My nana was educated (and so primarily equipped) to raise children. After her husband abandoned her, she had to flee Puerto Rico with her seven children to a Los Angeles project. My mother dropped out of junior high, and when she was sixteen, she had me. In another life, in another America, in a first-world country where governments dedicate much of their substantial capital to public education, she would have been a trauma surgeon. She worked swing shifts as a hospital clerk and devoured all the informal knowledge available to her. We were many: seventeen people in a three-bedroom trailer, asleep on beds, couches, and pallets. My cousins, younger siblings, and I ate cereal for breakfast, free cafeteria food for lunch, and Top Ramen for dinner. My nana made arroz con guandules and pollo guisado for us on special occasions. Sometimes, she’d slice up a mango and hand it out to us like a sacred offering. We’d savor it, skin and all. 

There was loss, pain, and terror, too, because those are characters in any novel of poverty. Some of us dropped out of school. Some of us had children when we were children. Some of us were stolen/imprisoned/killed. One of us went to college. I went—singularly focused on pulling my people out of poverty by becoming an educator and catalyzing systemic change in education. My commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is deeply rooted in both my lived experiences and my professional trajectory as a scholar, educator, and mentor.

My educational journey began in global majority schools that were poor, policed, and public. However, like most poor folk, I experienced high mobility in my youth, and so for a brief time, I attended an all-White American open enrollment school in a wealthy neighborhood. The quality of education was so egregiously superior that it was like being in an alternate reality. I still had roaches crawling out of my backpack, but for a brief time, I was exposed to a higher caliber of public education. I want(ed) to bring that opportunity back home to my people.

I hold multiple socially subordinated identities. As such, I grasp the nexus of systemic exclusion that marginalized students endure in every American institution. And yet, I am one of the few who have experienced academic and professional success. Nevertheless, I believe in the transformational capacities of educators to improve the livelihoods of generationally disenfranchised communities. To that end, I strive to sell my students on the subject matter, leverage their lived experience, and, ultimately, animate the promise of educational equity to advance the arc of justice.

Image: Los Angeles skyline at sunset with tall buildings and palm trees in view. Busy freeway traffic flows below with streaks of light from moving cars.