It was month 13 of virtual learning, and Alejandro Diasgranados once again had to keep his 19 fifth-graders engaged on their computers.
Diasgranados, known as Mr. Dias in the classroom, quickly addressed the daily glitches that inevitably come with teaching elementary school students virtually for more than a year.
And then, even in the awkward virtual setting, the classroom transformed into something that more resembled a small college seminar than a fifth-grade classroom.
The students listened to each other. They affirmed each other’s ideas. They pushed back when they disagreed. And the conversation and ideas kept flowing, even as their teacher did his best to let the 10- and 11-year-olds lead the class.
“I read a book about this in first grade,” Jalen said, reacting to a photo of a young Black girl being escorted from her Louisiana school in 1960 by federal marshals. “This was a girl who wasn’t allowed to go to school.”
Zamiyha jumped in: “I’d like to add on to what Jalen said. . . . That girl’s name is Ruby Bridges.”
This ability to lead, listen and build off their classmates’ ideas was a skill that their teacher has taught them over three years. Diasgranados — a fourth- and fifth-grade English and social studies teacher at Aiton Elementary in Northeast Washington — had taught many of these students since the second grade, moving up a grade each year with his students. When they started together, the students would yell over each other, not paying much attention to what their classmates said.
Diasgranados, 29, was one of the four finalists for National Teacher of the Year, and his teaching has been highlighted around the country for months ahead of the announcement. On Thursday, the Council of Chief State School Officers — the organizers of the competition — announced that Juliana Urtubey, a special-education teacher in Nevada, was the winner of the competition. First lady Jill Biden surprised the teacher in her classroom as “CBS This Morning” filmed.
No D.C. teacher has won the national honor since 2005. In 2019, Kelly Harper — a third-grade teacher at Amidon-Bowen Elementary in Southwest Washington — was also one of the four finalists for the top honor.
Diasgranados, whom the mayor named 2021’s D.C. teacher of the year, grew up in Prince George’s County. He was a standout football player and never intended to be a teacher. After college at Virginia State University, he enrolled in a physical therapy program in Springfield, Mass. It was the first time that Diasgranados — whose mother is African American and whose father is a Colombian immigrant — had been in a classroom with mostly White students.
When a classmate used a racial slur in front of him, he was surprised the administration didn’t support him after he reported the incident. Diasgranados ultimately got kicked out of the program because of low grades and took a substitute teaching job in town. He kept thinking of the influence that his seventh-grade teacher — a Black man named Mr. Harris — had on him, and he decided he would become a teacher. He wanted to prepare students who looked like him for the world that awaits them so they can succeed at a place like the physical therapy school he dropped out of.
He applied to Teach For America after seeing a statistic that fewer than 2 percent of teachers were Black men. In 2015, he was placed at Aiton Elementary — a school with high teacher turnover and mostly Black students who come from low-income families.
“I know my students are brilliant,” Diasgranados said. “I know they come to school every day after the trauma they experience and they come in day after day motivated to learn and get their education. They have big dreams.”
As soon as Diasgranados arrived at Aiton, he poured himself into the job. He secured a grant through the Washington Football Team that brought laundry machines to Aiton so families could wash their clothes on campus. In 2018, he posted a video of his ecstatic, jumping up-and-down students opening up their reading group “acceptance” letters that resembled college acceptance letters. He started an online fundraiser one year so 40 of his students could travel to Baltimore and watch him graduate with his master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.
The results showed: His students’ growth on the national standardized exams have exceeded citywide improvement rates.
And he has been recognized on the national stage multiple times. He went on “The Drew Barrymore Show” in March and was awarded a national teaching award that came with a $50,000 prize. He plans to use the winnings to pay off some of his student loans and help pay for supplies and field trips for his students.
Diasgranados says that during virtual schooling he has relied on the relationships he built with families over the years. He said he texts or calls each student’s family at least once a week.
Darlene Craft-Jackson, whose grandson is a fifth-grader in Diasgranados’s class, said that she is in frequent contact with the teacher and that he has taught her how to help her grandson during distance learning. When he is falling behind or feeling sad, she reaches out to Diasgranados, who then directly contacts her grandson.
“He pours his heart and soul into these kids, and these kids return it,” Craft-Jackson said.
Diasgranados says virtual schooling has been challenging. All of his students are still virtual because he said there was not enough demand to go back. They are making academic progress, but not as much as they would be if they were learning in person, according to Diasgranados.
Still, he does his best to keep class flowing. On this Friday, he tied those photos from the civil rights era to the protests for racial justice that unfolded in D.C. this past year. He shared his own experience of getting pulled over by police and invited students to share personal stories about living in their communities.
And then he reminded them of their own futures, their own dreams and why understanding history is so important as they grow up and become leaders in their communities.
“You guys are the next generation of leaders, so giving you this information will allow you to navigate this world much better,” Diasgranados told his students. “The next president is probably in this classroom. Future attorneys are in this classroom. You guys are going to be making the decisions.”
