I am a single father, a full time teacher, and a graduate student pursuing a degree in school administration. None of those roles exist in isolation. They collide every day. Being a single parent has not just shaped my pursuit of higher education, it has defined it. When my marriage ended, I did not just lose a partner. I lost stability, predictability, and the illusion that hard work alone guarantees security. I suddenly became responsible for everything. Parenting, income, legal battles, housing, transportation, and emotional steadiness for my son, all while holding down a demanding career. There was no safety net. There was no pause button. There was only forward. I teach inside a women’s prison, working primarily with students who have significant learning gaps, undiagnosed disabilities, trauma histories, and little trust in systems that have failed them repeatedly. I see versions of my own childhood in my students every day. Poverty, neglect, addiction, violence, and the quiet belief that they were never meant to succeed. Being a single parent has sharpened my sense of responsibility to these students. When I stand in front of a classroom, I am not just a teacher. I am a father who understands what it means to fight for a future when the odds are stacked against you. Pursuing higher education has been hard. I have written papers late at night after my son fell asleep. I have studied between mowing lawns, fixing broken plumbing at my house, and managing health issues brought on by years of stress. There were moments when continuing felt impossible. But quitting was never an option. I needed my son to see perseverance modeled, not preached. I needed him to know that setbacks do not define you, but your response to them does. My goal in earning my degree in school administration is not status or title. It is impact. I want to be in a position where I can advocate for students who fall through the cracks, especially those with special education needs and those affected by poverty and trauma. I want to build systems that identify needs earlier, support teachers better, and create real pathways instead of temporary fixes. I want to challenge policies that prioritize convenience over humanity. My experience as a single parent has taught me that change happens when someone refuses to look away. In my community, that means continuing to teach in spaces others avoid, mentoring students who have never been told they matter, and eventually leading in a way that amplifies voices that are often ignored. This scholarship would not just support my education. It would support a father trying to build a more stable future for his child and a leader committed to giving others the support he once needed himself. I am pursuing higher education because I believe in accountability, resilience, and service. My son is watching. My students are watching. And I intend to keep showing them what is possible.

LitRPG: Dungeon Educator I did not choose the battlefield. The battlefield found me. In this world, most heroes begin their journey in classrooms filled with light, resources, and second chances. Mine began behind razor wire, in a place where the students arrive already labeled as villains and the teachers are warned not to hope too hard. The institution calls it a school. The system calls it “rehabilitation.” The truth is closer to a dungeon. I entered as a novice educator, equipped with little more than empathy, grit, and an unshakable sense that something about this place was deeply wrong. The students I encountered were not monsters. They were survivors with debuffs stacked so high it was a miracle they were still standing at all. Undiagnosed learning disabilities. Childhood trauma. Addiction. Abuse. Reading levels frozen in elementary school bodies. Sentences measured in decades. The system insisted these were personal failures. My experience told me otherwise. Every day felt like a turn-based battle against invisible forces. Policies that valued compliance over growth. Schedules that fragmented learning. Paperwork that mattered more than progress. Rules that treated individualized instruction as a liability instead of a necessity. Teachers were expected to “fix” students while being denied the tools to do so. Still, I stayed. Over time, I began to notice something the system didn’t track. Not test scores or attendance, but subtle stat changes. A student choosing sobriety. Another staying after class to read. Someone raising their hand for the first time. These moments didn’t earn points in the official ledger, but they mattered more than any metric. Yet the longer I fought from the classroom level, the clearer the truth became. This was not a fight a single teacher could win. The system was designed to outlast us. Burn us out. Reduce our impact to isolated successes while the structure remained unchanged. That realization marked my class change. I chose to pursue school administration not as a promotion, but as an act of rebellion. If the system is the antagonist, then leadership is the vantage point where its rules can be rewritten. From there, I can advocate for trauma-informed practices instead of punishment. I can design schedules that serve learners, not logistics. I can push for proper identification and support for students with disabilities who were never meant to fail but were never taught how to succeed. This is not about power. It is about reach. I am building toward a role where my skill set doesn’t stop at one classroom door. Where I can equip other teachers the way I once wished someone had equipped me. Where students who have only ever known systems that harmed them finally encounter one that sees them. Every story needs a hero, a villain, and a choice. Mine is simple. I will not leave the dungeon. I will level up, return stronger, and change the rules. Essay: I am passionate about special education because it is where the system fails people first and where the right teacher can change the entire trajectory of a life. I do not work in a traditional classroom. I teach inside a women’s prison, where many of my students were never identified for special education services when they were children. They were labeled difficult, lazy, disruptive, or unmotivated. In reality, many had undiagnosed learning disabilities, cognitive delays, trauma responses, or mental health needs that went unmet for years. By the time they reached adulthood, school had already taught them that they were not capable, not smart, and not worth investing in. Most of my students read at an elementary level. Some are functionally illiterate. Many carry deep trauma from abuse, addiction, neglect, and poverty. They did not fail school. School failed them. Special education is the space where that truth is most visible to me, and it is where my purpose became clear. I come from the same places many of my students come from. Trailer parks. Addiction. Instability. A childhood where survival mattered more than academics. I know what it feels like to sit in a classroom believing you are broken while everyone else seems to understand something you cannot grasp. That lived experience allows me to see my students not as problems to manage, but as people who were never given the tools they needed. In my classroom, special education is not about lowering expectations. It is about removing barriers. It is about teaching differently, pacing differently, and believing differently. I break skills down to their foundation. I celebrate progress others might overlook. I say “you can do this” to students who have never heard it said honestly before. And I have watched women who once hid in the back of the room earn diplomas, get sober, advocate for themselves, and begin to imagine futures they were never allowed to picture. My passion for special education has grown into a desire to lead. I am pursuing a master’s degree in school administration because I want to create systems that do not wait until prison to identify and support students with special needs. I want to build programs that intervene earlier, train teachers better, and treat learning differences as human realities rather than liabilities. Special education is not a niche. It is the heart of equity. It is where compassion meets skill, and where education becomes what it was always meant to be. I am passionate about this profession because I have seen what happens when someone finally believes in students the system gave up on, and I refuse to stop doing that work.

