His name was Ron Clark.
Wisdom was pouring from him and I started jabbing away with my thumbs, taking notes on my phone. He told about being raised in a small town in rural North Carolina, then moving to Harlem to teach in a neighborhood where people like him did not belong. The kids he taught achieved what had seemed unimaginable. He was named the Disney American Teacher of the Year. He was on The Oprah Winfrey Show, twice. He wrote a book, and a movie was made about him. The man was everything I wanted to be. No wonder there was a stampede in the hallway and no wonder everyone had his book, eager to get it signed. No one even looked at their phones. Except me, because I was thumbing as fast as I could, trying to take down everything he said. Then, all of a sudden, he stopped talking.
He took a beat, then said, “Come on up here and join me since you’re texting during my talk.” I kept typing furiously, wondering what fool would be texting during such a stellar presentation. I closed my notes and glanced up from my phone thinking, I wish whoever he is talking to would get the hell up so the speech can continue. I looked around for the culprit, but everyone’s eyes were centered on me. I was so confused. I looked at them like, The hell y’all staring at? I looked at Ron Clark with his hands on his hips. “Yes, you,” he said, his eyes fixed on me.
“Oh no, sir,” I responded, “I wasn’t texting, I was taking notes on my phone. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Come on up here anyways and help me.”
As I rose from my seat, everyone clapped like I was a lucky winner. What I felt was embarrassment, not luck. I walked up and he reached out to shake hands. I shook his hand and then he announced, “See, people. This is an example of a weak handshake.” I thought, This man brought me up here to embarrass me, I oughta whoop his ass. But I smiled and laughed with everyone else.
He showed us how he teaches his students the importance of handshakes and first impressions. “You don’t look down at the hand,” he said. “You reach while maintaining eye contact.” I did as he instructed. “Yes, just like that,” he affirmed. “Excellent job.”
I did not feel embarrassed anymore. I felt empowered. No one had ever taught me so-called soft skills. I was eager to learn more from him. He patted me on the back and said, “Thank you, buddy.” I said, “Thank you, sir.” He reached out his hand. I extended mine without breaking eye contact. Before I walked away, he said, “See me at the book-signing table after this.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and returned to my seat.
The line stretched from one end of the building to the other. After a few minutes, I realized that if I didn’t leave then, I’d be late for my next class. The line was agonizingly slow because Ron Clark’s fans didn’t just want their book signed, they wanted their own moment with the education icon. I looked at the time again and decided that I would just go up and wave at him before I left. I skipped to the front of the line and said, “Thanks again, Mr. Clark. I have to head to class.”
“Wait,” he said, beckoning me to the table.
I was worried he would expect me to buy a book. They were about $20 and I could not afford it. Twenty dollars could feed my brother and me for an entire week or more. He inscribed a book for me and handed it over for free. We took a picture and shook hands again. I got it right for a second time.
On the cross-campus bus, I was on fire. After hearing Ron Clark speak, I knew that I was destined to do more than teach debate on Saturday mornings. Clark had showed me what was possible. I wanted to revolutionize education as much as he did, sharing my discoveries as he had done. I was so excited about changing the world that I could hardly concentrate as I sat in the back of my English class. My other class meetings were the same. I couldn’t tune in to my professors or classmates, although I read the books and passed the quizzes and wrote the essays. I daydreamed about how Ron Clark had gotten to the point of traveling everywhere, using his voice to empower teachers with strategies for making education work better for more children. I wanted to do that. I wanted to bring people together in the same way. But there was a big difference between Ron and me. Ron spoke at these places by invitation. Me, on the other hand, no one had ever heard of me. But I supposed Ron had started out as an unknown classroom teacher as well, and then blazed his own path to reach huge audiences. So I figured that I could do the same. After all, I was discovering myself as a trailblazer. And I remembered that we do not wait for opportunities, we create them.
