Harper decided to spend time observing some of the most highly respected teachers at her school. “The most helpful thing you can do in the first year is watch successful veterans working with students and constantly ask them, ‘How did you do that? How did you make that work?’”

The first change Harper made, she recalled, was her affect in the classroom. Harper had always thought of herself as a warm and positive person, but some students told her she often seemed “in a bad mood.” Later that year, a veteran colleague helped Harper understand what she now calls her “classroom persona.” “I learned that I had to be really consistent in my positive feedback and energy every day,” Harper told me. “If I frown or use a negative tone, it gets amplified in students’ minds a hundred times, in part because teachers have so much power over students. The students need to feel that I like teaching them. This creates a different feeling, and helps build stronger relationships with students—the most important foundation for teaching.”

Today, Harper is a 38-year teaching veteran, and those early lessons in how to be a good teacher are second nature. But her path to that sort of knowledge was a trying one, and what Harper understands now is that the system she entered into when she was 25 was not one that set her up for success, much less sustained it.

And for the most part, in her view, the system has gotten worse, not better. After nearly three decades of funding cuts to schools, growing class sizes, and declining pay, Harper said she feels that her profession is at a breaking point: Arizona was 48th in spending per student in 2017, according to the most recently available data, and seventh from the bottom for average teacher salary. The state now has widespread teacher shortages, and the number of students enrolling in teacher-training programs has been declining.

Last year, after 50,000 educators—including Harper and her daughter, Serenity Gielau, also a teacher—staged a six-day walkout in April, the Republican-controlled legislature approved new funding for the first time in a decade, including a pay raise of 20 percent for teachers by 2020. But despite the 13.5 percent increase in pay for Mesa teachers last year, too many educators are still taking on additional, part-time jobs to make ends meet, Harper told me. One of Harper’s colleagues, who is in her late 40s, drives for Lyft. Another veteran educator, who is raising three children, works a second job as a waitress.

Harper wants to see teaching become a healthier, better supported, and more effective profession, and is glad about the recent Arizona changes. She has been to the state capitol more than a dozen times since the walkouts to demand increased funding for public schools and higher pay. But while putting more money into teacher salaries and basic necessities—such as textbooks, functioning air conditioners, desks, and chairs—is key, Harper argues, the funding needs to go way beyond compensation and facilities. Bringing high-quality education to all students will require radically more resources for teacher training and support. Without it, teachers will continue to struggle and fail.