Home | Domain III | Professional Development Plan | Practitioner Journals
Professional Responsibility
Paradox
by Dishelesh Josey
© 2025 Dishelesh Josey
Listen closely! Humanity is awake?
Yelling at the sun—that offers warmth?
Planting on the ocean floor—where there is no light?
Cutting down the forest—to plant a garden?
Stopping at every home—to smell the apple pies?
Is that hope?
Professional responsibility, for me, sits inside that question—the tension between what we mean to do and what actually happens. My poem Paradox names that tension: the ways well‑intended actions can still cause harm, the ways certainty can masquerade as care. Teaching lives there. Not in perfection, but in the space where intention meets impact. In The Disordered Cosmos, Chanda Prescod‑Weinstein looks at the world through the eyes of an agender woman and insists that science, like education, is not neutral. She reminds me that those women whose names she does not know—who may not be part of her bloodline—are still her intellectual ancestors, just as much as Isaac Newton is (Prescod‑Weinstein, 2021). That idea lands heavy for me. It asks who we are listening to, who we are centering, and who we quietly erase while telling ourselves we are doing good.
That is the paradox. We build systems meant to help, yet too often they demand compliance before belonging. We correct behavior without asking what came before it. We cut down the forest hoping something better will grow. Professional responsibility means teaching inside that discomfort. It means asking not just what was my intention, but what was the effect. It means acting with care, awareness, and accountability in spaces where young people are still learning how to make sense of the world—and learning whether adults can be trusted to do the same. Teaching is not just about delivering content. It is about holding that tension honestly, listening closely, and choosing responsibility over ease, even when the answers are unclear. Paulo Freire helps me name what that responsibility requires. Freire et al. (2018) argue that “the struggle to be more fully human has already begun in the authentic struggle to transform the situation” (p. 47). That idea reframes professional growth for me as action rooted in reflection, not comfort.
For much of my teaching career, I had been actively disengaged from reality—close to students in proximity, but distant from their humanity, and comfortable within systems that rewarded control over understanding. Freire (2005) describes the central conflict of oppression as a series of choices: between being whole or divided, solidarity or alienation, acting or merely appearing to act through the will of others. At the heart of that conflict is the question of choice itself—whether people are positioned as decision‑makers in their own lives or reduced to spectators of systems acting upon them (p. 48). Reading this forced me to confront how often schooling removes choice before learning even begins. When students are given directions without dialogue, expectations without context, and consequences without understanding, they are not choosing—they are complying. For a long time, this compliance was treated as acceptable. It asked students to adapt to the system without asking the system to change. It rewarded obedience over understanding and certainty over care. Professional development, for me, becomes the space where I had to confront that realization—to unlearn practices that prioritized control and to replace them with learning that demands responsibility, reflection, and a deeper commitment to humanization.
What did I call “bad behavior” when students resisted those conditions? Once I began to question compliance as a measure of success, I had to confront how I understood behavior in my classroom. What I had labeled as “bad behavior” or non‑compliance was often a response to systems that removed choice before learning began. When students resisted directions, disengaged from tasks, or challenged expectations, I framed their actions as problems to be corrected rather than messages to be understood. Looking back, I see that many of these behaviors were not disruptions of learning but interruptions of a model that centered control. Non‑compliance became unacceptable not because it caused harm, but because it exposed the limits of a system built on obedience. This realization challenged my professional judgment and forced me to examine how my responses to behavior either reinforced compliance or created space for agency.
Professional development shifted my focus from stopping behavior to understanding it. Instead of asking, “How do I get students to comply?” I began asking, “What conditions produced this response?” and “What responsibility do I have here?” This shift reframed behavior as relational, contextual, and ethical—rather than simply disciplinary—and became central to how I understood my role as an educator committed to humanization.
There were days when students showed a clear distaste for learning—arriving without paper or pencil, refusing to engage before the lesson had even begun. At times, students lose their laptops, not because of learning, but as a way to avoid compliance altogether. These moments were frustrating, exhausting, and deeply personal. They challenged not only my classroom management, but my assumptions about what learning was supposed to look like.
The most difficult realization came when the learning environment began to feel less like a shared space and more like a barbershop—loud, performative, and disconnected from purpose—rather than a place of belonging. In those moments, behavior was not simply “off‑task.” It was a response to a space that did not yet feel like home. Professional growth required me to stop treating these behaviors as disruptions to be eliminated and start seeing them as signals—evidence that something about the conditions, the relationships, or the expectations needed to change.
