During Shawn Sheehan’s travels across the state as Oklahoma’s 2015-16 Teacher of the Year, he witnessed oversized classrooms, spoke to demoralized teachers and saw how a teacher shortage left teachers overworked and underpaid.
So when a scrappy group of teachers started filing to run for state office in the 2016 elections, Sheehan, a beloved math teacher in Norman, Okla., threw his hat in the ring, too. We profiled him in a PBS NewsHour piece that ran earlier this month. Here he details his journey from teacher to candidate for state senator.