I am a twenty-seven-year-old African American undergraduate student pursuing a Bachelor of Applied Science in Education with endorsements in Special Education and History. My journey to higher education began long before I ever stepped foot in a college classroom. When I was four years old, my mother accidentally caught our home on fire while attempting to make drugs. Throughout my childhood, I experienced instability that included living in shelters, staying on couches, and navigating life with a father who was largely absent. My mother struggled with addiction for many years, and much of my childhood was spent learning how to survive circumstances that were beyond my control. Despite those challenges, there were people who invested in me. My grandmother became one of the most important influences in my life. She taught me something that continues to guide me today: nobody can take away your education. When everything else felt uncertain, education became the one thing I could build for myself. Ironically, I was not always a student who valued school. I was suspended repeatedly and often struggled within educational systems. However, after leaving my mother's home, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. During my entire senior year of high school, I spent two to three hours commuting by bus each day so I could graduate. Nobody drove me. Nobody made me go. I simply knew that if I wanted a different future, I had to create it for myself. Today, I work as a Special Education Instructional Assistant at Rainier Beach High School in the Southside of Seattle. While I originally accepted the position because it was the opportunity available to me, I stayed because I witnessed how institutional systems often fail vulnerable students. Many of the young people I serve are searching for the same things I was searching for as a child: stability, validation, and someone who believes in them. My commitment to community is rooted in that understanding. Through my work, mentorship, and advocacy, I strive to be the kind of support that changed my own life. After college, I plan to pursue graduate studies in sociology at a HBCU and continue working to address educational inequities that affect Black students, students with disabilities, and other marginalized communities. The video I added is a description of what I am currently doing and what I want to do in the future! It’s from an assignment this year!

Being a first-generation college student means more than being the first person in my family to attend college, but choosing a different path than the one I was shown growing up. My mother dropped out of high school at fourteen years old due to addiction. Education was never prioritized in my household, and influence how much I valued it as a child. I was intelligent, but did not understand the purpose of school so therefor did not apply myself. I excelled in literacy, writing, and social expression but I had impactful academic gaps. By the time I reached fourth grade, I had fallen behind in math and didn't catch up until adulthood. I learned how to survive school, not how to succeed. Growing up in an unstable home made education more difficult. I was expelled my freshman year and sent to an alternative school. It wasn't until transferring that I knew I had to break generational tradition. After moving out of my mom's home, I spent nearly three hours on public transportation just to get to school to graduate. I pushed myself to keep showing up. Years later, when I applied to become paraeducator, I was forced to confront my educational gaps. At twenty-two years old, I had to sit with a tutor to relearn long division because I could not passed the required assessment for the position. It was eye-opening to my educational neglect, instability and systemic barriers that followed me throughout my child hood. Becoming a paraeducator changed my life. Standing on the other side of the classroom helped me understand my own educational experience. I began to recognize not only the personal barriers I faced, but also systemic ones. I saw how poverty, familial instability, under-resourced schools, and educational policies impact a students future. Today, I am pursuing my Bachelors of Applied Science in Education, while working full-time in special education. My long term goal is to earn a graduate degree in sociology and study educational inequities affecting students from marginalized communities. I want to use both my lived experience and my education to advocate for students who are often overlooked. One of the most difficult parts of pursuing higher education has been realizing how my growth changed relationships. The more education I become, the more disconnected I feel from my family. Breaking generational cycles means challenging beliefs, habits, and ways of thinking that have existed for decades. While I am proud of the path I've created and all I've overcome, my success is viewed as rejection. Being a first-generation college student means carrying the weight of the past while also believing a different future. Every degree I earn is not only a personal achievement but symbolic to a generational shift.

Throughout my life, I have often been told I was too loud, opinionated, emotional, or challenging. For a long time, I compartmentalized myself because these traits were presented as weaknesses. Today, they are the very same qualities that have allowed me to advocate and create meaningful impact on others. One unique part of my story is I became the type of educator many people never expected me to become. By my freshman year of high school, I had been suspended 23 time before eventually being expelled. At several points of my life the educational system seemed more prepared to give up on me than to invest in me. Today, I work in special education while pursuing a bachelors degree in education. My experiences have given me a perspective that cannot be taught in textbook. I understand what it feels like to struggle, to be misunderstood and to feel like you do not belong. What makes this influence powerful is that I often do not know who is watching. A student may never tell me that a conversation helped them, a young person may never reveal that seeing someone who looks like them, from the same community as them, and having the same lived experience as them made them believe that their success was possible. While my educational and career experiences have shaped the work I do today, they have also transformed the way I understand myself. The lessons that have impacted me the most were not always about academics but about identity. As a mixed-race Black woman raised by a white parent there were parts of my identity denied, punished, and suppressed. Living in a state of constant invalidation and then it transferring institutionally left me in a constant state of being a 'problem' My 23 suspensions is a direct result of adultification, punitive action taken upon myself because education as a whole is a white societal institution. My own strength is what got me to where I am today, but it's also led me to a path of sociology. I plan to get my bachelors in education, but I plan to apply at an HBCU for my masters in sociology. My long term goals is to address the systemic barriers that education still face in allocation of resources, school to prison pipelines, special education, and race. My 'success' is not worth mentioning if it's not an investment in my goal to help others.