Caring for my son, Marshall, has shaped every part of who I am. I am a father first. Everything else comes second. Marshall is autistic, and while that label explains some things on paper, it does not capture the daily responsibility, vigilance, advocacy, and emotional presence that caregiving requires. Raising him has made me more patient, more intentional, and far more aware of how the world treats people who need support but rarely receive it. Caregiving, for me, is constant. It is structuring routines so he feels safe. It is anticipating sensory overload before it happens. It is choosing words carefully, advocating fiercely in meetings, and making sure he never feels like he is “too much” for the world. It is also the quiet work that no one sees, monitoring progress, celebrating small victories, and staying strong when exhaustion sets in. I balance this responsibility while working full time and pursuing my graduate degree, not because it is easy, but because my son deserves stability and opportunity. Being Marshall’s father has changed how I see intelligence, success, and worth. I have learned that ability is not always visible and that potential is often misunderstood. That understanding directly influences my career. I teach adults inside a correctional facility, many of whom read at a first grade level, struggle with undiagnosed learning disabilities, or have spent their lives being told they were broken instead of supported. When I look at my students, I see echoes of my son, people who needed someone in their corner long before the system failed them. Caregiving has also taught me resilience. Divorce, financial strain, and constant advocacy have tested me, but they have never shaken my commitment to being present and dependable. I organize my life around Marshall’s needs while continuing to build a future that will allow me to serve him and others more effectively. That is why I am pursuing a master’s degree in school administration. I want to be in a position to create systems that recognize learners with disabilities instead of overlooking them. I want to be the administrator I wish had existed for so many families like mine. Caring for my son has made me a better teacher, a better leader, and a better human being. It has sharpened my empathy and strengthened my resolve. This scholarship would not just support my education, it would support a father who is building a future where his child, and others like him, are seen, protected, and valued. Caregiving did not limit my path. It clarified it.

My desired career path is to become a school administrator working inside correctional education. I am currently a teacher at a women’s prison, where I work daily at the intersection of education, trauma, poverty, disability, addiction, and the justice system. While my role is not formally within the legal profession, my work exists inside the consequences of law, policy, sentencing, and systemic failure. I see firsthand how decisions made far upstream, in courts, legislatures, and administrative offices, shape the lives of the people sitting in my classroom. I earned my bachelor’s degree in education and have been teaching inside a prison since 2017. During that time, I have taught adults reading at a first-grade level, many of whom were never diagnosed with learning disabilities, never given proper support, and never had an adult consistently advocate for them. I have watched students cycle in and out of incarceration. I have lost students to suicide, overdose, and violence. These experiences made it clear to me that individual effort alone is not enough. The system itself needs leadership that understands the human cost of its failures. That realization is what led me to pursue a master’s degree in school administration. I am not seeking leadership for status or authority. I am seeking it because I want a seat at the table where decisions are made. I want to influence programming, staffing, scheduling, intervention systems, and partnerships so that education inside correctional facilities is not treated as an afterthought, but as a legitimate pathway to rehabilitation and public safety. My experiences have prepared me for this path in ways that cannot be taught in textbooks. I am a single father navigating custody, financial instability, and personal health challenges while remaining fully present for my child. I run a small lawn care business to supplement my income. I have repaired my own home when I could not afford contractors. I have managed classrooms under constant institutional constraints, limited resources, and unpredictable attendance. These experiences have sharpened my problem-solving skills, resilience, and ability to lead under pressure. Working inside a prison has also given me a deep respect for policy, procedure, and accountability. I understand how rules exist for safety, but I also understand how rigid systems can unintentionally harm people when empathy and discretion are removed. As an administrator, I want to bridge that gap. I want to build programs that comply with institutional requirements while still honoring dignity, access, and human potential. Ultimately, I envision my impact extending beyond a single school or facility. I want to contribute to a model of correctional education that reduces recidivism, supports individuals with disabilities, and creates real opportunities for reentry. Education is one of the few interventions proven to change outcomes within the justice system. My goal is to strengthen that intervention through thoughtful, informed, and compassionate leadership. This career path is not just professional for me. It is personal. I come from the same environments many of my students do, places where resources were scarce and advocacy was nonexistent. Becoming a school administrator is my way of ensuring that fewer people fall through the cracks the way so many already have.