I was passionate about reforming education and I had ideas to share. I thought, Instead of waiting for a platform, how about I build my own? The way to do this, I thought, was to hold an academic conference on education reform right there in Lynchburg. I had pulled off the Harlem Renaissance Festival, so nothing seemed too big. I envisioned what the conference might look like and began thinking about everything involved. Where would it be held? Who would attend? How would I convince them to come? How would I pay for it?
Though my scholars program had grown rapidly and gained some regional notice, many people were skeptical about its sustainability. I would not get far with seasoned educators by saying, “Hi, I’m a former dropout and a four-time Praxis failure with no teaching license or experience, would you like me to train you on best practices?” I believed in the curriculum and process I had developed, but I could not be the main attraction for the conference I dreamed about. In fact, I couldn’t make it about me at all. It needed to feature authorities, people whose names would make educators say, I have to be there, I have to hear this person. And I knew exactly who that person would be.
I searched online for Ron Clark’s contact information. I called his school in Atlanta, Georgia. A woman named Mrs. Mosley answered the phone at the Ron Clark Academy. She had the kind of energy that reached through the phone and lifted you up, no matter where you were.
I told her that I wanted to book Ron Clark for my upcoming conference. She let me know, in the gentlest way possible, that an agent handles his bookings and gave me his contact information. I knew nothing about agents or speakers bureaus. I called and the agent asked me a sequence of questions that I couldn’t answer.
“What’s the date? Do you have a location? Is there a venue?” he asked. I had no answers.
He finally asked, “Well, do you have a budget?” I asked him what he meant by this and he told me Ron’s customary fee. I nearly dropped my phone. Naively, I asked, “He can’t do it for free?” In response, the agent took time to explain the speaking business to me. I understood. It made sense. But I would not take no for an answer.
I wrote a letter to Ron Clark and sent it to the school. I introduced myself as the young man he’d met at Liberty. I told him about my work and the revolution that I was trying to create. I asked him to help me by speaking at my conference even though I couldn’t afford to pay. I never heard back, and I assumed my long-shot letter was buried at the bottom of a giant pile of fan mail.
I went back to the drawing board. Who can I invite that people will want to listen to? And who will do this for free? Local leaders in education and politics seemed possible: the mayor, the superintendent, and well-known professors and principals. I reached out to them with an ambitious pitch: I promised the biggest education conference the city had ever seen, a fancy banquet with live jazz and hundreds of participants from throughout the region. I knew I had to make it sound like a thing before it actually became a thing. Everything was pie in the sky at that point, but hearing Ron Clark speak had emboldened me. I was not afraid.
I got no response from the most prominent names on my list. I was an unknown but ambitious college student with no experience planning conferences. So I formed a speaking panel with six people who had made me audacious enough to dream up this event, and they all agreed to speak. I soon discovered that students could reserve event space on campus for free. I picked a date, booked the banquet hall in the Hancock building, and created a flyer. At the copy shop, I printed, laminated, and cut 150 tickets to be sold.
I had what seemed like
the ideal marketing strategy. I had drafted ten of my friends to be on an advisory board for the organization. If we each sold fifteen tickets, then we were sure to have a full house. I distributed the tickets to my board members. A month later, I called a meeting to collect the funds. Four weeks had passed and only fifteen tickets had been sold. All by me.
I panicked. We were one week away from the event. I was angry, heartbroken, and had no idea what to do. I went to Pastor Gilbert and vented about how much I hated being the one in charge. I hated delegating and depending on others to deliver. I hated not being able to do everything myself. He let me vent. Then he said, “The mark of a great leader is not what he can achieve on his own; it’s what he can achieve through other people.” It made sense, but I was not in the mood for his philosophizing. I had to find another way. I collected the 135 unsold tickets from my board members.
