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Abigail Swetz is a teacher, writer, and student. For the past decade, she has been in the public school classroom, first as a Special Education Assistant and then as an 8th grade teacher of English and Social Studies. The author of An UnCommon Core, a solo performance work chronicling a year in her classroom through spoken word written by herself and her students, Abigail has performed at the Fresh Fruit Festival and Clutch Production’s empowHER reading series in New York City as well as the Kansas City Fringe Festival. In 2017, she was joined by four former students to speak at the Women’s March on Madison before a crowd of 100,000. That same year, she was honored to be named the GSAFE Educator of the Year and to receive the Rockwell Cooperating Teacher Award from the University of Wisconsin. Inspired by her students’ activism, she pursued a degree in public policy at the La Follette School of Public Affairs where she won the Penniman Prize for Most Outstanding Paper. A student once told her that “teaching is about changing the world; if you don’t believe that, you’re not doing it right.” Abigail tried to change the world by creating a safe space in her classroom to cultivate active, curious citizens out of her students; as she begins this new chapter in her life, she knows that at heart, she will always be a teacher. https://abigailswetz.com View all posts by Abigail Swetz