I had come into Teach For America feeling like I was high-achieving, but teaching will knock you down just because of how hard the work is. And I think we underestimate the hard work that teachers have to put in every single day in order to give their kids a great education. So I got knocked down a lot, especially those first nine weeks, whether it was trying to figure out how to get the labs ready for science, or how to help my kids get in line so that we could go to PE.

Every part of teaching was new to me. The teachers at Bonham took me under their wing as a first-year corps member. They were a huge part of forming the kind of teacher that I became. I still remember the phone call with my mother. I called her in December of my second year. That was about the time when I should've been applying to go back to grad schools, and I knew that I couldn't do it. I had fallen in love, not just with my kids and their families and the teachers at the school that I taught at, but also with our community.

I felt the call to stay here in San Antonio. The families at Bonham Academy welcomed me with open arms, and I could feel that this was the place where I needed to be.