Taylor Schmidt’s passion for teaching and democracy in education began in the classroom and has continued as a doctoral student at Carolina. Drawing upon his time in the classroom, Schmidt explores how education can inspire both teachers and students, and help democracy thrive while embracing global perspectives.
“My heart has always been in teaching,” said Schmidt, a doctoral student in the UNC School of Education’s Culture, Curriculum, and Teacher Education concentration. “That’s who I am. I’ve always been passionate about social studies, civics, and democracy in the classroom.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from Kansas State University in 2013, Schmidt moved to North Carolina to teach middle school science in Bertie County Schools — an experience that solidified his commitment to a career serving students and teachers. He enrolled in the UNC School of Education’s Master of Education for Experienced Teachers (MEdX) program.
“My graduate experience at Carolina introduced me to transformative ideas about education, teaching, and learning,” Schmidt said. “Learning from professors like Jocelyn Glazier and Cheryl Mason Bolick helped reshape my understanding of what it can mean to teach.”
Following his graduation in 2018, Schmidt taught social studies and civics in Durham — where he sought to foster democracy in his classroom, a place he says is an inquiry- and dialogue-based environment that gives students the chance to meaningfully practice social agency, responsibility, and involvement through shared, open-ended experiences.
Schmidt collaborated with his eighth-grade students on projects that embraced the principles and practices of active citizenship. One of the most impactful projects — a student-led voter registration initiative reaching beyond the walls of the classroom and hours of the school day — provided his students with responsibility and leadership opportunities.
The project also showed that when students are trusted, they can achieve remarkable results, he said, and drive their own learning to develop critical thinking, navigate complex systems and conflicting viewpoints, communicate effectively, and act on informed stances in public.
Schmidt said his time in the classroom highlighted the potential schools have to facilitate strong civic engagement with students throughout their school years, both within the classroom and outside in their own communities. His time in the classroom also fueled key questions about educational disparities and the potential limitations of common curricular and teaching practices.
“Children’s capacities are often underestimated, diminished by low expectations that position them as the future of democracy rather than its present,” Schmidt said. “Students have proven over and over that they want to be more than passive recipients of knowledge, that they can – that they want to – practically engage with big, complex issues in a modern democracy and that their explorations should be taken seriously. They can wrestle with the problems of our day long before we credit them as ready, cultivate their own ethical responsibility, and meaningfully practice civic engagement if given the chance.”
Schmidt said that he tried to instill in his students a need to practice democracy, reminding them that their practice is meaningful and consequential.
While Schmidt taught, he stayed in touch with his professors at Carolina, and they encouraged him to academically explore his work and experiences in the classroom. He enrolled in the School’s CCTE doctoral program concentration in 2020.
Rethinking teaching, global approaches and local change
Schmidt’s time in the doctoral program has provided him an opportunity to study the impact of a deeper practice of democracy in education, building on the principles and teaching models from his time in the classroom.
“I like to consider what possibilities exist within teacher education that can help us entrust and empower teachers and students with the capacity to act, make informed decisions, and move meaningfully toward the deep practice of small- and large-scale democracy,” Schmidt said. “Teacher agency is a critical component of this vision, emphasizing the importance of empowering educators and trusting them to navigate and respond creatively and courageously to the complexities of their roles.”
Schmidt’s research also considers teacher exchanges as one means of providing pre-service teachers with experiences that can help them gain that agency.
Since 2020, Schmidt has been instrumental in strengthening partnerships with the University of Hamburg (UHH) in Germany and the University of Education (UEW) in Winneba, Ghana, through the School’s Tricontinental Teacher Training (TTT) exchange program. These collaborations help to inform his research and reimagine opportunities for short-term study abroad programs for pre–service teachers.
“Dr. Glazier and I, along with our colleagues at UHH and UEW, have been conducting research that explores the varied impact that programs like TTT have on participants, and whether and how they last,” Schmidt said. “Preliminary findings suggest that the pre–service teachers who engage in these exchanges continue to ask critical questions long after the experience ends.”
Schmidt said their connections with peers from Germany and Ghana and their immersion abroad enable them to meaningfully interact with differences in how teaching and learning are conceived and practiced.
“Each participant can see and feel what educational ideals and practices are out there,” Schmidt said. “Their senses of normality quickly get shaken up and keep getting shaken up as the exchange goes on. They quickly pick up on how expectations of students and teachers can vary and how they reflect the priorities of our three democracies.
“A key focus of this research is exploring how to support teachers in navigating uncertainty,” Schmidt said. “It can feel distressing to have predictable norms confronted by difference – to have the ‘familiar made strange.’ By providing reflective tools and frameworks, we aim to help educators use these experiences to expand their understanding of what is possible for students, schools, and society. This work seeks to foster a more dynamic and transformative approach to teacher training and education, both in the U.S. and abroad.”
Schmidt’s dissertation work looks to compare the purposes, practices, and reported outcomes of study abroad programs for preservice teachers across the U.S. and to understand the TTT program’s place among them.
In support of his dissertation study, Schmidt was awarded a grant through the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s DAAD program, a joint organization of German and EU governmental agencies and universities that supports academics worldwide and promotes internationalization. Schmidt’s grant supports longitudinal studies to examine the lasting impact of these experiences. He noted that early indications suggest that teachers who engage in such disruptions retain a willingness to question norms and think expansively about possibilities in education.
“International exchanges provide invaluable opportunities for pre-service teachers to question the assumptions underlying their educational experiences,” Schmidt said. “By making the familiar strange, these programs encourage critical inquiry and help future educators envision new possibilities for teaching and learning.”