Mental health has shaped every part of my life, whether I had the language for it or not. Long before I understood words like trauma, anxiety, or depression, I learned what it felt like to live in survival mode. I grew up in chaos. Abuse came from people who were supposed to love me and protect me. Drugs were around more than food. Alcohol was more common than juice. Love felt conditional, unpredictable, and fragile. When you grow up like that, you learn early that you have to be tough, quiet, and useful to survive. You also learn, deep down, that you might not be enough. Those beliefs followed me into adulthood. I worked hard, stayed busy, and tried to build a life that looked stable on the outside. When I got married, I believed I had finally built something safe. When that marriage ended, it cracked something open in me that I didn’t realize was still bleeding. It felt like the same message from childhood all over again. You weren’t good enough then, and you aren’t good enough now. When my ex tried to take my son from me, that wound split wide open. I didn’t just question the relationship. I questioned my worth as a man and as a father. I asked myself if I was repeating the cycle I swore I would break. If my own child could be taken from me, maybe I really was as broken as I feared. That period nearly destroyed me. I battled severe depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. My blood pressure skyrocketed. I was hospitalized multiple times. I was mowing yards after teaching all day, pushing through dizziness, numbness in my face, tingling in my arm, and moments where I thought I might pass out in the heat. I couldn’t stop. I had legal bills from the divorce, rent to pay, and food to put on the table. There was no safety net. I forced myself to take breaks in the middle of jobs, sitting on curbs and pretending I was fine so no one would worry. At home, I taped letters to my fridge for my loved ones, just in case I lost the battle. I recorded goodbye messages for my son in case I didn’t wake up. I gave up my firearms because I didn’t trust my own thoughts anymore. That was one of the hardest and bravest decisions I’ve ever made. But somewhere in that darkness, something shifted. Therapy helped me see that my pain didn’t mean I was weak. It meant I had been carrying too much for too long. I started to understand that my fear of abandonment didn’t come from my divorce alone. It came from a lifetime of being hurt by people who were supposed to love me. That realization changed how I see myself and how I see others. It gave me compassion, not excuses, but understanding. It also reshaped my goals. I am a teacher inside a prison, and since 2017 I have lost thirteen students. Some to suicide. Some to overdose. Some to the streets. I teach adults who read at a first grade level, many with undiagnosed intellectual disabilities, trauma histories, and untreated mental illness. Every loss hurts, and I would be lying if I said it hasn’t made me afraid to get close to new students. But it has also strengthened my resolve. I am pursuing my master’s in school administration because I want to create bigger ripples than one classroom allows. I want to build systems that catch people earlier, before they end up incarcerated, forgotten, or dead. I want to advocate for people like me and people like my students, the ones who fall through the cracks because no one ever stood in their corner. Mental health has also changed how I show up as a father. My son is autistic, and while I wish I could take him fishing the way my dad and pap paw took me, I have learned that love is not about recreating memories. It is about presence. It is about showing him that even when life is hard, you don’t disappear. You don’t quit. You don’t give up on yourself or the people you love. Today, I understand the world differently. I don’t see broken people. I see wounded people doing their best to survive. I don’t believe strength means silence anymore. Strength means choosing to stay, choosing to heal, and choosing to build something better out of the pain. My journey with mental health has not just shaped my life. It has given my life purpose.