Lynchburg has about twenty public schools, and their websites listed email addresses for administration, faculty, and staff. I contacted all the principals, told them about the event, and asked them to share the information with their faculty. Some never replied, and the ones who did said they could only promote events sanctioned by the superintendent. He had declined my invitation to speak at the conference, so I didn’t bother to ask for his help now. I took matters into my own hands.
I spent my English classes surreptitiously scouring the web for the emails of every Lynchburg teacher, copy-and-pasting them into a spreadsheet one by one. When I got home that night, I sent a personal note to hundreds of them offering a discounted ticket. I was ready to give tickets away just to fill the room, but the catering invoice would be coming in a few days.
The emails worked: nearly a hundred teachers bought tickets, and the education department at Liberty purchased the rest and gave them to teachers in training. I collected just enough money to pay for the decorations and the catering. We were officially set for Lynchburg’s inaugural education symposium.
The event was a hit. There was not an empty seat in the banquet hall, and we ate an elegant dinner with live jazz in the background. The panelists went first, and then it was finally my time. The master of ceremonies introduced me as the founder of the program. I felt like I was sitting on the bench at courtside, waiting for the announcer to say my name so I could lope through the tunnel of cheerleaders, emerging from the dramatic fog and flashing strobe lights. I knew what that spike of adrenaline felt like. But this time it was different. I was about to take the stage at my own event, and for a moment I was speechless. I rested my trembling hands on the sides of the podium and looked out over a gathering of people I respected, people I wanted passionately to reach. The music faded. Everyone sat still, eyes fixed on me.
This was my second time speaking to a large crowd and it was nothing like the first. Months before, I’d stood on a stage that I had not created and was not really invited to. But this time, I stood on a stage that I had built on my own, against the odds. As I looked around the room, details leaped out and I gave thanks. I was grateful for the linen and centerpieces on each table. I was grateful for the jazz performed by the same friends who’d starred at the Harlem Renaissance Festival. I was grateful for the people in the audience, who’d paid for tickets and shown up. And I was grateful for the panelists, who’d believed in me. Pastor Gilbert was there. Two of my beloved college professors were there. And a man who’d driven all the way from South Carolina, who looked at me with pride and tears as I took the stage: Mr. Mills, the high school teacher who never counted me out.
I did not have a script. I spoke from the heart. My first words were “I’m not supposed to be here.” I sang my song, I told my story: how I’d almost died, and how I was learning to live. I told how each of the panelists was a teacher who had shaped and changed me when I needed molding and changing. I said that I was committed to inspiring other young people as they had inspired and motivated me. There was hardly a dry eye in the room. Afterward, I remained at the foot of the stage to shake hands and take pictures. People shared kind words with me like “Keep fighting the fight” and “This is only the beginning.” But no one’s words struck me like Kelly-Ann’s.
Kelly-Ann and I were high school friends back in the DMV. She was studying at the University of Virginia to become a teacher, and she’d driven down from Charlottesville for the conference. I always knew she would be successful, though she could not say the same about me. She could hardly believe her eyes when she saw a social media post about the education conference. She double-checked to see if the Brandon Fleming displayed on her screen was the same dope-dealing jock that she once knew. She had tolerated a lot of childish antics from me in our high school home economics class. She hung around until the well-wishers had moved on, and when a path cleared, she pounced on me and threw her arms around my neck, saying, “I can’t believe it!”
“I can’t believe it either, Kell,” I said as we shared an emotional moment.
We visited for a bit more but it was getting dark and Charlottesville was more than an hour’s drive away. Just before she left, Kelly-Ann said, “You’ve got something special here, Brandon. You should consider taking it on the road. Start with UVA, I’ll help you.” I was so exhausted that I brushed off the suggestion without much thought.
Back at my apartment, I collapsed on my bed, still dressed in my suit. I slapped my face a few times to reassure myself that the conference hadn’t been just a dream. It wasn’t. It was real. Reassured, I slept deeply and woke up the next day feeling so alive and ready for the next big thing. That’s when Kelly-Ann’s words came back to me.
