage of grief I’m in. Apparently the one where you go all-in on a blog and podcast and business. I wish I could hug last-year-freshly-pink-slipped-me. She’s sitting in the parking lot crying her eyes out, she was just told that the school is closing, and her whole world feels like it’s crumbling.
Don’t worry Drea, it gets better.
My DREAM SCHOOL
I taught high school history at a credit recovery school in Compton, California. Small classes. A community that was familiar with our school (no matter which side of the fence you were on). One family might tell you “that’s where the bad kids go to school” and others might say “my child wouldn’t have graduated if it weren’t for that school.”
I worked with teachers who enjoyed trying new things and, in the same breath, weren’t afraid to go back to basics if it didn’t work. I worked with a principal who I could text saying “you gotta talk to Juan, he’s trippin” and he’d show up minutes later ready to support me. I worked with students who could see right through you and weren’t afraid to call it out. I worked my booty off to build a foundation of trust and, in return, they gave me an open mind in my classroom.
What I learned there wasn’t discussed in any of my credential classes and it took really hard work to see it through: The best teaching happens when the teacher takes a step back.
And I don’t mean that the teacher hands out some crusty packet and sits at their desk and twiddles their thumbs. Come on, you know me better than that. I mean that the teacher puts in work to build learning experiences that put the students at the center of the learning.
That's where my obsession with inquiry-based learning was born. It began a relentless hell bent mission to figure out what works and how to implement it and most importantly, how to make it accessible for all my kids. I learned from books, podcasts, online PDs, anything I could get my hands on. I wrote proposals to get administration to invest in courses I wanted to take. And I had a room of students who believed in me. They firmly believed I had their best in mind and they gave me grace and feedback when I missed the mark.
But as you know from the opening of this blog, things quickly changed.
In April 2025, administration sat us down and told us the school was closing.
Here’s a little DHT lore: I actually started Deeply Human Teaching in (what would be) my last year in that classroom. With everything I had learned and the way test scores and attendance were improving, I felt called to share it all. I had already recorded the first few episodes of the podcast and I had so many ideas on how to bring everything in my brain to life.
NOT A TEACHER ANYMORE
Grief can really mess with your mind. It can make you think things that aren’t quite true.
“I’m not a teacher anymore” was the running lie that my grief was telling me. And to make things (what I thought to be) worse, I wasn’t headed back into the classroom in the Fall.
I applied to at least 100 jobs with various job titles, because I wanted to be abundantly cautious. I have my Masters in Curriculum and Instruction, I have a background in graphic design, I served as a mentor to other educators at my school, I wrote curriculum and assessments for our social studies department, and Mr. Claude (AI) helped me to present myself and as a great, highly skilled candidate for the jobs that were outside of the classroom.
I landed a role as an instructional designer at a private university. And, even though I still feel a twinge of guilt to say this, I love it. I kept that feeling as my dirty little secret for the first 6 months of the job. I thought about Deeply Human Teaching from time to time, and then promptly reminded myself that I was not allowed in that space anymore because “I’m not a teacher anymore”.
WHO I REALLY AM
On a random afternoon, I got a phone call from an old teacher friend who wanted advice about a project he was thinking of doing with one of his elective classes. He observed my classroom on a day that we were working on a project and remembered how fun it felt. My heart bursted with joy at the thought of nerding out and planning a student project, but then I hesitated because of that nagging lie… I can’t give him advice, I’m not a teacher anymore. So, I said: “You sure you want my input? I’m not in the classroom anymore.” He laughed and nonchalantly said: “In or out of the classroom, you’re one of the best teachers I’ve ever met. You’re creative, you love the kids, and they learn from you.”
After that phone call, it was a much different crying session than that parking lot crying session this blog starts with.
DEEPLY HUMAN TEACHING
That conversation lit a fire in me that had been put out, stomped on, but thank God it was somehow still smoldering.
I got to work in March 2026 by telling myself I’d focus on a handful of tasks each week to get Deeply Human Teaching back up off the ground.
I spent the first 6 weeks drafting my plan for all the free value I wanted to give to teachers. And it still didn’t feel like enough, so I planned for more. My goal is to take everything I learned in this last decade and package it so that other teachers can find my blog, my podcast, my website, and take what they need as they are on their own relentless pursuit of becoming a good educator.
That’s what Deeply Human Teaching is built on. Whether you have 20 min to listen to audio on your commute or you have a few early hours to read through blogs before the house wakes up, I have something for you. Because I’ve been there, when I didn’t have an extra buck to spend but I was devouring free content thanks to the generosity of other teachers who wanted to help. This website is my way of giving back so that everything you need is hosted in this one place.
The paid workshops and courses are everything I wish I had in the beginning. Those resources take lots of time and energy to build, and they’ll save you hours if not days of going back and forth, scratching your head, and starting over. I’m obsessed (perhaps a bit concerningly so) with making the videos clear, succinct, and always overdelivering with treats and templates.
the parking lot scene from the beginning
I think about that version of me quite often and the truth is that she got me to where I am today. I wish I could hug her and tell her it will all be okay. I’d tell her that I’m grateful for her tenacity and all the hours she’s spent building her skills up to that point, because I couldn’t have done all of this without her.
I’d tell her that the classroom isn’t the thing that makes you a teacher; the soul of it is the thing. In the same way that people identify as being hopeless romantics, whether they’re in a relationship or not, I feel the same way about education.
Even though I’m not currently in a classroom, I’ve found something to put that soul and hard work into. This is where it lives right now. And I’m really glad you’ve found it.
Drea