Where did you grow up?

My initial response to this is that growing up is overrated. I’ve been fighting that process, but the short story is born in Atlanta, and then Atlanta to LA to Cleveland as an infant, and then for some unknown reason to rural North Carolina in the mountains in like seventh grade. And so it took me a long time to recover from that—moving from the north to the south. It’s just not an easy transition for me at that time, especially seventh grade. I mean, it was challenging year to move. But pretty much east coast. 

What were you like as a child? 

I was very sensitive, very insecure. I was worried about everything, literally, the sky is falling.  I was comical. I had a sense of humor. I was unsupervised. This was the 80s, and, you know, the whole latchkey kid thing, and so I was a bit mischievous. And I was fast—I talked fast, my brain worked very quickly, I walked fast. But even as a child, I didn’t want to be a child. I wanted to be 40. I wanted to be married with kids. I want to be working as a doctor. I want to be as far away from wherever I was at at the time, so I was not ever really present in the moment. I was always in the future, and that’s still kind of a challenge for me to be present in the now. I don’t feel like I was a bad kid, but definitely unsupervised. 

What was your school life like?

I am an internally, a very high-strung person. That probably comes from the worrying part and just the anxiety piece, but I was also, very, very introverted. And I don’t know if that kind of came hand in hand with being sensitive, but a lot of people don’t pick up on that about me, especially if they meet me as a teacher—they think I’m an extrovert. I know it seems a bit cliche for a teenager to be talking about how alone they felt. I honestly did not feel like I fit in anywhere, including my own body; I was 4 foot 10 my freshman year, I think even my senior year, I was 5 foot 2. It was like two other people in the entire building that were shorter than me. I was definitely targeted for bullying. School was a safer place than home for me, but I didn’t really have a place to shine, and I think there was just this innate need or desire to be invisible. But on the inside, I wanted to be a star, so I kind of just felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. 

How did that lead you to choose what what you wanted to do after high school?

Originally, I wanted to be a pediatrician. And I think when I think back to that, I know I wanted to make a difference in the world, I know I wanted to work with kids in some capacity. I had some health issues when I was a kid and I was born deformed, they had to reshape my leg and some stuff like that. So there was this introduction to a doctor who actually seemed like a pretty nice guy. And I thought, I want to be like that when I grow up. I was pre-med in college … But I think I started thinking about becoming a teacher somewhere in there, or started questioning, where do teachers come from? No one in our family was a teacher. We weren’t friends with teachers, and so they were just kind of this mystery. And, as dumb as it sounds, I didn’t know that you could go to college to become a teacher, like that just didn’t really ever compute to me. And so somewhere along the line after graduation, I think I started toying with the idea of becoming a teacher. And part of that was because I had kids while I was in college. So then I was watching these little, tiny things grow into human beings. And was fascinated by watching them learn and take in the world around them. And I was wondering, how are they processing? And I wanted to be a part of that, and I’m almost positive that’s when I really, fully committed to taking a look at how to become a teacher. And then, at 29, I changed career paths from a chemist into education.

How did your life change in college?

So Emory University was my dream school, but I ended up at UNC Asheville, which was a liberal arts school, and that completely changed how I see the world. It’s just a different way of learning, which I thought was really impactful to me. And I had a couple of college professors there in the chemistry department who were trying to get me to switch my major, but it took me 10 years to graduate, and I was already in a place where it’s like, I cannot spend any more time in school. But I helped them start an undergraduate research program, and we were doing anti-cancer research, which I found fascinating.

But when I was [a chemist] as a job, while I was working on my doctorate in chemistry, I found it very unfulfilling. Working for a paycheck to make money for a company was meaningless to me. And so again, I was working in this ginormous lab completely by myself, and I found myself talking to an audience, and I was like, I think I want to be a teacher.

But before that, in college, yes, I had kids, I served overseas in the military, and I was always working three jobs. I put myself through school. I mean, there was definitely some changes, but that transitioning from not really being a successful high school student to being a really successful, advanced chemistry student, really kind of gave me, I mean, it gave me some security and it gave me some like validation, of like, Hey, I have talent, but I didn’t feel like that path was taking me somewhere that was aligning with my goals of making the world a better place. And had I stayed in anticancer research, sure, but that’s not where I was at. I was working for a textile company and it just was not fun.

Could you expand on your involvement in the military?

On Veterans Day, I watched a special where they did one of those war hero things, and talked about the storming of Normandy, and I remember watching that and thinking, there were so many lives lost before they ever even reached the beach. So I had the right to decide whether or not I want to serve my country. Nov. 13, I was in the MEP center signing up like it was. I just felt obligated to those people that gave their lives. When I was serving in the military, and the drill sergeants would ask you, why are you here? And I said, it was my honor, my duty, to serve my country. I honestly don’t know what they thought, but they got a kick out of it, because I was doing push ups every single time they would ask me to front laying Rez position, you know, Private First Class Bowers. Why are you serving in the military? And they tell the rich, come over and listen to this. Listen, this is my honor and my duty, does everybody? And I’m sure I sounded incredibly naive. I’m embarrassed at what I might have looked or sounded like, but at the core it was true, and I found out was that was not the case for everybody that was in the military. You know, people are in there for different reasons. But for me, it wasn’t going to be a career. It was just something that I kind of did, and I don’t regret it, but it was definitely a learning experience. 

