“Education is the instruction of those who do not know about the speeches and wisdoms of the ancestors. Instruction is a process of teaching Good Speech through good speaking. The individual, educated through good speech, becomes a good speaker.” — Jacob Carruthers
“Time is entwined with the political and psychological currents of the moment, and we must recognize the specific temporal dynamics at play and act with awareness that the present is indeed the critical juncture for meaningful change.” — Rasheedah Phillips
Sometimes, when I walk into a classroom or sit in a circle with educators or students, I remind myself: This is sacred work. Not just because it’s important, but because it’s deeply human.
To teach is to carry memory. To speak into the present with care. To open space for something better to begin.
That’s what this moment is asking of us not just to respond, but to remember. not just to resist, but to restore.
And not just to “prepare students for the future,” but to recognize: Our students already are the future. The way we treat them the way we teach them right now is shaping what that future becomes.
There’s this idea we’ve been taught—mostly through systems rooted in control—that time is linear. That history is behind us, the present is neutral, and the future is something we get to later. But that’s never how our ancestors understood time. And truthfully, it’s not how we live, either. When we center humanity, time begins to move differently. It remembers while dreaming. It loops. It listens. It holds the past, present, and future all at once. It’s divine time. And once you begin to move in it, you stop rushing. You start listening more closely. You start teaching with a different kind of purpose. You realize that the classroom isn’t just a space to “cover content.” It’s a space to restore connection to self, to history, to the wisdom that’s been passed down and sometimes forgotten.
In education, we’re always hearing language about “fixing” things. Fix the system. Fix the gaps. Fix the kids. But what if our work isn’t about fixing? What if it’s about restoring? Restoration is different. It’s slower. It’s more tender. It’s not about returning to what was, but reconnecting to what was meant to be. When we teach to restore, we’re not just focusing on what’s broken, we’re inviting students to remember who they are, where they come from, and what they have the power to become. And that doesn’t come from a textbook alone. It comes from listening. From telling the truth. From sharing space with students as full people, not empty vessels.
Jacob Carruthers talks about Good Speech as central to passing down the speeches and wisdoms of the ancestors, and shaping students into people who can speak with clarity and truth. That hit me deeply the first time I read it. Because in so many ways, that’s the heart of our work: helping students find their voice—not just to speak louder, but to speak well. To speak with something behind it. To speak as part of a larger story. When we teach Good Speech, we’re not just focused on presentation skills. We’re teaching students to speak from a place of purpose. To know what they’re standing on. To speak for those who came before, and those who will come next.
“Education is the instruction of those who do not know about the speeches and wisdoms of the ancestors. Instruction is a process of teaching Good Speech through good speaking. The individual, educated through good speech, becomes a good speaker.”
— Jacob Carruthers
That’s restoration. That’s ancestral alignment with future potentialities.
Rasheedah Phillips deepens this idea by reminding us that time itself is political. In her book, Dismantling the Master’s Clock, she argues that the present is not just a moment we pass through. Not later. Not once the political climate settles down. Not once the system is “ready.” Right now, students are asking big questions. They’re navigating grief, change, and a world that doesn’t always tell them the truth. They don’t need us to pretend everything is fine. They need us to be honest. To be present. To offer them language and tools to make sense of the world and to change it, too. That doesn’t mean we have to have all the answers. But we can hold space. We can share what we know. And we can be brave enough to name what’s broken and dream out loud about what could be.
But to do this kind of work, we must ask a deeper question: What worldview are we operating from? What do we truly believe about our responsibility to one another? Are we teaching from a place of self-preservation, or from a commitment to collective restoration? The dominant culture teaches us to prioritize the individual—to protect our image, our credentials, our comfort. But ancestral frameworks have always taught something different: we are responsible for each other. We are responsible for those coming after us. We are responsible to those who made it possible for us to be here.
Teaching from a worldview of interconnectedness means we cannot separate our well-being from our students’. It means we cannot pursue “success” if it comes at the expense of truth, community, or integrity. And it means that we must continually ask: What am I centering in this work? Is it fear or courage? Control or connection? Performance or presence? Worldview shapes everything. If we believe that time is limited, we rush. If we believe that students are broken, we diagnose. If we believe that justice is optional, we delay. But if we understand that we are working in divine time, if we know that each student is a carrier of memory and possibility, then we show up differently. We move slower, but with more intention. We listen with more care. We teach with more trust.
“Time is entwined with the political and psychological currents of the moment, and we must recognize the specific temporal dynamics at play and act with awareness that the present is indeed the critical juncture for meaningful change.”
— Rasheedah Phillips
And here’s the truth: the shift we need won’t happen through curriculum alone. It won’t come only from policy. It will come from how we see. How we love. How we remember. Every time we center love, truth, memory, and possibility in our teaching, we’re not just doing our jobs, we’re participating in something much bigger. We’re helping restore what this world has tried to sever: the relationship between young people and their power. The connection between history and healing. The belief that something better is possible, and that it’s already inside of us.
We’re not waiting for the future. We’re speaking it. We’re not waiting for permission. We’re moving in rhythm. We’re not teaching to survive the moment. We’re teaching to restore the world.
And when we teach from this place—when we are ancestrally aligned, when our worldview is rooted in collective responsibility, the future is already listening. The future is already watching.
And the future is, in many ways, ours to remember.
