Surge celebrates Pride Month by uplifting the leadership, experiences, and impact of LGBTQIA+ individuals. Today, we spotlight Surge Alum Sterling Grimes (PHILA24), who is making a meaningful impact by creating more affirming, inclusive, and empowering spaces for others.

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Sterling currently serves as a 9th Grade English teacher and as the lead of the Future Educators Academy, a CTE program for students interested in becoming teachers. At the end of the school year, Sterling will transition into a new role as the Director of Fellow Experience for City Teaching Alliance, supporting and mentoring early career teachers.

Why is it important for everyone to see their own identity represented in the classroom, but particularly in teachers, administrators, and other positions of leadership?

Conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, hobbies, and what makes you laugh are all important – all of these are pieces of who our individual students are. The opportunity for them to see those different parts of themselves reflected every day, especially in the teachers and administrators who are their first line, is so important. Every morning, we're having conversations about life as much as we're having conversations about Romeo and Juliet, right?

What does it mean to see somebody living in their fullness, in their wholeness, with self-love, with an ability to interrogate their experiences and find affirmation and confidence and beauty in who they are?

I think that is a transformative piece of the schooling experience. And it's one that, as our kids grow and evolve in an ever-evolving world, requires that they see that in the adults around them.

What does Pride Month mean for you?

For me, pride is self-love. Pride is community love. Pride is evolutionary, liberatory love. The idea that the way our experiences, particularly around gender and sexuality, have evolved over time, is giving us more space to be who we truly are. That evolution, that journey is one that we deserve just as much as any other community.

What does it feel like to be loved?

It's beautiful, particularly when I experience moments of unbridled queerness. There are parts of the queer experience (just like in any group) that you just get when you're a part of it. And it gets to be mind-blowing, and heartbreaking, and inspiring, and exciting, and personal. And it is, I think, just a beautiful opportunity to be held, and to learn what love actually looks like. I think the exchange is actually what love is truly based in.

And so when I experience moments of love that are rooted in or fully affirm my queerness, I think it creates more capacity in me. To offer more love, more care, more grace, more willingness to extend myself and seek out more community. And I think, in this iteration of my journey, being loved is allowing me to build more capacity to offer love, which, for many young queer folks, is not a space we learn to do very well. For me, it's been very much a healing process and an opportunity to realize more of myself.

Anything you want to say to your Surge Family?

Thank you, Surge. You came into my life at a point where I was really unsure about whether education actually had real space for me and the specific parts of the work that I had invested in. You really saw me as a meaningful leader and poured into me in a way that helped reframe how I see myself. That gave me energy and confidence to own my own credentials and to know that the work I was doing and the connections I was building across were going to be what sustained us long term.

And that's absolutely been true two years later. I'm super grateful to the network for offering me space, for putting me in certain rooms, and for never letting me not believe in myself to the fullest. They always saw in me things that I sometimes couldn't see in myself. Just from my heart to yours, thank you. And let's keep doing this work because we have plenty more to do.

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