Cardiac disease has shaped my life long before it ever showed up in my own medical chart. My father suffered a heart attack in his forties, and my mother has lived with high blood pressure for as long as I can remember. Watching both of them navigate fear, medication, and lifestyle changes planted an early awareness in me that heart disease is not abstract. It is personal. It is inherited. And for people who grow up under chronic stress, it is often unavoidable without intentional intervention. As an adult, that awareness turned into reality. I have struggled with dangerously high blood pressure myself and have been hospitalized multiple times because of it. Given my Adverse Childhood Experiences score, I know the data does not work in my favor. Research shows individuals with high ACE scores are at significantly greater risk for heart disease, sometimes up to three times higher than those with low ACE exposure. That knowledge sits with me daily. It affects how I eat, how I sleep, how I move, and how I pace myself, even when life does not allow much room for rest. What makes this obstacle especially difficult is that slowing down has never been an option. I teach full time inside a prison, working with students who carry their own trauma, learning gaps, and health challenges. After work, I mow yards and take on manual labor to supplement my income. During some jobs, I have experienced numbness in my face, tingling in my arm, dizziness, and moments where I felt close to passing out. I have had to force myself to stop mid-job, sit down, breathe, and let my body recover before continuing. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. At the same time, quitting was never an option. I was paying for divorce attorneys, managing unexpected expenses, and making sure my child had food and stability. There were days where pushing through symptoms felt dangerous, but not pushing through felt impossible. Navigating that balance taught me how to listen to my body without surrendering to fear. It taught me discipline, humility, and the importance of preventative care, not just emergency response. These experiences have fundamentally changed how I approach my health and my future. I am intentional now about diet, exercise, and rest, even when it means earning less or moving slower. I am pursuing a graduate degree in school administration so I can create environments that value wellness, sustainability, and long-term health, especially for people who come from backgrounds like mine where survival often outweighs prevention. Cardiac disease has been an obstacle, but it has also been a warning and a motivator. It has forced me to confront my limits while teaching me how to care for myself with the same seriousness I bring to caring for others. And it has strengthened my resolve to build a future where health is not something we react to only after it is already slipping away.

I learned character and work ethic long before I ever stepped into a classroom. Some of my earliest and most meaningful memories are on the riverbank with my dad and my pap paw. Fishing wasn’t about trophies or bragging rights. It was about patience, responsibility, respect for the water, and showing up even when nothing was biting. You didn’t quit because it was hot or slow. You stayed, you learned, and you kept your word. Those lessons stuck with me. That same mindset carries into every part of my life now. As a single father, a full-time teacher, and a graduate student working toward becoming a school administrator, there is no room for excuses. When my community needs me, I show up. When my students struggle, I don’t walk away. When my son needs stability, I provide it, even when things are hard behind the scenes. I teach inside a prison, working with adults who read at a first-grade level, many of whom were never identified as having learning disabilities when they were children. These are people who grew up without advocates, without teachers who believed in them, and often without anyone modeling consistency or discipline. I bring the same sportsmanship I learned on the water into that classroom. I treat people with respect. I meet them where they are. I hold them accountable while still letting them know they matter. I don’t quit on them just because progress is slow. Outside of teaching, I run my own lawn care business to support my family. It is honest, physical work that requires reliability, follow-through, and pride in doing a job right, even when no one is watching. That work ethic models something important for my son, especially because autism creates limits on what we can easily do together. I may not be able to take him fishing the way I wish I could, but I can show him what commitment looks like through my actions every day. This scholarship would directly support my goal of becoming a school principal so I can create systemic change, not just individual impact. I want to build schools that catch students before they fall through the cracks, especially those from backgrounds like mine. Character, sportsmanship, and work ethic are not abstract ideas to me. They are lived values that guide how I parent, how I teach, how I work, and how I lead. I learned those lessons on the water. Now I live them in my community.

Mental health has shaped nearly every part of who I am, whether I wanted it to or not. I grew up in places where survival mattered more than reflection, where emotions were something you swallowed, not something you talked about. In the trailer park, in the rough neighborhoods, in homes touched by addiction, instability, and violence, mental health wasn’t a topic, it was a reality. Anxiety, depression, trauma, and substance abuse were everywhere, even if no one had the words for them. We just learned how to function around the pain. As I got older, I realized how deeply that environment shaped my beliefs and relationships. I became hyper-independent. I learned to carry everything myself. I learned how to stay composed in chaos, how to read a room, how to de-escalate, how to survive. Those skills helped me, but they also came at a cost. I didn’t always know how to ask for help, how to slow down, or how to process loss. I’ve lost friends, loved ones, and students to suicide, addiction, and untreated mental illness. Each loss leaves a mark. Over time, you start to feel the weight of it in your body and your spirit. Instead of hardening me, those experiences pulled me toward service. I became a teacher because I wanted to be the adult I never had. Today, I teach inside a prison. Many of my students read at a first-grade level. Many have intellectual disabilities that were never diagnosed. Many carry trauma so deep it affects how they sit in a chair, how they respond to authority, how they see themselves as learners and as human beings. Mental health is not separate from education in that environment. It is the environment. I see students who were punished instead of supported, labeled instead of taught, warehoused instead of helped. I also see what happens when someone finally believes in them. When someone says, you’re not stupid, you were failed. When someone slows down, explains again, and doesn’t give up. That moment of dignity, of being seen, is powerful. It’s healing. My personal experiences with mental health have shaped how I show up in relationships. I lead with empathy. I listen more than I speak. I stay present when things are uncomfortable. As a father, this matters even more. My son watches how I respond to stress, to conflict, to setbacks. I want him to grow up knowing that strength includes emotional honesty and asking for help when you need it. I am currently pursuing my master’s degree in school administration because I want to make change at a systems level. I don’t just want to help individual students survive. I want to build programs, policies, and school cultures that recognize mental health as foundational, not optional. I want to advocate for people who grew up like me and who now sit in my classroom, people who were never given a fair shot. Mental health shaped my life through hardship, but it also gave me purpose. My goal is to turn lived experience into leadership, compassion into action, and pain into something that helps others heal. That is how I plan to make a positive impact on the world.

