Empowering Students & Professionals to Achieve Their Goals

For the past few years, I have served as a school teacher. I had no clue that I would end up here, but I had a cousin who graduated from NC State one year before I did and went on to become a teacher. Day after day, since he'd started his career as a teacher, we'd talk on the phone about what I was going to do after graduation and the potential impact we could make as teachers. I kept saying that I wanted to go into the corporate world because so many people within my network were going that route, and that looked the most realistic, since no one I knew, except my cousin, had become a teacher; let alone a Black male teacher. 

For 2 days I worked in corporate in an office, at a cubicle, charged with making 150 cold calls per day. On the third day, when I woke up and before my feet hit the floor, I was already miserable about my job. I went to work and resigned within the first couple of hours of my shift. I had come to a realization.

Remembering those conversations I had with my cousin, the very next week, I became a substitute teacher. It was on my first day as a substitute teacher that I realized I had found my calling as a teacher. When I went in that 7th grade classroom to teach math, I was able to get those kids actively engaged in their learning. I could tell they were having fun while learning. After all, I was a Beginning Teacher who had ZERO formal education training or classroom experience at the time. I could only go off of what I saw in my own teachers coming up through grade school. I was 22 years old, single, graduated from NC State with a Bachelor's degree in Sociology, and living in my first apartment. 

There are still so few of us, Black men in education. However, I am committed to being best servant-leader and educator I can be. When your passion is your work, you will enjoy what you do. That's only part of the battle. You've gotta have focus , ambition, and dream big. There is sometimes pain in discipline when on the journey of achievement. "Pain is inevitable, misery is optional."

As a highly sought after teacher and speaker, I use actively engaging inter- and intradisciplinary connections to engage my audiences in a way that they feel that the achievement they desire is within reach. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."