This is the fourth of four profiles on students in our Teaching and Teacher Leadership Program: Licensure Strand. Students in this strand will pursue Massachusetts initial licensure in secondary education with Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) endorsement. To learn more about our two licensure pathways, internship and residency, please visit our website.

I came to the United States in 2015, at the peak of gang violence in El Salvador. I was 11 years old when my mom made the hard and brave choice to leave the place we had called home for generations, in the hopes of finding something better than the reality we were living in. We eventually settled in the state of Maryland. Our early years in this country came with financial hardship and the challenge of navigating systems we didn’t understand, immigration being the most difficult. I believe being an immigrant came to shape my sense of self. At times it felt like a form of alienation imposed on something so natural as human movement. There was something disorienting about that identity: not speaking or understanding the language around me, experiencing myself as an outsider in what was supposed to be my new home.

Over time, I’ve learned to live with that contradiction. There is something inherently paradoxical about how I navigated my environment with a sense of caution, even as I was still searching for a place to belong. I think within this tension, one of the most important realizations I’ve had is that nothing in my life ever happened in isolation. For instance, my high school gave me the opportunity to engage in free rigorous college coursework early in my teenage years, which for me was transformative because prior to me, no one in my family was given the opportunity to access higher education. This early exposure to higher education spaces, the support from the teachers, and the group discussions that emerged from the classroom, naturally expanded the possibilities of what I could be and what I can explore through my learning.

It’s through these experiences that I root two of my personal beliefs: I genuinely believe that education can transform people, and I believe that part of teaching is community building, creating spaces in which we can recognize each other as part of a community. Based on my values and personal experiences I don’t like individualistic environments, especially when they aren’t productive to our collective learning. So when I was considering HGSE and TTL, that was one of my fears, encountering an individualistic culture. What I can say now is that TTL uses a cohort system within the licensure strand. I’m part of the ELA cohort, interning and learning to teach with very limited prior classroom experience, alongside others doing the program at the same pace, we have the same advisor; Dr. Rosette Cirillo who I think is a grounding piece of this community. What I’ve found most valuable about this experience has been being part of the cohorts. It really does feel like a community and there is so much space for personal reflection as graduate students but also as people who are trying to be better educators for our students. 

If you’re thinking about coming to HGSE, or to any other program, I genuinely mean this; reflect on your experiences. Take the time to sit with them. Think about what you value, and then think about what this program, or any other you’re considering, actually offers and values.

Estefany Lara (She/They) is a Master’s candidate in the ELA internship model, Teaching and Teacher Leadership Program, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is a recipient of the Harvard Fellowship for Teaching. Born in the department of Chalatenango, El Salvador, she is a first-generation high school and college student and a graduate of Bard High School Early College Baltimore, where she earned an Associate of Degree in Liberal Arts alongside her high school diploma. Estefany went on to complete her undergraduate degree in three years at Bard College, studying Philosophy and Latin American Studies. During her time at Bard, she was involved in community work and advocacy through The Scale Project, a student-run organization serving first-generation and low-income students, led a team within Bard’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, and worked as a writing tutor through the Bard Prison Initiative.