I wasn’t the student who loved school. To me, classrooms often felt like cages for curiosity; places where memorizing mattered more than asking ‘why?’ I rushed through assignments, counting down to graduation, convinced real learning happened elsewhere.
Life proved me both right and wrong. As a firefighter and medic for 18 years, I discovered that the most critical skills, crisis de-escalation, trauma-informed communication, and emergency decision-making, weren’t in any textbook. Education wasn’t confined to classrooms; it was in the grit of lived experience.
When injuries forced me to step back, I became a stay-at-home dad and an accidental advocate. What began with a frustrated email about dangerous drop-offs turned into a decade of volunteering at the crosswalk (freezing mittens, warm determination) and eventually, into chairing School Councils for nine years. But my deepest education came during lunch hours at Bessie Nichols Elementary.
For three years (two as Team Lead), I witnessed the heartbeat of our schools: kids navigating friendships over sandwiches, staff juggling allergies and playground conflicts, and those fleeting moments where a bandage or a high-five changed a child’s entire day. I saw how policy gaps became lunchbox gaps, how overcrowding strained kindness, and how the ‘invisible’ work of staff held the whole system together.
Now, as my youngest graduates, I’m doubling down. Armed with frontline resilience and a decade of boots-on-the-ground advocacy, I’m fighting for a district where every child’s potential is nurtured—not just those with the loudest voices. Because courage isn’t just physical; it’s showing up where you’re needed, even when the system feels as rigid as those classroom walls I once couldn’t wait to leave.