Arizona Educational Foundation

Kareem Neal

It’s a contentious time to be a teacher in Arizona. Last year, we saw massive teacher walkouts amidst the #RedForEd movement, there’s an ongoing statewide teacher shortage and an ongoing battle over how to fund K-12 education here.

In that landscape, The Show sat down with the newest ambassador for Arizona public school teachers. Kareem Neal was just named the 2019 Teacher of the Year by the Arizona Educational Foundation.

Currently, he’s the self-contained special education teacher at Maryvale High School in Phoenix, and that means his students are in his classroom for the majority of the day. They all have pretty serious intellectual disabilities, and some are physically disabled as well.

Neal started by saying it’s a career that has a pretty high burnout rate.

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