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  • Phoenix Rising:The Whirlwind Story of Success While at the Poles
  • Richard Williams (bio)

"We need to talk; I found your note." "Why would you write this?" "What is wrong?" These and similar questions began my first recollection of depression in third grade. As a student, I was always the socially awkward teacher's pet who spent far too much time in the books and in my head and not with others. It was not that I did not want to hang out with my friends; I did not know how. I felt different; I have always felt different. It is no different now, as a multiracial, gay, first-generation college student with bipolar II disorder in the upper echelon of the academy preparation, a PhD program.

My undergraduate career was as haphazard as they come. After bouncing from four colleges—starting at the local community college, then attending two private schools, and finally settling in at a state university—I earned my bachelor of arts in philosophy. I fully intended to go on to law school to become a civil rights attorney, specializing in education. However, the story almost stopped there. My advisor told me point blank that I did not have what it takes to go to grad school. I was a C student with a full-time job who did not go to office hours until midterms and finals. This middle-aged white man told me that I was not good enough and needed to "just find a job and be happy." I had a vision of my most influential high school teacher and heard the words, "If better is possible, good is not enough." So I packed up my information packets from law schools off my advisor's desk, told him that I would show him, and never saw him again. [End Page 210]

While at a law school fair, I talked to a brilliant Black man about my goals. He told me that the law was not for me; I had too much passion, too much heart, and that I would be bored. He directed me to a few historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that had great education programs. He charged me with finding a school that historically created change agents and with becoming an active cog in the machine. In his words, "Break it [meaning the educational system] until it works for people like you and me."

That conversation led me to go back to graduate school to pursue a career as a change-agent teacher: a teacher who aims to dismantle harmful systemic practices from within the educational system. The change-agent teacher enters the educational field knowing it is flawed and that it causes tremendous harm to a plethora of students. After graduating from college on August 14, 2010, I started my master's in arts of teaching program at a historically Black university just two weeks later. It was heaven. I loved two of my professors particularly. They were vibrant, brilliant, passionate, and nurturing Black women who believed in me and pushed me hard. One would often begin a corrective conversation with "I suggest" and from there lay into me in the way only a mother can. The other would take a more soothing approach and gently guide me; however, both had no room for excuses or subpar performance. They prepared us students academically, socially, professionally, and, most importantly, emotionally for the lives we chose as change-agent teachers. They taught us not only how to write a quality individualized education program and hundreds of strategies for teaching a diverse population of students, but they taught us also how to be scholars.

The first professor often told us of her research in reading and how she took her research and experience and wrote a book about child literacy development. The second gave us blow-by-blow examples of how to navigate challenging parents, students, and our eventual bosses. I felt my university created an atmosphere of academic, social, political, and professional excellence. My professors helped me get my first conference acceptance from an Ivy-League graduate-student education conference in 2011. I presented a bold educational philosophy paper in which...

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