My experience in higher education has been shaped by instability before I ever entered a classroom. I grew up without a father, raised by a single mother whose struggled with untreated mental health issues, addiction and incarceration. School was never about academics for me, it was the only place where routine existed, but systemic barriers had greater influence. Through my K-12 education, I experienced adultification as a Black girl before I had the language to identify it. I was not treated as a child who needed support, but as someone who needed to be controlled. I was consistently met with punitive responsive rather that understanding or culturally responsive support. Any time I asserted my agency, questioned authority, or demonstrated intellect outside of what was expected I was met with discipline. My behavior was framed as defiance instead of communication, and my potential was masked by me being a problem. Rather than being met with educators who sought to understand my background or learning style, i was repeatedly suspended, apprehended and punished. I now understand that what I was experiencing was not individual failure but a system that criminalizes Black girls for existing outside of white-centered expectations of compliance. This pattern resulted in me being expelled from high school and placed at an alternative school. At the time, I felt as if I was disposable however this would become the place I was seen. It was not until i became an educator myself that I fully understood my lived experience. Working in special education at a Title 1 school allowed me to see how systems reproduce the same harm under different names. I recognized myself in students who were labeled as aggressive or noncompliant. My expulsion was not an isolated incident but part of a pattern that institutionalizes Black children into punitive systems. My pursuit of higher education is directly tied to this connection. I am committed to using my education to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and advocate for learning environments that center cultural responsiveness. My goal is to work at the intersection of education, sociology, and juvenile justice reform to ensure that students are supported regardless of institutional power. The obstacles I face reveled the urgent needs for understanding that adolescent behavior is a form of communication and that intelligence cannot be standardized. Regardless of my education as a youth, who I am now as an adult does not reflect. I got my associates degree in ten months, I work at Seattle Public Schools as a teacher's assistant for kids with intellectual disabilities, I volunteer at Department of Corrections Washington State to visit young ones in juvey, and I am working endlessly to make sure that my educational path leads me to Howard University. I am not a statistic that is used to weaponize or justify the way at which the system continues to oppress Black and Brown students.

My experience in higher education has been shaped by instability before I ever entered a classroom. I grew up without a father, raised by a single mother whose struggled with untreated mental health issues, addiction and incarceration. School was never about academics for me, it was the only place where routine existed, but systemic barriers had greater influence. Through my K-12 education, I experienced adultification as a Black girl before I had the language to identify it. I was not treated as a child who needed support, but as someone who needed to be controlled. I was consistently met with punitive responsive rather that understanding or culturally responsive support. Any time I asserted my agency, questioned authority, or demonstrated intellect outside of what was expected I was met with discipline. My behavior was framed as defiance instead of communication, and my potential was masked by me being a problem. Rather than being met with educators who sought to understand my background or learning style, i was repeatedly suspended, apprehended and punished. I now understand that what I was experiencing was not individual failure but a system that criminalizes Black girls for existing outside of white-centered expectations of compliance. This pattern resulted in me being expelled from high school and placed at an alternative school. At the time, I felt as if I was disposable however this would become the place I was seen. It was not until i became an educator myself that I fully understood my lived experience. Working in special education at a Title 1 school allowed me to see how systems reproduce the same harm under different names. I recognized myself in students who were labeled as aggressive or noncompliant. My expulsion was not an isolated incident but part of a pattern that institutionalizes Black children into punitive systems. My pursuit of higher education is directly tied to this connection. I am committed to using my education to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and advocate for learning environments that center cultural responsiveness. My goal is to work at the intersection of education, sociology, and juvenile justice reform to ensure that students are supported regardless of institutional power. The obstacles I face reveled the urgent needs for understanding that adolescent behavior is a form of communication and that intelligence cannot be standardized. Regardless of my education as a youth, who I am now as an adult does not reflect. I got my associates degree in ten months, I work at Seattle Public Schools as a teacher's assistant for kids with intellectual disabilities, I volunteer at Department of Corrections Washington State to visit young ones in juvey, and I am working endlessly to make sure that my educational path leads me to Howard University. I am not a statistic that is used to weaponize or justify the way at which the system continues to oppress Black and Brown students.