Being a first-generation student means I have always been building the map while walking it. No one in my family sat me down and explained college, financial aid, or how higher education could change the trajectory of a life. I didn’t grow up with examples of people earning degrees or talking about careers that required them. I grew up in places where survival mattered more than planning, where there were more drugs than snacks and more alcohol than juice. Education wasn’t dismissed, it just wasn’t accessible. I learned early how easy it is to fall through the cracks. I saw it in my neighborhood, in my schools, and later in myself. I worked, struggled, stopped, started again. Getting my bachelor’s degree in education was not a straight line. It took persistence, sacrifice, and a lot of doubt. There were moments when quitting would have been easier and made more sense financially. But I kept going because I knew that if I didn’t push forward, nothing about my future would change. Now, I am a single father, a graduate student, and a teacher inside a prison. I teach adults who read at a first-grade level, many of whom were never identified as having learning disabilities, never supported, and never told they were capable. I see my own story in them every day. People who were written off early and punished later. People who needed one adult in their corner and never got one. Being first-generation means I am doing this not just for myself, but for my son. My child is watching everything I do. He sees me studying late, writing papers after mowing yards, fixing broken water lines, dealing with car trouble, and still showing up for him fully. I want him to grow up knowing that education is not just something you talk about, it’s something you fight for. I want him to see that hard things are worth doing and that your past does not get to decide your ceiling. I am pursuing my master’s in school administration because I want to create change beyond my own classroom. I want to build systems that catch people before they fall, especially those who come from backgrounds like mine. I want to advocate for students who are underestimated, underdiagnosed, and underserved, whether they are children in public schools or adults behind prison walls. This scholarship would not just help financially. It would give me breathing room. It would allow me to focus more fully on my studies and my family instead of constantly choosing which bill gets paid or which need gets postponed. It would move me closer to finishing my degree and expanding the impact of my work. I am not perfect. My path has been messy, exhausting, and hard-won. But I am still standing, still pushing forward, and still committed to building something better for my son, my students, and the communities that raised me.

Teaching, for me, has never been about content alone. It’s about presence. It’s about standing in front of someone who has been overlooked, underestimated, or written off and saying, “I see you, and you matter.” I didn’t grow up with that message. I came from places where survival came before dreams, where drugs were easier to find than opportunity, and where adults were often absent, overwhelmed, or struggling themselves. School was not always a safe or encouraging space, but education still became my way out, and later, my way back in. I earned my bachelor’s degree in education because I knew I wanted to work with people who reminded me of where I came from. That path eventually led me to teaching inside a prison, where I have worked since 2017. I teach adults who read at a first- or second-grade level, many of whom were never diagnosed with learning disabilities, never given support, and never told they were capable. Some of my students struggle with intellectual disabilities, trauma, addiction, and mental illness. Many have lived lives shaped by abuse and neglect long before they ever made a bad decision. Teaching in this environment has changed me. It has shown me both the fragility and resilience of people who have been failed repeatedly by systems that were supposed to help them. Teaching is important to me because I have seen what happens when people finally experience someone believing in them. I have watched students read their first book as an adult. I have seen women pass their equivalency exam after years of thinking they were “stupid.” I have also experienced deep loss. Since starting this work, I have lost thirteen students to suicide, overdose, or continued cycles of crime and violence. Those losses stay with me. They make me cautious, but they also make me more determined. They remind me that education alone is not enough. Leadership, advocacy, and systemic change matter just as much. That is why I am pursuing a master’s degree in school administration. I want to do more than teach my own classroom. I want to build structures that support vulnerable learners, train teachers to recognize hidden disabilities, and create programs that intervene earlier instead of reacting too late. I want to make bigger ripples, not for recognition, but because I have seen the cost of doing nothing. For myself, I want stability, growth, and the ability to provide a better future for my son. As a single father, my role as an educator extends beyond my classroom. I model perseverance, accountability, and compassion every day, both at work and at home. For my students, I want dignity, opportunity, and someone in their corner. Many have never had that. I intend to keep being that person, and to help build systems where they are no longer the exception, but the priority.

