To the Teachers Who Are Still Showing Up

Hello everyone,

I came across this page through the Global Teacher Prize community, and I wanted to reach out just to say that the work you're doing matters, and I'd love to be connected to someone who understands what this kind of teaching actually costs and gives.

I'm Maria Angala, Filipino-American educator, and a National Board Certified Teacher from Washington D.C., where I teach bilingual special education at an inner-city public school. I work with neurodivergent students — many of them multilingual learners navigating English alongside a disability — and I've spent the better part of my career building the instructional infrastructure that should have existed for these students and teachers all along. That work eventually became the A.C.C.E.S.S. Literacy Framework™, and it's grown into something I never fully anticipated: international keynotes, teacher training in Malaysia and Myanmar, and a platform at BilingualSPED.com that reaches educators across the U.S. and beyond.

I've recently submitted my application for the Global Teacher Prize, which is part of what led me here — to this community of educators who I imagine carry the same quiet conviction I do: that the students the system overlooks most are the ones who deserve our very best work.

I'm not looking to network in the transactional sense. I'm looking for peers. People who know what it's like to fight for a child's right to be fully seen in a classroom — and who are still showing up to do that fight, year after year.

If any part of your story or your work resonates with what I've shared here, I would genuinely love to connect. Even just to learn from what you've built.

With respect and solidarity,

Maria Angala, NBCT

Bilingual Special Education Teacher Leader

Developer, A.C.C.E.S.S. Literacy Framework™

BilingualSPED.com | TpT: maria-angala-nbct