My name is Dalayna Wallace, and I am currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in education at Seattle Central College while working full time as a Instructional Assistant in a distinct special education classroom through Seattle Public Schools. My experience with cancer has been influential in the way I work in special education settings. When I was in sixth grade, my mom was diagnosed with Stage III lymphoma. At the time I didn't understand the impact of cancer nor how my mom’s diagnoses would affect me directly. My life became centered around chemotherapy appointments, anxiety and emotional turbulence. Every night I would wake up in a panic and go make sure my mom was still breathing in her sleep, as the oldest sibling I didn’t allow my siblings, or my mom see how much fear I was suffering from. This is when I first experienced dissociation, distancing myself from fear of losing my mom and morphed myself into a survivalist at a young age. With my mom's chemotherapy paralyzing her, by eleven, I became the caretaker of my household. I cooked, cleaned, bathed my siblings, got them dressed, and supported them academically. As my mom health declined, job loss followed, and our family experienced severe financial hardship. I learned early what it meant to survive without stability, support, or invention from systems that are meant to help families in crisis. The clearest memory I have of that time came at the start of the seventh-grade year. School was not approaching, and my mother could not afford backpacks or basic supplies for us. We applied for multiple community and school-based assistance programs, but the school year was approaching fast. I felt urgency to make sure my sibling and I had the things we needed. I took the bus to Target, placed a toy chest in a cart, and filled it with backpacks, notebooks, pencils, binders, and journals and pushed it all out the Target entrance without paying for a thing. I carried the chest onto the bus and brought it home. When my mom asked where the supplies from, I told her they were donated. At the time, my only concern was protecting her from additional stress and ensuring her that my siblings and I could start school prepared. Looking back, this moment represents how early responsibility and system failure shaped my development. I learned when institutions move slowly or overlook families in crisis, children step into gaps they were never meant to fill. Although cancer was influential in my childhood, it did not guide me towards education. What it did was heighten my awareness of how instability and unmet needs follow children into classrooms, and that understanding would help me once transitioning into my career in special education. In distinct special education classrooms, I recognized familiar patterns. Students with carrying invisible responsibilities, disabilities being misunderstood or unsupported and behavioral challenges being met with punishment rather than protection. Special education gave me the framework to understand the link between my personal experiences and how unmet needs, disabilities, and lack of intervention push vulnerable students towards disciplinary systems. My educational goals extend beyond teaching alone. I am passionate of addressing the intersection of disability, IEP intervention, and juvenile systems. My long-term goal is to advocate stronger protections for students with disabilities and are not criminalized for needs that schools fail to meet. Cancer taught me how fragile stability can be, special education taught me how powerful systems can be when they intervene, together, these experiences shape my commitment to educational justice that protect children rather than forcing them into survival.

My Pie in the Sky is to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and disrupt the profit-driven systems that rely on the criminalization, incarceration, and free labor of Black and Brown children by challenging the institutions that benefit from their disposability. My name is Dalayna Wallace, I discovered my passion for this work through learning about the Exonerated Five. Their story exposed me to how deep injustice is practiced within our legal and educational systems, and how vulnerable populations (youth) are often manipulated for economic, political, and social gain. As I continued my education, I began to recognize that mass incarceration does not begin in prison, it begins in classrooms. When I began working in special education at a Title I school, my experience supporting students with disabilities, I experienced how exclusion from classrooms, disproportionate disciplinary practices, and limited educational resources increased students’ contact with the juvenile legal system. Behaviors are often treated as defiance or disruption were actually forms of communication, unmet needs, or trauma responses. Instead of receiving support, students (Black and Brown) were removed from learning environments and placed on paths that mirror carceral systems. When I decided to pursue my degree in education, I also discovered my passion for sociology: the study of how systems, power, and inequality shape lives. Sociology gave me the language to name what I had been learning: how schools function as sites of surveillance and control, and how punishment is normalized for children who are marginalized. Educational inequity is not accidental; it is structural. My long-term plan is to complete my bachelor’s degree in education and pursue a master’s degree in sociology at Howard University, where I can utilize my research and activism within a historically Black intellectual tradition. I intend to start an organization focused on dismantling systems through education, research, and policy advocacy. My work will address issues such as the fact that approximately 70% of juveniles in detention have a disability, with nearly 65% of those students being Black or students of color; that only about 19% of high school credits earned in juvenile facilities are transferable, resulting in recidivism; and that standardized testing starting in third grade are measures of access to resources rather than intelligence or potential. Before discovering my purpose, I was directly impacted by these systems as a Black girl. I experienced adultification, punitive discipline, and a lack of supportive resources, resulted in being expelled and sent to an alternative school rather than being supported. Despite systemic barriers, I returned to school as an adult, completed my associate degree in ten months at Seattle Central College, and was recently accepted into an accelerated bachelor’s program at University of Washington. However, my success is individual, most people impacted by these systems, especially those with criminal records, are not given the same opportunities.