I didn’t leave education—I left the classroom. I once planned to be a history teacher, but one unexpected opportunity working with a young man with autism changed my path. I loved teaching deeply, but I also care loudly, and eventually I couldn’t carry every gap alone. Leaving the classroom was hard and necessary. Now through Spesh, advocacy, and teaching at WKU, I’m still in education—just in a different form, on my own terms, building the dream I didn’t know I was already s