I strongly value Sergeant Albert Dono Ware’s commitment to service, sacrifice, and bravery, because I believe those are traits that we all need at times to get through the challenges of life. A particular journey of mine that challenged these characteristics in me was when I spent a few years studying remotely in Canada while still enrolled at the University of Colorado. I first started university in 2020. During the COVID lockdowns, my mom, who had separated from my dad when I was in high school, wanted me to study in Canada, where she had moved to. I agreed, because this was an opportunity for me to be closer to my mom while still working towards my degree. Thus, I spent a few years of my college experience studying online from Canada. Given Sergeant Ware's values, it took serious bravery and service on my part to make it through those years living in Canada. I was thousands of miles away from my fellow students and teachers, which made it hard at times to stay focused on studying because it felt so abstract while on a screen. Not only was it tough to stay on top of classes, but switching majors from Computer Science was particularly hard because I didn’t have anyone at school I could talk to in person. It took me a while to transfer to Economics; it required bravery on my part to pick something that I wasn’t sure I would be content with, but I’m glad it worked out well. Regarding the African diaspora in the U.S., I believe that a major sacrifice that should be made is to strengthen the community’s independence in educational reform. I believe that the educational experience in black-majority schools should be reformed to incorporate significantly more African history, culture, religion, and philosophy teaching, particularly (but not limited to) in the West-Central African region from which most of Black America’s ancestors came. My reasoning is simple: To best know where one should go, one should best know where they’ve been. As White Americans can look to the Roman Empire, we should also be able to look hundreds and thousands of years in the past to understand why and how we got here. I grew up in a majority-black education system in Chicago and spent almost my entire primary and secondary education there. In my schools, so little African history or culture was taught; I believe there were only one or two AP-level courses in African history. This meant that in a majority-black school, and likely many others, almost everything about Africa is taught either by the internet or the media, which could be biased. The key stakeholders involved in this change are parents, teachers, and even students. These are the most direct stakeholders as they are all interested in the quality of the students’ education. But from a bigger picture, everyone should be invested in such an educational reform. By learning more about one’s roots in school in a positive environment, it would lead to children growing with a greater sense of self-esteem. It would also motivate children to be more interested in school in general, both from the examples of ingenious ancestors and also because by learning about their ancestors, they can see more of themselves in school. In the same way that a typical American history class would teach a lot about European history, or a Chinese history class about Chinese history, seeing African history from a positive perspective could open the door for students to become interested in school in general.