Balancing school and family as a single parent isn’t something I plan to do one day. It’s something I am already doing every single day. I am a full-time teacher, a graduate student, and a father, and none of those roles get to pause when the others get hard. I don’t have the luxury of choosing between my education and my child. I have to carry both. My son is watching everything I do. He watches how I handle stress, how I respond when things break, and how I keep moving forward when it would be easier to stop. There have been times when I was mowing lawns after work just to keep the lights on, fixing water lines at my house because I couldn’t afford a plumber, dealing with car trouble, and still making sure I showed up for my son emotionally and physically. I have learned to study late at night, write papers after long days, and build my coursework around the realities of parenting instead of pretending those realities don’t exist. What makes this balance possible is structure, discipline, and purpose. I don’t treat school as something separate from my family. I treat it as something I am doing for my family. My graduate degree in school administration isn’t just about a title or advancement. It’s about stability, advocacy, and impact. It’s about being able to provide for my son while also building a career that allows me to protect and uplift people who were never protected themselves. I currently teach inside a prison, working with adults who read at a first-grade level, many of whom were never identified for learning disabilities, never supported, and never believed in. I see the end result of systems that failed early and failed often. That is why I am pursuing leadership. I want to create change that reaches beyond my own classroom. I want to build systems that intervene earlier, support better, and treat people like they matter before they end up incarcerated, addicted, or lost. As a single parent, my biggest challenge is time and financial strain. I don’t have backup. When something breaks, I fix it. When extra money is needed, I earn it. When my child needs me, I show up. A scholarship would not just help pay tuition. It would give me breathing room. It would reduce the constant pressure of choosing between immediate survival and long-term growth. It would allow me to focus more fully on my studies without sacrificing stability at home. This scholarship would help me finish what I started. It would help me continue modeling resilience, discipline, and purpose for my son. It would help me step into leadership with less debt and more capacity to serve. I am not asking for a shortcut. I am asking for support to keep doing the work I am already committed to doing, for my child, for my students, and for the communities that raised me.

Mental illness has been a constant presence in my life, long before I ever had the language to name it. I grew up in unstable environments where addiction, untreated mental health struggles, and survival were the norm. Anxiety, depression, anger, and emotional shutdown weren’t seen as things to be addressed; they were just part of daily life. You learned to carry it, bury it, or numb it. There was no space for vulnerability, and definitely no roadmap for healing. As an adult, I’ve had to unlearn a lot of what I was taught about strength. I’ve struggled with anxiety, depression, and the long-term effects of chronic stress and trauma. I’ve learned how easy it is to function on the outside while unraveling internally. Mental illness doesn’t always look dramatic; sometimes it looks like exhaustion, hyper-independence, or always feeling like you’re one crisis away from losing everything. I’ve lived that reality while trying to be a good father, a present teacher, and a graduate student pushing toward leadership. Mental illness has also affected my family deeply. I’ve watched loved ones struggle silently, self-medicate, withdraw, or burn bridges they didn’t know how to repair. I’ve seen how untreated mental health issues can ripple outward, impacting relationships, parenting, and entire family systems. Those experiences shaped how I show up now, especially as a father. My son is autistic, and advocating for his needs has sharpened my awareness of how closely mental health, emotional regulation, and support systems are tied together. I’m determined to be the adult I needed when I was younger, someone who notices, listens, and stays. My work has put me face-to-face with mental illness in its rawest forms. I teach inside a prison, where many of my students live with undiagnosed or untreated mental health conditions, intellectual disabilities, and trauma histories that were ignored long before incarceration. I’ve lost students to suicide, overdose, and violence. Those losses don’t stay at work; they follow you home. Over time, they make you guarded. You want to protect yourself from the pain, but you also know that connection is often the only thing keeping someone alive. What mental illness has taught me is that silence is dangerous. Avoidance is dangerous. Systems that prioritize control over care are dangerous. It’s also taught me that small, consistent acts of support matter. Sitting with someone. Believing in them. Telling them they are capable when no one else ever has. Pursuing a master’s degree in school administration is my way of pushing back against the cycles I’ve seen repeat for decades. I want to help build systems that recognize mental health as foundational, not optional. I want to advocate for early identification, real interventions, and educational spaces where people aren’t written off as problems to be managed. Mental illness has shaped me, challenged me, and nearly broken me at times, but it has also given me clarity. I know why I’m here. I know who I’m fighting for. And I know that healing doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens when someone finally decides to stay, speak, and lead differently.

