I’m Southern.

I’m Appalachian.

I’m a teacher.

I profess for a living.

I believe that all students deserve access to an inclusive, free, public education.

I began my career in education in 2006, after graduating from the University of Georgia with a degree in Secondary Social Science Education, and as the first in my family to graduate from college. I grew up in the working poor class of the rural north Georgia foothills from a long line of folks who labored endlessly to get by. Their labor taught me that hard work mattered and that everyone deserved to be treated right. Those life lessons led me to becoming a public school teacher.

My first teaching position was in an alternative middle and high school for students who had not found the success they were looking for in the traditional school setting. I was a white boy from the rural Southern Appalachian working class and the majority of my students were Brown and Black students from socioeconomically marginalized groups. We were all just trying to figure it out and none of us fit quite well in traditional spaces. Through those experiences, I learned something important:

Everyone deserves an education.

Not everyone is afforded that right.

I’ve taken the lessons those students taught me 20 years ago and spent my career advocating for inclusive education spaces in a part of the world that makes my heart tick: the American South and Appalachia.

That’s what this site is about. Inclusive education in the American South and Appalachia.

If you’re here because you too love those regions (or want to love them) and you believe that all students deserve equal access to education as a human right, welcome. I hope you’ll come stay a while. We have much to discuss.

There’s always a snake in the hen house, intent upon taking education away from folks who deserve it. Let’s let inclusion win.

Thanks for joining.