Restorative healing, for me, does not begin with programs, quizzes, or scripted responses—it begins with the teacher. It begins when I am willing to pause, to listen, and to take responsibility for the conditions I help create. Healing shows up when I stop asking how to fix students and start asking how to repair relationships, trust, and learning spaces that may have caused harm or disconnection. This requires humility and presence. It requires me to see behavior not as resistance to authority, but as communication rooted in experience, context, and unmet needs. This ethical, equity‑rooted reflective practice frames teaching decisions as a responsibility for learner dignity. My shift from viewing science as memorized explanations to understanding it as sensemaking through phenomena and evidence now guides how I approach professional responsibility. I apply the same inquiry‑driven mindset to teaching practice—examining patterns in student responses, revising assumptions, and using evidence to guide ethical decision‑making rather than relying on habit or compliance. I learned that effective instruction requires me to study conditions—not just outcomes—by paying attention to student sensemaking, discourse, and moments of struggle or breakthrough. That same lens now guides my professional responsibility. I reflect on my practice the way I study learning: by noticing patterns, questioning assumptions, and revising my decisions with humility rather than relying on habit or control.
According to Armstrong (2016), humor is an essential part of the learning process. When I first began teaching middle school students, it was difficult to laugh when compliance was louder than curiosity. Control left little room for joy. However, I began to recognize that healthy laughter in the classroom was not a distraction, but a signal. It was evidence that students’ limbic brains were engaged and actively integrating the learning taking place.
As part of my professional responsibility, I continue to seek professional development that helps me better understand adolescents, not just as students, but as developing human beings. Reading The Power of the Adolescent Brain by Thomas Armstrong shifted how I think about student behavior, emotional regulation, and classroom management. Armstrong explains that many of the behavior’s adults label as defiance, impulsivity, or disengagement are often connected to ongoing brain development rather than a lack of care or ability. That understanding pushed me to slow down my responses and rethink how I interpret student actions.
This work strengthened my commitment to social‑emotional learning as a professional responsibility, not an add‑on. Instead of reacting to behavior in the moment, I am more intentional about building routines and relationships that support emotional safety, flexibility, and belonging. Armstrong’s emphasis on adolescence as a period of growth, risk‑taking, and identity formation helped me see that SEL is not about controlling behavior, but about creating conditions where students can practice decision‑making, self‑regulation, and reflection. Engaging with this scholarship reinforced my responsibility to align classroom management with care, context, and development rather than punishment or compliance.
Reclaiming humor as part of my professional practice required me to release fear—fear of losing control, fear of noise, fear of appearing unstructured. Through professional development grounded in adolescent brain research, I came to see humor not as the absence of rigor, but as a sign of emotional safety and cognitive engagement. Allowing laughter back into the classroom became another way of restoring humanity to a learning space that had once prioritized compliance over connection.
Small wins were few but deeply welcomed—especially when compliance was no longer the loudest voice in the room and was instead overtaken by moments of liberation. One of those moments came when sixth‑grade students were able to express ideas through single‑page, 8 x 10 one‑pagers focused on famous aviators from 1909 to 1945. What mattered was not the format, but the shift. Students were writing, drawing, explaining, and choosing how to represent knowledge on paper—something that had previously felt inaccessible or resisted.
This moment mattered because I needed a win—not just for morale, but as evidence that change was possible. I now have more than sixty one‑pagers created by students on figures such as Bessie Coleman, Aída de Acosta, Marie Marvingt, Robert Goddard, Amelia Earhart, and Nancy Hopkins. These artifacts represent more than completed assignments. They show students engaging with history, identity, and science through their own voices. For me, they marked a turning point: proof that when learning conditions shifted from control to trust, students responded with creativity, persistence, and agency.
The Artemis II mission would not be possible without the foundational work of early rocketry pioneers such as Robert Goddard, whose research on liquid‑fueled rockets laid the groundwork for modern spaceflight, as documented in Robert Goddard: Mr. Rocket Science (Lucasfilm, 2025). Connecting present‑day space exploration to historical innovation helped make learning feel relevant and real for students. Two years ago, in 2024, many students demonstrated their understanding using simple materials—paper and markers—rather than digital tools. Through one‑page, 8 × 10 artifacts, students made connections between past and present, showing how early aviation and rocketry continue to shape current space missions. These moments mattered because they showed that when students were given accessible tools and meaningful context, compliance gave way to expression and learning became visible
Professional responsibility means holding myself accountable for that work. It means recognizing that restoration is not something I do to students, but something I practice with them. By responding with care rather than control, and curiosity rather than certainty, I am learning to create classrooms that invite belonging instead of compliance. This ongoing work—reflecting, unlearning, and choosing responsibility again—defines my professional growth. It is here, in this commitment to humanization, that restorative healing begins for me as a teacher.
Professional responsibility also extends beyond the boundaries of this dossier. Additional reflective writing, curriculum artifacts, and professional documentation are curated separately as part of an ongoing public professional portfolio.
References
Armstrong, T. (2016). The power of the adolescent brain: Strategies for teaching middle and high school students. ASCD.
Freire, P., Ramos, M. B., Macedo, D. P., & Shor, I. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed (50th anniversary ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Lucasfilm. (2025). Robert Goddard: Mr. Rocket Science [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt2Q–GhyUg
Prescod-Weinstein, C. (2021). The disordered cosmos: A journey into dark matter, spacetime, and dreams deferred. Bold Type Books