I have been deeply impacted by mental health and suicide, not in an abstract way, but in ways that have shaped who I am as a father, a teacher, and a leader. I teach inside a prison. Since 2017, I have lost thirteen students. Some to suicide. Some to overdose. Some to violence and crime that caught up to them after release. Each loss hits differently, but none of them are easy. These are people I sat with, taught to read, encouraged, watched struggle, and slowly start to believe they might be capable of more. When you lose someone you were trying to help find hope, it leaves a mark. It makes you guarded. It makes you afraid to get too close to the next student because you know how easily they can disappear. Mental health is woven into every part of my work. Many of my students enter prison with undiagnosed learning disabilities, untreated mental health conditions, and long histories of trauma, addiction, and abuse. I teach adults reading at a first grade level who have been labeled lazy or criminal their entire lives. When someone spends decades being told they are worthless, stupid, or beyond help, the damage is deep. That damage shows up as anger, shutdown, self sabotage, substance abuse, and in some cases suicide. Outside of work, mental health has shaped my life as a father. I am raising a son while navigating custody challenges, financial instability, and constant pressure to hold everything together. There have been moments when my house had no water, when my car was unreliable, when I was mowing lawns after work just to survive, all while trying to shield my child from fear so he could still feel safe. Mental health, for me, is not about self care buzzwords. It is about endurance, responsibility, and choosing to keep showing up even when everything feels like it is breaking at once. Suicide, in particular, has changed the way I view leadership. Losing students has taught me that systems fail people long before they ever reach prison. By the time many of my students arrive in my classroom, they have already been written off by schools, communities, and families. Suicide is not a sudden event in those cases. It is the final chapter of a story that was neglected for years. That is why I am pursuing a master’s degree in school administration. I am not chasing a title. I am chasing leverage. I want the ability to create systems that identify students earlier, support teachers better, and intervene before people fall so far that prison becomes the end point. I want to create programs that recognize mental health, learning disabilities, and trauma as educational issues, not personal failures. Mental health has taught me that presence matters. That saying “you can do this” can be life changing when no one else ever has. That leadership is not about control, but about care. And that real change happens when someone is willing to stand in hard places long enough to build something better. I carry the people I have lost with me. They are the reason I keep going. They are the reason I refuse to numb myself to the work. And they are the reason I believe education, done right, can save lives.

Substance abuse has shaped my life long before I ever had language for it. It was part of the environment I grew up in, not something dramatic or exceptional, just normal. In the places I came from, there were more drugs than snacks, more alcohol than juice, and more chaos than stability. Addiction wasn’t a cautionary tale, it was the backdrop. Families adapted to it. I learned to read moods before books. Survival came before self-reflection. As I got older, I watched substance abuse fracture relationships again and again. I saw what it did to parents, siblings, friends, and eventually to people I loved deeply. I learned early that addiction doesn’t just hurt the person using, it rearranges everyone around them. Trust erodes. Promises become flexible. Stability feels temporary. Those patterns followed me into adulthood, not because I wanted them to, but because they were familiar. Becoming a father changed everything. It forced me to look at the cycles I came from and decide, consciously, what I was willing to pass down and what stopped with me. I don’t get the luxury of checking out. I don’t get to numb myself and disappear. My son needs me present, steady, and emotionally available, not perfect, but accountable. That responsibility sharpened my awareness of how substance abuse ripples through families, especially children who have no power to escape it. Professionally, this awareness pulled me toward education, and eventually toward correctional education. I teach inside a prison now, and substance abuse is everywhere. It’s in the crimes that brought my students there. It’s in the trauma they carry. It’s in the untreated mental health issues and undiagnosed disabilities that were masked for years by drugs, alcohol, or both. Many of my students read at a first-grade level as adults. Many never had a teacher who stayed. Many self-medicated pain that no one ever helped them name. What substance abuse taught me is that punishment alone does nothing. Shame does nothing. Ignoring root causes does nothing. Education, consistency, and human connection do something. I see it every day when a student realizes they aren’t stupid, they were neglected. When they understand that addiction didn’t define them, but it did derail them. When they start to believe that change is possible, even now. This is why I am pursuing my master’s degree in school administration. I want more than individual impact. I want structural change. I want to help build systems that catch people earlier, that recognize learning disabilities, trauma, and addiction before the criminal justice system becomes the intervention. I want to create environments where education is not a last resort, but a preventative one. Substance abuse didn’t just influence my family relationships or my career aspirations, it clarified them. It showed me what happens when people are written off and what can happen when someone finally shows up. I choose to be that person for my students, and for my son. I choose to turn survival into purpose, and pain into advocacy.

