With ten years’ collegiate experience, I entered the urban K-12 classroom. Prior to my work in Detroit Public Schools, I taught courses in African American Studies, Women Studies, Global Issues, and Writing, at various community colleges and universities in both Michigan and Ohio. I entered the K-12 classroom with a focus on increasing the intellectual capacity of students so that they could access the kind of courses I previously taught. Since 2000, I have served as an educator and instructional specialist at high schools within DPS and DPSCD, sometimes where up to 1,600 students would learn together in a single building.Having worked in these various capacities for both the district and schools, the hallmark of my professional life is the capacity to build our instructional infrastructure with a practical awareness of our educational ecosystem. This means grasping how schools themselves operate in an urban center, the district bureaucracy and procedures and their interactions with the public and schools, the workings of the higher education institutions – and notably the gap between what we are doing in theory and what students can actually do when they arrive to university – as well as how teachers and professors function, and the realities of urban classrooms and college seminars. The sum of my experience leads me to believe, urban education can be transformative, if we engage our entire teaching staffs in a productive struggle of identifying, reaching, supporting, and providing appropriate rigor in all grade levels, and all content areas. I do this currently in an English/Language Arts position, although I have extensive experience in social studies as well. My work blends the expertise of a seasoned professor with the insights of a K-12 educator, so that our district can build in all students necessary access for higher education.