I began teaching when I was 14 years old. Pedagogy quickly became my hobby as I was intrigued by ways to connect with students and help them overcome various hurdles. Although pedagogy is an unusual hobby for a teenager, I read any pedagogy book I could, in part, because I was trying to figure out how to overcome my own challenges with attention and reading. Through this quest, I learned about multisensory approaches to teaching both reading and music and incorporated them into my teaching as well as my own studying. It was through this inquiry and experimentation on students and myself that I learned about dyslexia, setting me on a journey to obtaining an official diagnosis of specific learning disability in reading, dyscalculia, and ADHD, and igniting my passion for helping adolescents overcome learning challenges. 

 

My parents and I knew that I learned differently. When I was in fifth grade, attending a small Christian private school, my mom was my fifth grade teacher. Horrified, she witnessed firsthand my inability to function in school. It felt like everything was so difficult. Copying notes from the board, writing my ideas on paper, comprehending what I read, and performing basic math calculations were torturously painful. On top of these academic struggles, my body felt like it was going to explode when I had to sit quietly for more than 30 minutes behind a desk. Fearing my academic demise, my mom quit her job, took me out of school, and homeschooled me in the middle of my fifth grade year.  Day after day, she poured into me, determined to rebuild my self-confidence and academic skills. Though my mom knew that I learned differently, she did not understand dyslexia and ADHD and did not want me to be labeled as another black child who couldn't read, so she did the best she could, finding curriculum that would provide me with the remediation and solid foundation I needed to succeed academically. 

 

I managed to develop several strategies and tools that helped me succeed academically, though it was a long and painful process. I am fortunate to have had parents who believed that I was exceptionally smart and, despite my struggles, never allowed me to think that I would achieve anything but academic success. With the strategies and tools I developed over the years, I managed to complete a PhD program at Harvard University in historical musicology, although it was an extremely difficult process. When I had finished the final draft of my dissertation, I wanted to know for sure that I was dyslexic and had attention issues, so I took advantage of access to a neuropsychologist provided to Harvard students, and finally pursued a complete neuropsychological evaluation. While it was a relief to know that I am neurodivergent, it was also painful to realize that I did not have to struggle so much if I could have accessed the accommodations and tools provided for people with a diagnosis. As a result, I became even more determined to be a highly skilled educator who could effectively teach literacy skills to students like myself. 

​