The Stan \u201cthe Man\u201d Musial Award. I still remember it. Somewhere, I bet, my mom still has it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was the end of 7th<\/sup> grade, and our teacher, a St. Louis Cardinals fan, was giving out awards to the class for the year. I remember thinking there\u2019s no way I get an award, and I remember being really sad about it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had a few rough years in middle school. Constantly in detention, sometimes suspended, and a regular of the assistant principals office, getting all C\u2019s with an occasional B. I look back on it now and can only imagine what kind of difficulty I was for my teachers and administrators.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was towards the end of this makeshift awards ceremony, when I knew without a doubt that I wasn\u2019t getting an award, that my teacher called my name. She gave some speech about how Stan Musial, the hall of fame baseball player, was a stand up guy and that he loved people, and that he was a special individual. I thought to myself \u201cShe thinks I am like that?\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here\u2019s someone, who I\u2019ve made upset all year, who found positive qualities in me despite all I\u2019ve put her through. I was shocked and surprised, but most of all I believed that I could change and really be those things she described. She saw things in me before I knew they were there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This was just one of many moments that I can remember where a teacher impacted my life. Whether it was helping me cope with my parents divorce or my mom\u2019s illness, in some way a teacher helped me out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the first 6 months of my time at my host company New Urban Learning, a charter school management company, I was working as a data analyst.<\/p>\n While the role was vastly important and crucial to the success of the school, I missed being in an actual school environment. I miss having direct impact on student\u2019s life, much like I did when I worked for City Year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That changed however, when I switched roles within my organization to an operations manager. In this role I work with teachers and principals on a daily basis, along with other educators that are working to make a difference in Detroit\u2019s education.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This change has reminded me of inspiring and hard working people in education are. Not a day goes by that I see a teacher, or principal, or dean of students, make a positive impact in a child\u2019s life, some big some small, but all meaningful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Stan \u201cthe Man\u201d Musial Award. I still remember it. Somewhere, I bet, my mom still has it. It was the end of 7th grade, and our teacher, a St. Louis Cardinals fan, was giving out awards to the class for the year. I remember thinking there\u2019s no way I get an award, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}