“I hope and feel that a change is going to come to this place. I feel that it is not going to be the same culture which is damaging towards African American and minority students. I am a teacher for social justice and equity, it is my job to create spaces where brown and black kids can achieve. I do this via my African American literature class, my theater class, and my English 1 class where we read a diverse set of literature and try to help students make connections from their literature to the world that they live in. I am a teacher. I am a father. I am an ally. Aside from my job as a teacher, seeing my son achieve in school brings me the greatest joy of all. I love how he values his education, which is something we have in common. If he gets anything lower than an A, he will be disappointed. That is how I raised him. And because I am an educator, he values his education. He will achieve great things. After school, I go pick him up and spend some time with him, usually 2-3 hours. After that, I’ll go home and decompress by either reading a book or watching a show. Right now I am into a Netflix show called ‘Dexter.’ I find it very intriguing. Never really been into sports since the whole Colin Kaepernick fiasco. What has happened to Colin Kaepernick has happened to kids all over the US. African American and brown kids are being labeled and judged by who they are based on their appearance or the stands they make against society. I like to think of myself as a young James Baldwin, who is an African American writer who inspired me to do what I do.”