I always wished I could move around and switch schools. It was hard to have these radical transformations. You'd think, 'I will be a totally different person tomorrow,' but it never worked.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I hoped that it would be possible to slide slowly from my public life back to the life of teaching and writing that I had always wanted. But things didn't work out that way.
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.
I fell through the holes in the educational system. But education is still a way to change a life.
Whenever we changed schools, we had to make a new set of friends. At the time, of course, I hated it. But looking back now, I'm really glad I did, because it forces independence on you.
I realized if you can change a classroom, you can change a community, and if you change enough communities you can change the world.
I can't say that I've changed anybody's life, ever, and that's the real work of the world, if you want a better society.
Education has fundamentally changed my life. It's perhaps the mission of my life. I'm wed to it in a very powerful and personal way. And I chose the pathway that I believe could make me the most significant on changing the outcomes that we see now in North Carolina.
There is always frustration from people who work in schools that things keep changing but it is an unfortunate truth with the world of work changing as rapidly as it is, we do have to change.
Transformations don't scare me: it thrills me to become the polar opposite.
I wish my school days could have dragged on a little longer, or that I could go back and do it later in life.