What inspired me to pursue a career supporting the intellectual disability community is simple and complicated at the same time. I saw myself in them long before I ever had the language for it. I grew up in places where struggle was normal. Trailer parks. The ghetto. Homes where there were more drugs than snacks and more alcohol than juice. Places where survival mattered more than school, and nobody was really checking on whether you could read, process information, or keep up. If you fell behind, you stayed behind. If you struggled, it was your problem. There were no diagnoses, no IEPs, no advocates standing in the gap. You were just labeled difficult, lazy, or dumb, and you carried that label with you. I made it out, but a lot of people didn’t. And the ones who didn’t are the same people I teach today. I currently teach inside a prison, working with adults who read at a first grade level, many of whom have clear intellectual or learning disabilities that were never identified when they were children. These are not bad people. These are people who were failed early and often. They struggled in school, were pushed through or pushed out, turned to crime or substances, and eventually ended up incarcerated. Now, decades later, they are sitting in front of me trying to sound out words for the first time, embarrassed but still willing to try. That is where my purpose locked in. I also see this reality every day in my personal life as a father. My son, Marshall, is autistic and has an IEP. I have watched how early intervention, support services, and people who actually care can change the entire trajectory of a child’s life. I have also seen how fragile that support system is and how quickly kids fall through the cracks when adults stop paying attention or stop advocating. Being Marshall’s father changed the way I see everything. It sharpened my sense of urgency. It made this work personal in a way that never turns off. When I sit across from incarcerated adults who were never diagnosed, never supported, and never told they could succeed, I see the version of my son that could exist in a world without advocacy. That thought alone is enough to keep me in this fight forever. I did not enter education because it was easy or safe. I entered it because I wanted to be the person I never had. I wanted to stand in the corner of people who came from the same places I did and say, You can do this. You are not broken. You are not stupid. You were just never given a fair shot. This scholarship would help me continue that work while providing stability for my family. It would allow me to focus less on surviving and more on leading. More importantly, it would help ensure that my son grows up in a world where people like him are supported instead of sidelined, and where people like my students are not written off before they ever get a chance. My goal is not just to teach. My goal is to advocate. To disrupt cycles. To stand between vulnerable people and systems that have historically ignored them. That is not just my career path. It is my responsibility.

I need to be honest upfront. I am not currently attending ASU, but i did graduate from there. I did not lose one single person to suicide in a clean, contained way. I have lost many people, and the loss did not happen all at once. It has happened over years, slowly, and repeatedly, in a way that changes how you move through the world. I am a teacher inside of a prison. I started teaching here in 2017. Since then, I have lost thirteen students. Some to suicide. Some to drugs and overdose. Some to violence. Some to choices that were made long before I ever met them, but still ended the same way. When you teach in a place like this, you do not just lose former students. You lose people you sat across from, laughed with, argued with, pushed, believed in. You lose people who trusted you enough to show up to class when they did not have to. You lose people who, for a brief moment, believed their life could still turn in a different direction. That kind of loss changes you. Every time I hear about another death, it reopens all the others. There is no clean grieving process. There is no closure. There is just a growing list of faces and names that stay with you. I still catch myself wondering what I could have said differently, what I missed, what small moment might have mattered more than I realized at the time. That weight does not go away. You learn to carry it, but it never gets lighter. The hardest part is that after enough loss, you start to protect yourself. I hate admitting that. I am afraid to get close to new students. I still care deeply, but I feel the tension inside myself every time I start to believe in someone. I know what it feels like to get the phone call, or the email, or the quiet confirmation that someone is gone. Loving people in this space comes with a cost, and the cost is cumulative. I have dealt with this loss by refusing to let it turn me cold. That is not easy. It would be easier to detach, to teach content only, to stop seeing the human being in front of me. But that would mean the loss won. Instead, I keep showing up. I keep teaching. I keep pushing my students to think, to read, to write, to imagine a future that does not look like their past. Some days, that is the only way I know how to honor the people I have lost. This loss is also the reason I am pursuing my master’s degree in school administration from Gardner-Webb University. I realized that caring at the classroom level is not enough. I want to create change that reaches farther than one room, one schedule, one group of students. I want to implement systems that support students before they reach the breaking point. I want to advocate for better programming, better mental health awareness, better educational access inside correctional facilities. I want to create bigger ripples, not because I think I can save everyone, but because I know what happens when we do nothing. Losing students to suicide and overdose has taught me that presence matters, but structure matters too. Compassion matters, but leadership matters as well. I cannot undo the losses I have experienced, but I can let them shape the kind of leader I become. One who does not look away from hard realities. One who understands trauma, poverty, addiction, and despair not as abstract concepts, but as lived experiences that walk into classrooms every day. These losses have broken my heart more times than I can count. They have also clarified my purpose. I am here to advocate for people who come from the same dark places I did. Places where resources are scarce and hope is fragile. I carry my students with me, the ones who survived and the ones who did not, and I let their stories push me forward instead of shutting me down. That is how I live with the loss. I keep going. I build something better in their name.