“I always knew that I wanted to be in a high school with college prep. Because [in the college where I was an adjunct] I was dealing with those kids that were about to fail out. I was dealing with the kids that the system failed and they needed that last hope, that last teacher to get them through. And I'm like, ‘You know, if I go into a high school, I can get these kids before they end up in college and fail out. I can really be that teacher.'”
“So I (..) started looking for a school and I found [the college prep high school where I have been working ever since] (…) I did my research. They were graduating kids. They were sending kids to college—kids of color. And I'm like, ‘I think this is the school for me. Let me go visit it.’ So I visited the school (…) and something just hit me in here. In a lot of the schools that I was visiting the demographics of teachers were not representative of the student body. But in this school it was more than at any other school—and it was actually college prep, the kids were actually doing things that were preparing them for college on a college level. So I said, ‘I think this is the school for me.’”
“[The principal] (…) said to me later that the reason why he picked me was because he wanted to start a Journalism program (…) And that's how I got started. He kind of put me in a senior position. I came right in teaching 11th grade, prepping them for the [state exams]. (…) So they kind of threw me in the middle of the pool with the [upper-level] class. I did well. And pretty soon I was teaching Journalism (….) At the same time, he gave me the AP Composition class to do. And from there I did AP Comp.–AP Lit., the dual enrollment course that I'm doing now.”
“I didn't want to stop teaching, even though people wanted to push me to do other things. I don't want to leave the classroom. This is where I want to be.”
“After COVID, I was, ‘Okay, let me let me try something else. Here, let me do some other things.’ And as I was doing and taking other courses and getting certified for other things, I started to realize that there are other things I can do to impact the students. And so I became (…) an instructional coach. But I'm still teaching two classes.”