What did you learn? How did it impact your life?

I definitely learned what it was like to have your freedom taken away when you enlist. I mean, you sign a contract and you forfeit your rights as a citizen. You fall under the code of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ, and they have control of your life. They can do what they want with your life—not just you as a person. That, to me, was that was a big step. I mean, I was a commitment, and I had to learn how to follow through on commitments. As you know, as someone that was 19, 20 years old, I was very likely to just say, I don’t want to do this anymore, but you can’t do that while you’re in the military. So I learned some discipline. I had taken ROTC in high school, so I wasn’t completely oblivious to what I was getting into, but I did Air Force ROTC, and this was the army, so I kind of felt like that was a step down in some ways, but I think overall, I learned what I needed to learn to be more successful at life. It definitely taught me some resilience. I definitely learned how to overcome adversity, and I felt like I was okay at that beforehand, but I learned how to master achieving things that seemed unachievable. So I would encourage anybody who’s remotely thinking about it to, you know, seriously, think about serving some serving for something that’s bigger than you. I think that’s a missing piece in today’s society, as being a part of something that’s truly bigger than just oneself.

How has teaching impacted you?

I think the biggest thing was that becoming a parent definitely catalyzed the need for patience. Like, when you’re dealing with somebody who’s new to the world, like you need to be kind and gentle. But, having taught middle school in North Georgia, working with teenagers with very diverse backgrounds, individual needs, who knows what’s going on in their lives at any given moment—like, my patience had to be grown exponentially. And the other thing is, I felt like it made me a better listener. You know, if I really am going to be here to serve the students, I need to be listening to what’s being said and what’s not being said so I can internalize what their needs are and try and meet those needs. It’s made me more empathetic. But the hardest piece for me was taking a look at my own prejudices, my conscious ones and unconscious ones. Because, again, I want to teach all students. I want to help all students be successful, so I needed to go in and kind of debug myself for these things that were holding me back from being somebody who was able to come from a place of love and just do deep dives on those not loving comments, or whatever feelings that were coming into my head for certain people, and just go “that’s gotta go away.” And so I’ve worked really hard on trying to be accepting of all people. I think teaching has kind of made me a little bit more liberal in that case, which these days is kind of a bad word to some people, but I think it’s an amazing concept to have an open mind and try and see things from different perspectives.

What are your favorite and least favorite things about being a teacher? 

It’s grades, and not the grading process. Like, I love giving students feedback, but the chase of grades is annoying, and it’s annoying because I know it’s not as fruitful as somebody chasing or fueling their desire to learn. I know that when I was chasing grades, it was anxiety producing and inefficient compared to when I made the switch around my junior year of college, where I just said, You know what, forget it. I’m not going to worry about grades anymore. I’m going to go to every class, and I’m just going to go there and want to learn, and all of a sudden, like literally overnight, I became a straight A student. And I see that with students, and I know I can’t tell a teenager what to do, because they’re just not going to listen. So many people need to experience life and figure it out on their own, so I try and create an environment that’s safe to do that. But there’s times I just want to shake someone and just be like, stop worrying about the grades and just focus on the learning. I promise you it will work. I think that, to me, is been the most challenging piece to teaching is trying to find that balance. And then, of course, the other side of that question is my favorite part, and that’s working with people like you also. I mean, it is truly the greatest joy of my life to to have students like you who care enough to ask questions, and you know, somebody who is asked to write two sentences, but they write three paragraphs. I mean, I’m I’m in, I feel like I’m in the right place, you know, teaching and working with people that want to learn.

Is there anything else you feel that people have to hear or that you want people to know? I don’t know that anybody wants to hear or know anything?

You know, I guess I mean, as cheesy as it sounds, I would just encourage people to follow their heart. I mean, as long as your heart is somewhat pure and you know, and you’re doing it for the right reasons, like, follow your dreams no matter I’ve I’m not kidding you. I never had anyone in my life tell me I could achieve my dreams. Not one person they were. Everyone was telling me, why don’t you be more realistic? There you’ll never make it. That’s to this. You’re not enough that, and you just gotta learn to ignore all of that. But there are times when you need to hear, yeah, you can do this. And so sometimes you have to be that voice for yourself. So I would encourage anybody who is having negative thoughts in their own voice, strip those out, you know, and replace it with something positive and you know, fake it till you make it, you know, and start, start making a transition away from the negative and towards the positive. And I think everything else will come in line. All right, yeah.