When I applied to Teach For America, I knew I wanted to work somewhere in the southwest. I'd heard incredible things about the city of San Antonio, and I also knew that there would be a place where I could use the Spanish that had stayed with me.

Teach for America, especially here in San Antonio, some of the work we were doing was both about how to have high academic standards for students, while also recognizing the need for us to be culturally responsive to the community that we were serving. It's one thing to drive in and out of a community every single day, go to a school building and then leave. And it's another thing to really immerse yourself in the community that you're serving.

The way that I think about Teach For America's mission and vision is how do we bring some of the strongest leaders into the classroom to really help kids who are oftentimes underserved, so that then wherever they go—education, law or counseling or bio and medicine—that they have the opportunity to always carry the stories of their students and the communities that they served with them.