 When I think of the promise, I think of progressive education and the father of that movement, John Dewey. And while Dewey promoted education as a critical component to democracy, it was his unwavering belief that education was the only way for a child to reach their full potential. And that still moves me. Dewey said that education is not preparation for life, education is life itself. And now before I knew who John Dewey was, and before I knew that I would become a teacher, it was my father that embodied that quote. My father's family came from Jalisco, Mexico. He along with 12 brothers and sisters were migrant workers along the southern border of Arizona. And from the age of three, he picked cotton in the fields. A hundred pound burlap bag would get him $3. And when he was school age, he still had to head to the fields before school and immediately after. And as brothers and sisters, they stopped going to school around the age of eight. And as my father picked cotton, all he wanted to do was be in school. His brothers and sisters would badger him relentlessly saying that he was going to school to get out of work. But he really did love to learn. He was curious with an insatiable love for learning. Now growing up in the 1940s and 50s in very segregated towns in southern Arizona, that was no feat. The Chicano workers and the families were treated as second class citizens. My father told me that he remembers signs that says no dogs, no Mexicans. The struggle to stay in school became harder and harder for my dad. He made it to the eighth grade, farther than anyone else in his family. And while his formal education stopped early, his love of learning did not. My mother too only received an eighth grade education growing up in Southern California, leaving school to work and to raise her younger brother. And these two people became the biggest champions for public education I would ever know. My father in particular allowed zero excuses for not making school my top priority. His promise to me was to give me the opportunities that he never had and to squander those opportunities was unthinkable. My father never minced words about how to uptake his promise. Hard work was non-negotiable, service a necessity, and ganas, the Spanish word for something stronger than desire. And for whatever I wanted, I'd have to work. Now my parents owned a landscaping business, most of my childhood. I worked every day after school. I was running the register by the time I was eight, driving the tractor by the time I was 10, and putting in sprinkler systems by the time I was 12. And on our hardest days outside, planting hundreds of bare root trees, which I hated, or digging trenches for a sprinkler line. My father would playfully nudge me and he'd be like, Miha, how important is your education? And I would give him that irritated preteen look, dad. And he would smile and he'd say, most important. My parents' sacrifice for me was evident throughout my childhood. They knew that my education was my ticket, my chance, my opportunity to live the life I wanted on my own terms. Now there is honor in a life of physical labor, but my father wanted it to be my choice, not a default, because I didn't have an education. So education was gospel in my house growing up. And as I grew older and was encouraged to take more difficult classes in high school, and I started looking into colleges, my father again helped me uptake his promise. We had really honest conversations. You'll have to work harder than many of your peers, Miha. You're Chicana and we're poor. We don't have the money to put you through school. Your mother and I don't know how college works exactly, but we've given you the skills you need to figure it out. And so he'd ask me, how bad do you want it? So it was never a question if I would go to college. Every struggle I had in university, really hard struggles. Difficult classes and working two jobs through my undergrad. An infant on my hip much earlier than I had planned. My father would continue to ask me, Miha, how bad do you want it? And while I thought I would be a lobbyist advocating for the underdog, life led me to be a public educator. And my commitment to the promise of public education became as compromising as my parents. That notion of hard work, service, Iganes, became a mantra in my classroom with my students, in my union work, and with my own children. I find myself echoing my father in my classroom, not allowing any of us to make excuses for our responsibility to our education. I want my students to have the opportunity so many of our family members were denied because they were immigrants, because they're poor, because they were marginalized in some way. I think of my parents and I channel my father in every challenge I face through my undergrad, through my masters, and now as I finish my doctorate. I am going all the way because I can. Because I am conscious of the sacrifice my parents made for me and I fully understand what it means to uptake the promise of public education. And now my own daughter just started her sophomore year at college. In one generation, my father, a migrant worker, picking cotton for $3 a bag changed the entire trajectory of my life and that of my children through his commitment to education. They can't be undone and they can't take it from me. The desires and hopes for our children both in the classroom and within our own families are not exclusive to a particular nationality, race, socioeconomic status, immigrant or not or native born. We all want better for our children. My father's dreams for his daughter were not hindered by his documentation status nor the persecution he experienced nor the challenges he faced. He knew that education was a way to a better life and while he wasn't able to obtain it in any formal arena. My dad's the smartest guy I know. My passion for public ed is directly related to the example he set for me and the doors that were opened because of education. And so brothers and sisters, we are all still Ellis Island. Public education is still the gateway to those opportunities and hopes and dreams and those who have agonized for something more. It takes hard work though. And while we are in the trenches with each other, fighting for public ed, organizing, campaigning, advocating, telling our stories, our work doesn't end here. What do we need to do to uptake the promise of public education for all students regardless of zip code, race, gender, class? How resolute is our courage to do this great work? We are so blessed to be here to fulfill the promise of education within the most critical profession there is. So John Dewey's quote, education is not preparation for life, education is life itself, that is our map for the future. We must work and serve and have the gunners to commit to this uptake, like our very lives depend on it because it does, not just our lives, but the lives of our children, our kids. And we can do it together, but I ask you, how bad do we want it?