I called her and she told me again how glad she was to see that I had turned my life around. We caught up on lost time. I told her all about the scholars program. She told me about UVA and about pledging Alpha Kappa Alpha. We talked about her plans to teach after she graduated. I hid the fact that I would not be able to do the same. Then I couldn’t hold my question any longer.
“Were you serious last night?” I asked.
“Serious about what?”
“About bringing the symposium to UVA. You really think we could do it?
“Absolutely,” she said. “Just say the word and I will help you.” There’s no feeling like when a Black woman tells you that you can achieve something. I believed what she said she saw in me. So we went for it. I launched the Symposium Tour and we took the event to several college campuses on the East Coast. Starting with the University of Virginia.
My students sometimes traveled with me when I was invited to speak about education at nearby conferences. I was living my dream as a budding orator. But I still did not have a teaching license or a job lined up, and graduation was coming. I applied to public schools, but the answer was always the same: “Sorry, we cannot hire unlicensed teachers.” I applied to just about every private school in Central Virginia, but none of them would take me. I looked at my scholars program and my events and thought, What was all of this for if no one thinks I’m good enough to teach at their school? I had no idea what to do. No administrator thought my successes outweighed my lack of credentials, except for one principal who’d attended my symposium.
“I can’t hire you as a teacher,” she said. “It’s public school policy.” I had heard this a million times already. The news did not surprise me.
“However,” she continued. “I have an office position that I can give you.”
I had no other choice. I could either work in her school’s front office or keep making minimum wage.
“And I worked something out,” she said. “Ms. Prewitt has an open fourth period. You can use her classroom to teach an elective on leadership.” I thought, Leadership? What the hell is this, a daily pep talk? I wanted to do some real ass teaching. I wanted to teach English and philosophy and rhetoric like I taught my scholars on Saturdays. But her offer was the only one I had, so I accepted.
I spent most of the day in the main office. As visitors entered the building, I was the guy who swiped their ID cards and said, “Look
at the camera, please.” I handed them a stick-on name tag, smiled, and said, “Have a good day.” But on the inside, I was saying, Fuck my life. When I wasn’t signing people in, I was tracking truancy. I didn’t need a college degree for any of this, not even for my so-called leadership class. That’s why I decided to change it.
That one hour in the classroom became my salvation five days a week. It was the only thing I looked forward to other than Saturday school with my scholars. Several of them were enrolled at the high school where I now worked. They were excited to see me every day, but I was embarrassed. I traveled with them to events where I inspired hundreds of people, only to crash-land on Monday at a clerk’s desk. That fourth period class gave me something to be proud of. It gave me purpose in what felt like an unending purgatory.
I was eager to teach on the first day. I had just turned twenty-three years old. If I’d worn polos and khakis like most of the male teachers, I would’ve looked like a student with no fashion sense. But I did not want to dress, talk, or walk like any of those stuffy teachers. So I dressed to suit myself. The school gave me a cart to shuttle my laptop and belongings to Ms. Prewitt’s classroom. It wasn’t the classroom I dreamed of, or one that I created, but it was better than the front office where I looked like a doleful kid trapped behind a lemonade stand.
I was enchanted the first time I walked into the classroom. There were real desks and real chairs, not like the white plastic ones we used on Saturdays. Instead of a small whiteboard balanced on my lap, I now had a wall-sized Smart Board. It felt like I had finally arrived. I set up my workstation and watched the clock advance. In a few minutes, the bell would ring and my students would tumble in. I could not wait to meet them and see the room fill with eager learners. I could not stand still. It was as though the drummers were beating and the rowdy crowd was poised for tip-off, with the cheerleaders chanting, “Jump ball, get it, get it!” Finally, the bell sounded and the entire class burst into the room with excitement. The entire class was one student. One whole student. Exactly one person had signed up for my elective class on leadership and she sat in the front row with a big smile. It was Shontae.
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